welcome to new mexico
we are starting out this three-part travel series at carlsbad caverns and then tomorrow we'll
venture off into white sands national park and eat some food in las cruces and the day after that
we're going to be trying to climb the highest peak in texas guadalupe peak but first let's adventure
way down deep into the earth 750 feet below the surface a total of about three miles worth of
total trail future stacy here apparently my mic wasn't working so i'm going to try to voice over
what i was trying to tell you here so you can take the elevator down from the visitor's center
straight the big room but what we're going to do is take the natural entrance into the cave we're
going to go all the way down walking through the entire trail until we get down to the big room
now the big room is kind of its own separate trail
i want to say it's like another hour's worth of walking but if you don't want
to go through that trail you can always just take the elevator right back up to the visitor center
before you get to the opening of the cave there is an amphitheater and it says that the entrance
of the cave hosts brazilian retail bags the cave ceiling works like a nursery so the 90 degree heat
in summer like an incubator and then at sundown hundreds of thousands of brazilian free-tailed
bats fly through the exit and you can sit in the amphitheater and watch them
oh they have like a gated door the ranger at the cave entrance said we would take a trek about
two and a half miles down into this cave before we would reach the point where we
could take the elevator back up he also told us to kind of keep our voices down in the cave
because down here our voices are going to carry about half a mile now down in the cave you can
see just a glimmer of sunlight and that's the entrance way up there where we started
after you get through kind of the first opening and the area where the bats stay
you get into essentially just a dark zone now the national park service has put lighting in here so
that you can see where you're going but without the lighting it would be virtually pitch black
so because this is federal property you do still need to wear your masks inside the cave you do
not have to wear them when you're outdoors outside the cave but then if you're going to be you know
back in the main building or the recreation center you do have to wear them i think one
of the first plaques that we read stated this cave was initially discovered maybe in the late 1800s
but that people have been coming down here for tours for roughly like 100 years which kind of
just blew our minds i think it just sunk in that people have been coming down here
for about 100 years and that's just kind of crazy to think about there was a ranger that
was telling the people in front of us that they ended up installing the elevator in here sometime
in the 30s and that before that they had more like a bucket he said it only went down about 150 feet
but of course you know you have to imagine it you're sitting in a bucket and it's swaying
150 feet or not i think i would be terrified the temperature in the cave
stays relatively consistent throughout the year and it'll hover around 59 degrees fahrenheit
you may not know this about me but i am absolutely terrified of heights going down in this cave
it's so massive and then you could look over the rail and it's just like an infinite
black hole and i know you say with stacy how do you get on roller coasters but that's because the
roller coaster shoots you and up and down really fast and you don't have time to think about how
high you are it's not like i'm hanging out up there you know sitting down and having a sandwich
so it says the last official exploration of crossbed caverns measured about 31 miles of
passages there are still so many unexport areas though so it may be even longer
uh currently at 357 480 square feet the big room is the 22nd largest cave chamber in the world so
we've been walking maybe about what do you think an hour we've been walking probably about an hour
so we have now reached the underground rest area this is where you'll go to the restrooms you can
get some water or a light snack this is also where you're going to find the elevators to go back
up she was just telling us that probably about 30 years ago they used to actually
have hot foods down here you could sit and have a meal but because of the frying and stuff that
they were having to do it was causing the ceiling to have a black soot on it so they
kind of turned it into um like cold stuff only so that's why you'll see here just like drinks candy
bars chips and then a couple of pre-packaged cold things like a sandwich or a salad and then she
said they moved all of the hot foods in the dining room upstairs now you can either stop your tour
here and then take the elevator up and be done or if you wanted to you can continue on through the
route which should be like another hour to an hour and a half walk if you want to do it if you have
mobility difficulties this would be the area if you could ride the elevator down and you would be
able to pretty well tour this area as well as most of the big room if you have mobility difficulties
