Carlsbad Caverns

Sometimes not taking a guided tour is better than taking one. At Carlsbad Caverns you have to make reservations before getting there fore a guided tour like you normally would have at a cave. However, there are self guided tours at Carlsbad. You can also rent a tape to listen to but we didn't know about that until too late. I don't think we missed much as there are also some signs along the way. On the self guided tour, you could either take the elevator down, the height of the Eiffel Tower, or walk to the natural entrance and walk in for a mile to where the elevator stopped. We picked the walk in and were glad that we did as you see lots then. These first pictures are of the entrance as we went in. There were lots of cave swallows flying around. You can see the steep switch-backs that we went down.
This is looking back up at the entrance as we were going down in.
This is still going down in. If you look at the center bottom you can see some of the people walking on the path. The 'people' in the center of the picture are stalagmites.
This is looking back towards the entrance, above the blue area. If you look closely you can see people. The green is because of the type of light shinning on that area. You don't see these colors when looking at it, but cameras pick it up.
At one time there were other people who came into the cavern. They left their drawings on the wall. This was in what they call the twilight area as it still gets a little light from outside.
There were pools in the cave also. Here is one.
There is lots of sand stone on the ceiling, sometimes many, many feet over head. I thought this was pretty.
There are some interesting things in this cave. Such as the forest:

The tongue,The whales mouth,
The finger,
The rainbow room,
The lion's tail,
Big daddy and his kids,
Profile of Chibocci from star wars,
Snow White's castle,
Grapes,
And an aerial view of a mountain.
After some of the formations were here, the cave was partially flooded, depositing popcorn formations on the stalagmites up to a height. One of the most interesting things was areas where water had flowed (looking like a mud flow) and then went into a pond. The pond edge would have shapes that resembled mushrooms with the tops cut flat. Then there were popcorn crystals below the water.
Sometimes the water would then flow out of the pond and make more formations. This picture doesn't show it well but is the best I have of it.

Did I mention that after we reached the area that the elevator came to we went through a huge area, sort of shaped like a cross, lying down. It was one mile in to here, then one and a half around this area. The ceiling was at least 100 feet up or more in places. It was hard to tell exactly. The three 'trees' in the bottom left corner are people. I couldn't get a picture of how far it extended.
These are just formations that I liked.
That is B standing by the rail.