Carlsbad Caverns NP is located along US Routes 62 & 180 in the extreme southeast corner of New Mexico. It is about 20 miles south of the city of Carlsbad, NM and about 150 miles east of El Paso, TX.

We planned this trip in August to see the exit of bats from the caverns at sundown. In a regular season, as many as 500,000 may leave the caverns each night. Because of the extreme drought in west Texas the past summer, the numbers of bats were very low. The night we visited, my estimate was that only about 10,000 bats flew from the entrance.

There are as many as seven types of bats that spend the summer in Carlsbad, but the most prevalent is the Mexican free-tailed.

Now there are the caverns, an incomparable place of surrealistic shapes, textures and imaginary shadows lurking around each bend in the trail.

The main attraction is the big room. the big room is 750 feet below the ground surface. there are two ways to get to the big room. The first is the natural entrance, a steep one mile trail. The second is an elevator from the visitor's center to the big room. We chose the latter.

The big room is about 8+ acres and has paved trails with some for access by wheelchairs.

We cannot begin to try and paint a verbal picture of what is to be seen in the big room. Our photos (more than 150 taken) are an indequate attempt to show what we saw.

It was overwhelming!