10/13/2018 – Whites City, NM (Carlsbad Caverns)

Today we went to Carlsbad Caverns NP. We hiked in through the Natural Entrance and down 754 ft to the bottom of the main cavern. It was quite a hike just to get down (it took about 45 minutes). In fact, that was the hottest I got the entire afternoon. The NPS has done one hechuva job maintaining a very nice paved path down to the bottom of the main cave, and around all of the publicly accessible areas of the caverns. It was amazing how many of the stalagmites and stalactites shapes in the cavern looked like something else.

We got back to Alice about 3:30 and watched the Ohio State Buckeyes (Theresa!) defeat Minnesota (we taped it). Go Bucks 😊

About 5pm, we made the 15 minute drive back to Carlsbad Caverns NP to go to the Bat Amphitheater. The amphitheater is neatly carved into the natural surroundings, and sits in front of the cavern entrance area where Brazilian bats come pouring out around dusk to hunt for food.  The bats only occupy one main area of the caverns called, appropriately, Bat Cave.  The rangers did their best to keep the crowd entertained while waiting for the bat exit to begin (the bats don’t follow an exact schedule!) Then, as dusk approached, he warned everybody about 3 hard rules — no pictures or video’s of any kind. In fact, everyone was told that it was important too actually turn off all cell phones and other electronic devices. Also, no moving or talking loud while the bats are exiting the cave.

The bats started flying out of the caverns at 6:07pm (Nancy checked). Once they started coming out, it looked like a swirling tornado of birds as they flew from deep down in the cave out and then high into the sky. This continued for about 12 minutes! There were hundreds of thousands of bats flying around. Honestly, I expected to see some fly into each other but it never happened. They have an incredible internal radar/navigation system that keeps them flying safe and allows them to identify tiny flying insects and gobble them up with incredible speed and precision. Also, we noticed that they tended to fly in large groups once they got well outside the cave……they looked like huge swarms of bees…..sometimes making very big, coordinated changes in direction. It would have been nice to get a few pics of this amazing sight, but we understand the reasoning behind the ban (eg. bluetooth, radio and other types of electronic signals can interfere with the bats “internal radar system”.)

After most of the birds had exited the cavern, the crowd broke up and headed back to the parking lot.

This is the Natural Entrance where we hiked down. It’s also where the bats fly out….

This guy looks pretty miserable!

These guys look like they’re having fun!

Budha?

This was near the end….this sight was amazing (of course, some may not see what I  see)

We came back for the evening bat show but could not take pictures (park rules). This was another great day for us!