030914 It's big, part deux

This time I'm talking about Carlsbad Cavern, and we only went on what I call the "Old Fogies" tour.  This tour being the self guided one, that was much less strenuous and didn't require a park ranger to accompany us, and didn't require climbing and very careful footing and riding the elevator down and back up.  The "Old Fogies" tour is just the "Big Room", and it's huge, in and of itself.

The green in this picture is probably due to the type of lighting.  Three types of bulbs are used.  Regular incandescent, florescent tubes, and mercury vapor lights.  By the way, all of my photos in the cave were taken without flash.  I had to discard a few due to motion when taking the images.  I'm very pleased with the new to me camera (Nikon 5100) and  lens (Tokina AT-X Pro wide angle 12-28mm).  I tried one with flash and it didn't work so well.  I have a lot of good pictures, at least I think so, but its going to be a while before I can upload them.  I'm going to need a good wifi connection with a lot of band width.

I was quite impressed with both the immense size and the unusual formations.  I had given some thought to bypassing this national park, but I'm sure glad we didn't.

To get to the entrance to the caverns, one must drive, via motorized vehicle, to the top of a small mountain.

We did it pulling the trailer since we had checked out of the CG already.  There was a high wind that morning.  It took a lot of effort to close both the truck door and the trailer door.  It would have blown our granddaughter over.

After leaving Carlsbad, we motored up US 280 to Roswell, NM.  Yes that Roswell.  However we didn't see any aliens except at the gas station. He/she/it was short and green.  I took a picture. :)

We went over the mountain to Alamogordo on US 70.  We picked this route because it was 4 lanes all the way.   We topped the mountain at Apache Summit which is 7,591 feet high.  We didn't see it at the time, but the top of this peak is much higher and is covered with snow.  We found this out after getting up this morning and seeing it.

It was night when we parked for the night.  We go to White Sands National Monument today.  I'll cover that in part 2.

Revised 4/12/14.  Pictures added.