Ridiculous Road Trip #1, Part 6 Carlsbad Caverns

Back to Part 5.

Foolishly, I have let three weeks go by without doing a blog post. Yikes! Let me time travel back to the beginning of May...

May 7
We woke up that morning trying to decide if it was worth an extra two hours of driving each way for a day trip to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Luckily we chose well, we decided it was worth it. And boy, was it ever!

 Since we were up early, we managed to get to Carlsbad by 9:30 AM, which meant that we beat most of the crowd. This is officially the first national park of our trip, so we bought our annual national Park pass and we also got our first "stamps" of the year in our national parks passports. Then we headed down for our self-guided tour of the caverns.

The cave swallows were amazing.

And then we went down some more, lots more. The cave formations are awesome, the rooms of the caverns are huge.

We wandered the route through the caverns for a few hours and then made our way back up into the desert heat. It was totally worth the extra four hours of driving!

On our way back to Bottomless Lakes, we were distracted by a sign for the Living Desert State Park. It's a sweet little desert plant outdoor museum and zoo. We were lucky enough to be there for feeding time for a few of the animals including the bear and some of the raptors. And an adorable porcupine. And baby prairie dogs are also pretty stinking cute.

Back to camp again for one last night at Bottomless Lakes State Park. Doug took another dip in the chilly chilly lake. I gleefully read books in the air conditioned camper and wandered out at sunset to enjoy the lovely colors over the desert.

Up next, Part 7.