Speleothem – the word of the day!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

As we progressed through today’s tour I was trying to think of some way of describing it in today’s post.  Spiritual is perhaps a good way of saying it.   Janet and I, have seen some really remarkable things during our travels together.  Seeing a whale spout and then breech and seemingly wave his tale fluke at you.  Seeing a grizzly sow with her cubs searching for food in the shadow of Denali.  And today, seeing the Carlsbad Caverns.  Just sheer beauty that sends shivers down your spine; something that man cannot dream of creating.  I tried taking some pictures to capture it and it just doesn’t do it justice.  The area is so vast, the formations so impossible.  

In concrete terms, from the Natural Entrance to the Big Room is a drop in elevation of 800 feet.  The Big Room is the size of 14 football fields (NFL not CFL), or 6 acres.  From the ceiling to the bottom of the Bottomless Pit is over 260 feet.  The elevator descends 750 feet from the Visitors Centre to the lunchroom/rest area and takes a minute to make the trip.  We have visited only two other caves, Jewel Cave and Wind Cave, both located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and both caves have fine examples of box crystals and popcorn crystals, they in no way compare with the grandeur of these. Apparently, the Carlsbad Caverns are not the biggest, not the longest, and not the deepest caves in the world; but they are the most beautiful.  So much so that in 1995, the caverns were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

If you’ve seen the movie the Bucket List with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, their characters need to “See something majestic.”  Their characters of Carter and Cole, try to see Mount Everest, but it is cloaked in clouds.  Seeing the Carlsbad Caverns is also just as majestic.

Bats were, what led to the modern day discovery of the caverns.  A young boy thought that he’d seen smoke coming from a hill side near where he lived.  He went to investigate and saw that this smoke was millions of Mexican free-tailed bats exiting the cave searching for insects.  The bats migrate south to Mexico in the winter and return to the caves each summer.  Every summer evening they make the nightly trip in search of food and park rangers give a talk about the benefits of bats.

After spending over four hours underground we came to the surface.  We spent some time and and helped the American economy in the book store.  Afterwards we took the Scenic Desert Drive along Walnut Canyon.  As we were progressing through the various sign posts a small coyote or kit fox crossed the road about 30 feet in front of us.  Janet jumped for the camera to try to get a shot but it seemingly disappeared into the underbrush.  It soon came out and start to climb the lower limbs of a juniper bush and started eating some of the berries.  We shot a number of pictures before he had eaten his fill and then moved away from us.

I had noticed on the scenic drive that the wind had come up and I was concerned about the trailer awning which I had left out.  With the wind gusts of 40 miles per hour I was sure that it would be in shreds by time we got back to the campsite.  Not so!  It was nicely rolled up.  I asked our neighbour who was just retrieving something from his car when we drove up, if he had done it.  He replied that he and his wife had rolled it up about a half hour ago when the wind started picking up.  We thanked him profusely for this act.  There are good Samaritans wherever you go.

Speleothem – a cave formation, usually as a result of water action - often referred to as decoration here at the Carlsbad Caverns – it includes stalactites, stalagmites, columns, draperies, soda straws.