Exploring Carlsbad Caverns with Kids
Exploring Carlsbad Caverns with Kids
The Travel Vlog Family
We're at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and we're going to go inside and explore the entire cave with you. It should be awesome. Are you ready?
Hiking the blue trail on its own takes an hour, and the Big Room around is an hour and a half. We had the fourth-grade park pass because Amelia is in fourth grade, which got us free admission. We took the elevator down, did the Junior Ranger Book, and tried to explore as much of the cave as we could. There's only one elevator button to press that takes you to the cave room. It goes down to 725 feet.
Look how huge this is. It's so flat. Can you imagine descending a rope ladder and finding something like this?
We're going to the Big Room. There's a rope going way up into a hole, and they found more cave above that. They used a helium balloon to get the rope up, and once they were up there, they found another room above that. I read about a statue of John White climbing this rope ladder in 1923.
Look how deep this is. It looks like a bottomless pit. It's 140 ft. deep.
The upper level has been explored twice, once in 1972 and once in 2019. The rope on the other side goes up to the spirit world; it's in the middle of everything. We walked 2.5 miles today, but there are almost 40 miles of cave. We're coming back tonight to see the bat flight program.
The kids liked the cave and got their National Park Junior Ranger badges. They have wooden badges here, so you can get a stamp on the back of the badge with the date and location.
We left for nap time, but we'll be back later for the bat flight. First, we have to get gas because we have a three-hour drive to White Sands, New Mexico, and we want to get there sooner rather than later.
Back for the Bat Flight
We're going back down to Carlsbad Caverns to see the bats come out of the cave. There's no thunderstorms, so we're good to go. We're going to the Bat Flight Amphitheater, where the bats fly out of the cave around 7:45.
It was super cool. There were more bats than we expected. The Ranger talks for about 30 minutes, and then the bats fly out for about 30 minutes. It was definitely worth coming to see. Check it out if you're ever in the area.
We haven't seen a sunset in the wilderness in a long time, so we're going to watch one. There's a little 500 ft. trail called Walnut Canyon that leads to the top. Look how high up we are.
This trail is an incredible way to finish your day at Carlsbad Caverns. Go to the cave in the morning around 8:30. There's barely anybody there. Go home, do whatever you want. We had burgers for dinner at the hotel, relaxed, and then came back to see the bat flight. After that, you can come to this trail to enjoy the sunset.
It's a perfect ending to a great day with our family. I love taking our kids to new places to experience new things they've never seen before, like bats flying out of a cave. We saw so many amazing things at Carlsbad National Park. If you're ever in the area with your family, you're sure to make some memories. Tomorrow we're continuing our road trip and going to White Sands National Park. I'll include a link to a video about that below. Thank you all! Go travel somewhere! Bye.
https://youtu.be/6sKBEQ7f8IM (Sledding on Steep Dunes at White Sands National Park)