Carlsbad Caverns

And so begins another year of life as an inconsequential corporate drone, an unnoticed cog buried deep within the machinery of industry. Another year of slaving to the drumbeat of the merciless time clock, turning out batch after batch of nearly identical product, toiling without hope of ever breaking free of the shackles of white-collar labor, basing all hopes and dreams on the flimsy promise of another series of bi-weekly lottery tickets.

Another year of paychecks. Hopefully.

But you don't want to hear me talk about returning to the office after a long and wonderful vacation. You want to hear more about my dangerous and exhilarating trip to Mexico! Right?

As you may recall, Tanner and I were on our way to Carlsbad from Roswell, NM, where we had made the dubious decision to trust that we'd find somewhere to eat before we starved to death. We were still hoping to find an authentic Mexican restaurant, but we also were able to compute that we were going to cut it close on getting to the cave before it closed. We ended up eating at (sigh) Sonic, in Carlsbad.

But we did make it to the monument in time to join the next-to-last group to be allowed to enter the cave, so we headed down into the bowels of the earth.

It was nothing like I expected. No creepy vampire bats, no cuddly fruit bats...in fact there was no bat-related stuff visible at all. No bat poles down from Stately Carlsbad Manor. No bat-computers, bat-arangs, or bat-mastersons, either. No one was doing the batusi. You see, it turns out that the bats migrate -- spending their winters in Capistrano or someplace, drinking piña coladas, listening to Jimmy Buffett, and laughing at all the poor slobs who drove thousands of miles to see a stupid cave that had no flying rodents in it at all. Hmm.

But batless or no, the cave itself is pretty spectacular. The nicely-paved pathway descends into chamber after chamber, each one revealing more of the magnificent geological artwork left behind by eons of erosion. What makes this a very special cave is simply the size of everything; it's HUGE, and it keeps going and going. There are dozens of spots where you just have to stop and make fireworks crowd noises -- "Ooooh. Ahhhh! Whoaaa!"

But you make those noises quietly. Every sound, no matter how small, echoes forever in these vast rooms. They say you can hear Philadelphians talking from nearly a mile away while you're down there, and I believe it. Tanner and I whispered in the softest voices possible, and could hear each other without trouble.

The total descent is 750 feet, the height of a 75-story building. As I walked down the fairly steep path, I started thinking about the upcoming stair-climb event I've entered, and decided that walking (or maybe even jogging) back up this path to the cave entrance would be a dynamite way to get in some good training, and to see the cave formations from a different viewpoint. Tanner agreed that we should try it, and since we were among the last folks in, we should have the path to ourselves when we started back up.

'Twas not to be, though. When we finally managed to squeeze our way past the fitness-impaired folks clogging the walkways in the main section of the cave, we found that the path was now guarded by a stern-looking fellow with crossed arms and a Smokey Bear hat. "Excuse me sir, but we'd like to ascend back to the surface via this fine trail, sir. May we, sir?"

"Nope. Can't."

"But it appeared that there were no restrictions against upward movement, and the other tourists have vacated the path. We'd be no trouble at all, I assure you."

Dramatic pause, possibly to prepare a Strother Martin speech. Then..."Sorry, guys, but they've shut off the lights and there's a big candlelight tour coming down. You'll have to take the elevator up, like everyone else." Well, there goes my workout.

Still, if you're going to ride straight up in a fast 75-floor elevator, what better way to do it than in an open-sided box where you can see the rock wall zipping past as the operator reels off his memorized patter for the 87th time that day? It's dandy entertainment -- unless you have a problem with being squished into a small box with a bunch of obese and smelly tourists, rising upward at near-supersonic speeds on a thin strand of steel cable. Which I do.

Claustro-odor-dangle-o-phobia aside, though, I'd have to recommend this attraction with great enthusiasm. We had a fantastic time, and if amateur underground flash photography could do a better job of portraying the cavern's magnificence, I'd upload all the rest of my snapshots. (Sadly, though, they mostly look like icky piles of dirt and dog doo. Sorry.)

Anyway, after being dazzled by Nature's subterranean wonders, we decided to go ahead and press onward towards El Paso, with the idea of finding our authentic Mexican restaurant for dinner, getting a good night's sleep, and then crossing the border to sample the hospitality of Juarez in the morning.

Yeah, you guessed it. We ended up eating pancakes at Village Inn. Sigh.

But we did find a motel that had minimal exposure to live electric wires and an Internet connection, so after dinner we did some research about the trip over the border, and got a good night's sleep. But did we really make it into Mexico? I'll tell you tomorrow. In the meantime, watch out for migrating bats, and have a great day!