@NP.Adventuring - Carlsbad Caverns (2nd time)

Carlsbad Caverns National Park Website

In February 2021 we decided to do a quick trip to our favorite neighboring state, New Mexico. We had taken our kids to Carlsbad Caverns a couple years earlier but they were too little to remember it and too young to get their Junior Ranger badges. Plus they were studying geology for their science unit at the time so it seemed like a great opportunity to take them back and experience it for the first time all over again.

Turns out the week that we had decided to go was also the week that the weather decided to freeze Texas and the rest of the country. Two days before we were supposed to visit the park they had to shut it down because of too much snow on the road leading up to the cave entrance. But it was quickly melted and perfectly dry by the time we got there. We stayed at an Airbnb in Carlsbad, NM which is about 30 minutes north of the park entrance. There is a small hotel right at the park entrance that we stayed at the first time we went, but we would not recommend staying there, do yourself a favor and drive the extra 30 minutes.

Carlsbad Caverns is a really cool park. You can choose to go in through the natural cave entrance, the same one the bats use, or you can take an elevator ride from the Visitor's Center down to the middle of the cave. We chose the elevator. They have a little food court inside the cave and that is the only place you are allowed to eat in the cave. The cave is setup in big loops that you can explore at your leisure. It's really cool to see all the different types of cave formations and think about all the time it took for these features to grow. They say it takes 100 years for a stalactite to grow half an inch on average. The largest stalagmite in Carlsbad Caverns is The Giant Dome; it stands at 62 feet high and is 60 million years old.

The famous bats of the cave migrate south for the winter so they weren't there this time around, but we were able to see them last time. You can see them each night from May-October. It's a really cool site to see thousands of bats exiting the cave. If you finish with the cave in the morning and need a place to hang out, Rattlesnake Springs picnic area is a great place to relax and let the kids run.

This park rates at 4 out of 5 stars based on our standard criteria.

Rating Criteria: Fun, Scenic, Ease of Travel, Wildlife, Crowds

BONUS PARK: Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Coming in from Arizona you cut through the western tip of Texas to get to Carlsbad Caverns and it just so happens that one of the two national parks in Texas is along this route. This is a pretty small park and pretty much all there is to do there is hike. I think they only made it a National Park because it is the highest point in Texas, but I'm sure the park service would disagree and say it was to preserve “an area possessing outstanding geological values together with scenic and other natural values of great significance" or something like that. We weren't up for a big hike that day so we just did the short little hike down to the ruins of the old Butterfield Stagecoach stop. The kids had fun exploring and imagining what it would have been like to stay there on a journey westward.

This park rates at 3 out of 5 stars based on our standard criteria.

Rating Criteria: Fun, Scenic, Ease of Travel, Wildlife, Crowds