Carlsbad Caverns -- Ranger-led King's Palace Tour and The Big Room

After hiking down about 750' underground into Carlsbad Cavern via the natural entrance, we joined up with Ranger Tiffany who was leading our King's Palace Tour.

Going down into the King's Palace - about another 80 feet further down.

"Draperies"

As we were about to enter the King's Chamber room, Ranger Tiffany lit 3 candle lanterns so we would experience the cave as early visitors would have seen it (she turned out the artificial lights).

When we first got into the room, we sat on a wall and she told us about some of the early explorers. Then she went to turn on the lights so we could see the whole room...

It was so large and with so much to see!

Lots of features hanging from the ceiling (Ranger Tiffany in the foreground).

Some more of the ceiling

"Bacon" draperies (so named because of the coloring and shape)

Another place where we stopped and sat along the wall -- this was the Queen's Chamber. In this location, Ranger Tiffany turned off all of the lights for a few minutes, allowing us to experience utter darkness (she had us make sure that all electronic or light-emitting devices were covered), and to listen for the dripping of the cave.

Looks like a pipe organ to me!

Suffice it to say that we really enjoyed the Ranger Tiffany led King's Palace Tour!

After our ranger-led tour of the King's Palace, we returned to the lunchroom area to have a snack and drink some water, and then headed out for the self-guided "Big Room Route". There were long lines for the elevators, so we figured we would enjoy ourselves below-ground a little longer and hope that there would be fewer people waiting to leave when we finished.

We took more pictures in that part of the cavern, but I'll only include one:

A representation of the type of ladder (fence wire and branches) that Jim White would have used in his early exploration of the cave.

When we got back to the elevator area, the line was shorter, and it went really fast! It turned out that they had had only one elevator running most of the day, but by the time we got in line, a second elevator was running, so the line moved twice as fast!

A note: Carl has been wondering why it is called "Carlsbad" instead of "Carlsgood" (he has a personal interest in this). I found this in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlsbad_Caverns_National_Park):

The town of Carlsbad, which lends its name to the cavern and national park, is in turn named after the Czech town formerly known by the German name Karlsbad (English spelling Carlsbad) and now known by the Czech name Karlovy Vary, both of which mean "Charles' Bath[s]."

While we were underground, the wind continued to blow. Some rain spitting caused the Jeep to get really dirty! Poor dirty Jeep!

Because the pictures on the blog are very small to see, I made a movie with many of the photos included in the blog -- on YouTube, you can make it fullscreen which may give you a better view if you wish: https://youtu.be/CenuVMSSHfY

We thoroughly enjoyed visiting Carlsbad Caverns. Getting tickets to the ranger-led King's Palace Tour required planning ahead and a couple of days of attempts to get into the system at the right time and book the reservation before all the tickets for the day were gone -- but it was definitely worth it. Visit Carlsbad Caverns if you get a chance!