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Carlsbad Caverns National Park Inside and outside the caverns

Entrance to the National Park The Natural Entrance to the Caverns. There is also an elevator to the bottom. Looking back up to the entrance from inside the caverns Speleothem. A fancy word for cave decorations. Drapery speleothem. Draperies are formed when a line of running moisture builds up big sheets of rock. Cavern view. It is hard to convey in photos just how huge this place is, Tiny-E. Looking down at tourists on the path. They are blurry because I needed to use time exposure for these photos and I was not always able to keep the camera steady. This rock used to be on the ceiling but then fell. You can tell because the dripping rock down its side is tilted. And looking closer at the speleothems on top of the big rock, it fell a long time ago for this much growth to occur. A close-up view of dripping rock. View in the King's Palace. A large room with lots of speleothems. The Papoose Room The Papoose Room Another drapery speleothem, backlit with an electric light. Yes, it really is translucent rock. And you can see a cave cricket at the top of the photo. More speleothems When a speoleothem connects ceiling to floor, it is called a column When speleothems grow down from the ceiling, they are called stalactites. This means the water seeping through the rock above has a very low flow rate, allowing the rock to accumulate above. Round, noduley speleothems This flow speleothem looks like a real liquid flow Cavern pool. Since all the water in here seeps through the rock above, there are no fish in any of these pools The Green Pool. Turns out this color is due only to refraction. Stalagmites growing up to stalactites. Stalagmites are speleothems formed by a high flow rate of seeping water, which drops to the ground before the dissolve rock can precipitate. An unusually well-rounded stalagmite. More speleothems Almost... Big fat stalagmites The Lion's Tail. A very fore-shortened view. This stalactite is about 6 feet long, and has popcorn speleothem at the end. Popcorn speleothem is caused by evaporating water. A massive stalagmite These guys are 30-50 feet tall. These photos don't quite convey that, do they? Another view of the big guys Fairyland. James White, the first explorer of the caverns, came up with many names for things in here. The pair on the left had just the right flow to grow the speleothems the same amount. The one on the right had a much higher rate of flow of water. The Chandelier, in the Big Room of the Caverns. These stalactites are like 40' long! In front of this squat stalagmite, note the ring of rock growing at the level that the water pool used to be at I don't know how this formed. It looks like a big shell of rock. More Chandlier. The stalagmite on the right is maybe 40 feet tall. Another view Big stalagmite. This one is actively growing, meaning water is dropping on it from above Many stalactites Speleothems Speleothems Those are not sticks at the bottom of this pit. They're stalactites that fell off a long time ago and then got covered over. A view inside the Big Room A view through a window to the Chandelier Speleothems Speleothems. They come in all sizes. This alcove was only about 3 feet tall. The path through an area called the Zoo More speleothems In the evening in the bat-viewing amphitheatre That's where I entered in the morning Moonrise over the desert Those blurry things are the bats These bats are stragglers. Most have already migrated to places in Mexico. There they go for a nightime feeding A drive back to my hotel in White's City. White's City is basically "Carlsbad Caverns Hotel and Restaurant City". This was weird weather. Here I am in the middile of the desert, and it's 40 degrees out in heavy fog! Driving back to the hotel Sunset over the Gualalupe Mountains Sunset over El Capitain mountain at the southernmost end of the Guadalupe Mountains