Carlsbad Caverns is one of the most unique National Parks
it's located in southeastern New Mexico in the Guadalupe Mountain range. In this video I'm
going to give you five things you need to know before planning a trip to this national park
Currently the cavern is open seven days a week. The last time to enter the caverns is around 2:15
possibly 2 30 p.m so you have to reserve a time ahead of time. It's $1 per person to
reserve your time slot and you have an hour to enter the caverns from your reserve time. This
is something they started during the pandemic that is still they're still following those
rules today it probably helps with crowd control. As you can imagine carlsbad caverns is a very
popular national park. When you arrive it's about seven miles- a very scenic drive from white city
there's a lot of traffic in the parking lot if you come later in the day just know that there's
going to be some empty spaces near the front that people are going to leave from the morning tours
and you'll be able to find a pretty good parking spot the entrance to carlsbad caverns is up pretty
high you can see guadalupe mountains national park off in the distance those mountains are in texas
and i bet you can see to mexico here but i'm a little unsure of exactly which direction is mexico
also keep in mind it is very hot in this part of the desert in the summer but the cave
is 56 degrees year-round and very very humid
so you're gonna want to bring a sweater there's plenty of rv parking up here at carlsbad caverns
however there is no overnight stains in your rvs you also can't leave pets in the vehicles
so they do have a kennel it's $10 a day to leave your dogs in the kennel so there is no food or
drink inside the cave it has to be protected you can bring water but that's it and so there
is a restaurant here at the gift shop there's also a place at the very bottom of the caverns
when you walk down if you want to get a bite to eat but you have to eat it there you can't carry
it around the caverns the coolest restrooms ever are at the bottom of carlsbad caverns
and plan accordingly the snack bar was closed when we got down here we were going to come in the
morning and eat down here at the bottom but it's closed so you may want to eat before you come down
this is where they used to have a snack bar i have eaten here before
so the restaurant here closes at three for hot food it is 3 20. so we just missed it
we do have some food in the car they have grab-and-go items until about 5.
so plan your food accordingly that's always important to us
so you can hike down in the natural entrance which i'll show you it's a
couple miles down into the cave and it is fairly steep but it is paved
if you are unable to hike such a long distance down there is an elevator now
once you get down you can take the elevator back up after you hike down into the caverns
this shows you the whole cave system that's under us right here at the visitor's center the expanse
of caves around us okay so from the visitor center we're heading over to the natural entrance
you are given a receipt with a time of entry and there's somebody that's going to meet you at the
entrance to make sure you have your receipt so don't lose it the natural entrance trail is
one and a quarter mile long and it's extremely steep you go about 750 feet down in elevation
and now we continue the hike down to the natural entrance
during the summers may through october is when the bats exit the cave in the
evening it really is a sight to behold if you ever hear it during that time
i would recommend coming you have to come around sunset and you can sit around this amphitheater
and then the bats suddenly leave in masses when you come down to the natural entrance the park
ranger is going to gather everybody right here at this little awning and they wait until they have
a group of so many people he checks all your tickets and lets you all in at the same time
so this is the amphitheater for the bat flights when you come here to see that this
is where you're gonna sit while you await their departure out of the cave and this is the entrance
i don't expect my cameras to do very good job once we get in the dark
and this path heads down towards the cave so they ask you to talk quietly and right about this point
the sound starts to echo so i'm not going to do much talking in the cave i'm going to tell you
that the perspective is something you just can't imagine unless you're here in person the walk down
is one and a quarter mile and it takes you down about 75 flights to the depths of carlsbad caverns
i have been in here before with a fair amount of vertigo
so it can be a little crazy on your depth perception when you enter the cave
okay we made it to the big room
there's the elevators the restroom and there's a snack bar down here
okay guys once you're down here we're gonna take a tour through the big room that's another
mile and a quarter trail and they said that it's the largest cave in north america by
volume in the big room it is a flat trail so if you can't do the path in here you can take
the elevators down and then hike just the big room and then take the elevators back
up so there is a shortcut if you don't want to do the entire hike around the big room you
can take this shortcut here that cuts across and makes it a little bit of a shorter path
all right here we go
this is my favorite areas
it's all to capture the grander
hello
if you've had enough walking you can shortcut the loop and head back a half
mile back to the restrooms otherwise you can continue doing a loop around the big room
i would allow two to two and a half hours to do the full hike in and out of course if
you elevator down and just do the big room you could cut it a lot shorter now there's
several hiking trails in this area we're pretty worn out from our knees from that
hike so i don't think we're going to explore some of those trails but i'll link down below
to a description of all the hiking trails in the area there are no campgrounds inside the national
park you can only camp via backcountry permit i recommend you find a place to stay in the town
of carlsbad we stayed in the fairfield inn there's plenty of hotels to choose
from and plenty of rv parks to choose from the closest place to stay is white city take a look
okay guys there's a lot of traffic noise around here but this is white city this is the place
that's the closest place to stay if you want to stay really close to carlsbad caverns it's about
a 30 minute drive from carlsbad to white city and so there's just a couple of hotels there's
noisy trucks and there's the one restaurant here to eat and there's some gift shops it looks like
a little convenience store here um but if you want to do the bat program that's in the evenings
in carlsbad caverns that's when we stayed here in white city and then we visited the bats we
did the caverns we came back to the hotel we ate and then we went back for the bats in the evening
if you stay in white city this is where you're gonna want to eat
so this used to be a roadway inn and it was like gosh this was probably 10 years ago
you