you wouldn't be able to come through the natural entrance because there's stairs and the incline is
not feasible for wheelchairs strollers and walkers and stuff like that so i would recommend taking
the elevators down here to this kind of rest area and then just checking out maybe the big room so i
think at this point we just went to the restroom we topped up a bottle of water and we're going
to try to continue as much of the trail as we can and then after that we'll get up on the elevator
the big room is about the same size as six football fields caves like carlsbad caverns take
millions and millions of years to form and more water droplets than we could probably ever count
okay we are squeezing our glutes we are hiking back out of the big room towards the elevator
if you're finding this video helpful or entertaining or if you just want to
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of course what tour would be complete without exiting through the gift shop uh they also have
a restaurant up here as well this is where the hot foods are sides you can refill your water
bottle get you a soda a nice area to sit down of course you can get stuff from the gift shop
shirts cups souvenirs so we just finished hiking the entire route of carlsbad caverns we started
this journey about 11 30 this morning and we got done about 3 p.m now obviously we took our time
we took a lot of video and pictures so you could really make this an all-day event if you wanted to
or you could try to go very quickly and probably get at least the first part of
the hike done in about an hour some things to note if you're going to come across bed caverns
wear good footwear some parts of the trails are very slippery you need footwear that's going to
have some grips on the bottom in case you hit one of these wet patches on the trail and you
don't slip they do have guard rails but some of the areas of the trail are they do have a
little bit of an incline to them so again just be very careful as far as the trek being strenuous i
didn't really find most of it to be very strenuous for a lot of it you are kind of going downhill
but then when you're trying to climb back out of the big room there is some incline there so you
need to keep that in mind if you have mobility issues i would probably recommend that you
take the elevator down check out what you can of the big room and that's probably going to be the
most that you're going to be able to see but don't get me wrong there's a lot to see in the big room
also keep in mind that although the big room is wheelchair and walker accessible there are
still a couple of portions of the big room trail that you cannot take a wheelchair they won't fit
my other tip would just be very aware of your timing we are here in february 2022
and currently the schedule stops selling tickets about 2 15 in the afternoon that is the last time
that you can enter into the cave they want to do this so that if it takes you a few hours
to go through it you'll be done by four or five when they're trying to close up
currently because of kovac you do have to have a timed entry you can do this very easily by
going online i'm gonna put the link down in the description below you just go on there reserve
a time entry they do give you an hour to come in so like ours was from 10 30 to 11 30 just arrive
anytime in that hour and you'll get your tickets at the front desk and they'll let you down don't
forget we also have been getting into the national parks using our america the beautiful pass this
is the national park annual pass that you can get for 80 it is good for everybody in your car
it's not per person so that can really save you a lot of money especially if you're going to hit up
more than one national park in the year be mindful that it is an average of mid 50 degrees fahrenheit
in the cave year round so even if it's 100 degrees outside in the new mexico heat it's probably still
going to be somewhere around 58 59 degrees down in the cave and if you're like me and you tend
to get cold i would probably wear something light like a light jacket or maybe a sweatshirt because
it does get pretty chilly down in there we found that when we were moving at a pretty brisk pace
i stayed warm it wasn't a problem but then once we kind of stopped to maybe take a break or get
some pictures i noticed oh i'm getting kind of cold now today i just wore a light t-shirt and
this chambray button-up shirt and that worked just fine so those are my biggest tips for
visiting carlsbad caverns let me know down in the comments if you have any other tips i would also
love to know if you've ever been here and what you thought of it as i mentioned in the intro this is
the first video in a three-part series where we start off here at carlsbad caverns tomorrow
we're going to go to white sands national park and check out las cruces and then on the third video
we're going to attempt to climb guadalupe so we'll see how that goes uh give me some
love down in the comments if you don't mind kind of bring my spirits up for that video
if you've made it this far please hit that like button and consider subscribing to become part
of the online travel family otherwise we will see you in the next video bye
you