When we woke up, we ate breakfast and showered.  Bob packed his backpack with water to drink during the tours and sandwiches to eat at lunch.  We drove to Carlsbad Caverns.  The drive was much easier this time since we were not pulling the trailer up the mountain.  When we arrived, we put on our hiking shoes and went inside.  We looked at the bookstore and the gift shop again.  Then we went to the elevator.  When we were here a few years ago, we walked to the natural entrance and walked into the cave through the area where the bats live.  This time we decided to go down in the elevator.  The elevator takes about a minute and descends about 750 feet.  The doors to the elevator are glass so you can see the side walls of stone.

As usual, we were early so we had to wait about half an hour before the tour started.  We waited in the area where they have a shop where they sell sweatshirts for people who don’t realize that the cave is about 50 degrees year round.  They also have an area where they sell sandwiches and drinks and have picnic tables where people may sit to eat.

At 9:55, the tour guide (ranger) arrived.  Actually, there were two rangers-one who led the tour and another to turn off the lights and make sure that no one was left behind.  We walked through part of the Big Room single file because we were walking against traffic.  We walked down some switchbacks until we got to the deepest portion of the cavern open to the public, King’s Palace.  This guide talked to us about the geology of the cave-how the cave was formed.  When we were here a few years ago, the ranger talked to us more about the history of the cave-how it was discovered and who discovered it.  This ranger told us to imagine that we had to fill a bathtub with an eye dropper.  She asked us how long it would take to fill the tub.  She compared filling the tub to how the cave was formed.  At the end of the tour, she asked the other ranger to turn off all the lights in the area where we were sitting.  It was so dark that you could not see your hand in front of your face.  We walked back up the switchbacks and went to the area where we could eat our lunch inside the cave. 

After the lunch, we took the self-guided one-mile tour of the Big Room.  In the fourteen acre Big Room, you can see Bottomless Pit, Giant Dome, Rock of Ages, and Painted Grotto.  The size of the room is amazing.  Also, the caverns have been lit to show the caverns in the best light.  The person who did the lighting for the cave really knew what he was doing.