Carlsbad Caverns

Notes from Lynn:

My father, John Ludlow, loved to talk to us about things he had seen – and we hadn’t. Oh, he would say with sympathy, you should have heard Schwarzkopf as the Marschallin in 1948, or, you visited Guanajuato and missed the Náhuatl carvings on the baptismal font at Iglesia de San Diego? Oh, my. Too bad. Most memorably, our family placedropper would thicken his voice and unfocus his eyes when he told us in rapt memory about the incredible beauty of Carlsbad Caverns. Sure, I would say to myself. Sure.

My father must have visited the newly anointed National Park in the 1930s, before elevators were installed. Margo and I arrived about 70 years later, but the caverns hadn't changed much in the last half-million years.

It took millions of years for water to percolate through fractures and create the enormous caves in the limestone bedrock.
It took 500,000 years for calcite-laden water to decorate this cavern, drop by drop, with statuary, ornamentation and phantasmagorical shapes that no sculptor could dream up.
It took me 70 years to get to the southeast corner of New Mexico and check out the best of my father's stories.
It took me less than a minute to discover to my surprise that my father had, if anything, understated the wonders of a fantastic art museum created by nature.

Margo and I took the elevator downward and found ourselves 750 feet below the Chihuahuan Desert in an S-shaped cathedral a little more than an acre in size. (Photos at right come from the National Park Service.) We spent almost two hours on an unforgettable trail illuminated by hundreds of concealed lights, none of them colored, in a Technicolor world of formations in hues of yellow, bronze, copper, green, red and black.

We stared at tens of thousands of stalactites that hang like icicles from the ceilings. (Margo called it "underground at the carrot farm.") We saw stalagmites rising like pointed candles, twisted arrows or sand castles built by demented children. When a stalagmite marries a stalactite, it's called a column.

We marveled at dripstone draperies, nodules that look like popcorn and the tiny stalactites called soda straws. We saw cave pearls and flowstone lily pads in pools of water. The park rangers have names for their favorites, a kind of geological anthropomorphism. We were introduced to the Witch’s Finger, Temple of the Sun and the Big Room; Rock of Ages (it's at left, shot by our totally inadequate camera), Hall of Giants and Totem Pole; the Chinese Theater, Painted Grotto and the Bottomless Pit (it isn't.)

The park, now encompassing 46,766 acres on the surface, has more than 100 other caverns not open to the public. Slaughter Canyon Cave is available for guided tours; take a flashlight. Research scientists have access to the biggest cavern, Lechuguilla Cave, with 110 miles of chambers and vaults. It was discovered only 20 years ago when someone noticed a draft from a small cave called the Misery Hole.

We pretty much had the Big Room trail to ourselves, probably because early December is not a time for crowds of tourists. Moreover, economic malaise is blamed for a huge drop in attendance from about 800,000 in 2000 to a reported 430,000 in 2007. The high cost of gasoline could be a factor – the caverns are a long drive from any big cities or any other tourist attractions.

Carlsbad Caverns, named for a nearby city, is not the largest or deepest of the hundreds of big limestone caves in this country. But its appeal is stated well by former ranger Edward J. Greene: "What it is, is overwhelming. Nothing else in our experience prepares us for the combination of immense size; intricate, delicate shapes, and overpowering beauty that is Carlsbad Cavern."

My father couldn't have said it better. To him, my apologies.

Notable: The posted speed limit on Interstate 10 in west Texas is 80 mph, but we are told by locals that the troopers don't care. When we averaged 80, even the 18-wheelers passed us.

Mileage from Carlsbad, New Mexico, to Phoenix, Arizona: 580

Mileage so far: 11,152