62 Parks Traveler听started with a simple goal: to visit every U.S. national park in one year. Avid backpacker and public-lands nerd听听saved up, built out a tiny van to travel and live in, and hit the road. The parks as we know them are rapidly changing, and she听wanted to see them before it鈥檚 too late.
Pennington is committed to following CDC guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure the safety of herself and others. She鈥檚 currently on a travel break until the parks begin to reopen. In the meantime, we鈥檒l continue to publish her previously completed parks to help you take your mind off the pandemic and plan for future adventures.
Driving through West Texas oil country at night felt like stumbling into some dark听occult ritual uninvited. Huge fireballs dotted the horizon in every direction, each one surrounded by a semicircle of big听chrome machinery. Floodlights blinded me in the pitch-black. My tires screeched to avoid hitting a lone coyote in the chilly 28-degree winter听air. It was a rough entry into New Mexico.
The next morning, I drove through the Chihuahuan Desert in southern New Mexico to pay a听visit to Carlsbad Caverns and was immediately struck by how developed the entrance was. Unlike most other parks on my list, the main attraction here听is the central cave itself, meaning that the ticketing window, restrooms, gift shop, restaurant, and elevator to听the cave are all housed together in one giant building that feels more like a scene out of Disneyland than a U.S. national park. I flashed my parks pass, paid for the ranger-led King鈥檚 Palace Tour, and stepped into the elevator that would carry me down, down, down, 750 feet below the surface.
At the bottom of the elevator? More Disneyland. Shiny glass doors and a silver roundabout marked the听entrance to the cave itself, complete with an underground gift shop, flush toilets, and a cafeteria.
Thankfully, the tour lightened the mood a bit. I meandered through a series of enormous subterranean passageways with 20 other visitors, staring up听slack-jawed听at delicate calcite speleothems. A variety of rock formations鈥攔ippling draperies,听pencil-thin soda straws,听and melted chandeliers鈥攈ung high above our heads as we traversed a series of caverns just off the park鈥檚 famous Big Room area.
However, my initial upset about the nearby oil wells came rumbling back when our guide mentioned that all the lights from the听surrounding听oil fields above听are听the primary reason Carlsbad Caverns isn鈥檛 yet recognized as a dark-sky park.
I was hoping for peace听and instead found civilization everywhere.
I had the afternoon completely free to wander, so I took the elevator back up to the surface and decided to hike down the cave鈥檚 1.25-mile Natural Entrance Trail. With the park鈥檚 bat colony vacationing in Mexico for the winter and the lion鈥檚 share of park visitors arriving in March, I found myself descending the steep switchbacks into the cave in silence.
鈥淔inally,鈥 I thought to myself, 鈥渟tillness.鈥
The farther I hiked down the paved pathway, the more I began to notice magnificent cave formations appearing out of the darkness. Much like with cloud-watching, my mind began to define each shape with a strange, psychedelic precision. I walked past a 20-foot-tall whale鈥檚 mouth, a spiny marionette, and a hoard of goblin fingertips reaching up and through the earth.
Winter is the slow season at Carlsbad, and I had听the Big Room mostly to myself, save for a few international families and retired couples milling about. The silence was tremendous. It was exactly what I needed.
I found a bench with a 180-degree view of the cave鈥檚 Top of the Cross area and sat in the deep quiet for a long while. The trip may have gotten off to a rocky start, but this hushed tranquility was pretty damn perfect.
62 Parks Traveler Carlsbad Caverns Info
Size: 46,766 acres
Location: Southeastern New Mexico
Created In: 1923 (national monument), 1930 (national park)
Best For: Caving, hiking, backpacking, accessible trails
When to Go: Year-round. The temperature in the caverns听remains a steady and humid 56 degrees in every season, though surface-level temperatures can soar during the听summer months, hitting over 100听degrees.
Where to Stay: Though no vehicle camping is allowed inside the park, Whites City offers convenient听(though often crowded) . The town of Carlsbad听is also home to dozens of affordable chain-hotel options, many of which have听pools and offer free breakfast.
Where to Eat: 听is a sight for sore eyes in the barren restaurant desert of Carlsbad. Go for the pulled pork,听stay for the coleslaw.
Mini 国产吃瓜黑料:听Take a self-guided tour of the park鈥檚 Big Room area by purchasing a general-admission ticket ($15) and riding听the elevator or walking the Natural Entrance Trail down to the main caverns. About half of the self-guided tour is wheelchair accessible, and visitors can spend听as much or as little time as they want inside the cave until it closes at 4:45 P.M. (6:45 P.M. in the summertime). In the warmer months, be sure to stick around for sunset, when hundreds of thousands of Brazilian free-tailed bats soar out of the cave鈥檚 mouth.
Mega 国产吃瓜黑料: Go on the ranger-led ($15, five and a half hours) or the ($20, four hours). Don a headlamp and prepare to crawl, hike, and squeeze your way through a wild cave system that鈥檚 only permitted with a guide.