Spelunking adventure

Apologies for the late post! Moving halfway across the country and moving into a new apartment was a lot more work than I had planned.

On Wednesday morning, Becca and I woke up at the base of the Carlsbad Caverns (located in the middle of NOWHERE). Before starting the 8 hour drive to Austin, we took a little spelunking adventure.

We headed about seven miles up the hill to the entrance of the caves. Thank goodness we got there early- by the time we got out of there, the place was packed!

The entrance to the caves was pretty spectacular and a little haunting! We basically were entering a giant hole in the ground. No flashlights. No cell phone service.

Scary.


The lovely Becca. Zero light gets into the caves, so there was a lot of artificial lighting. They did a nice job making the lighting look natural.


Our last glimpse of sunlight for the next two hours!


A lot of the formations in the caves looked like weird things. This formation was called the "Whale Mouth." Do you see the teeth and the whale's eye? It reminded me of the giant whale in Pinocchio/the one at Disneyland at the storybook ride.


Becca and I agreed that this was by far the most spacious cave we'd ever been in. Everything was really open; the cave ceiling seemed like it was a hundred feet or more above us.


This was the original rope ladder early explorers used to check out this passageway.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think there's enough money in the world to make me go down that hole using that rickety little ladder!


These *draperies were Becca's favorite. They looked like trees!

*We learned all sorts of cool cave lingo.


You can't see it, but there's a rope in this picture that early cave explorers used to check out caverns above this large one. We're about 750 feet below the surface, so there are other cave rooms above the one we're in. The explorers used a helium balloon to float and attach the rope about 200 feet above where we're standing. The first person who climbed that rope must've been a brave soul.


When we got to the bottom of our descent, Becca and I were very happy to find elevators back to the surface. Just the downhill walk was a workout- I couldn't imagine the uphill climb!


Check out the flatness behind us. That was what our drive looked like all of Tuesday and half of Wednesday. Needless to say, we were bored out of our minds.


On Friday, after a full day of moving in, shopping and spending too much money, Becca cooked a delicious meal (a Cajun recipe from The Pioneer Woman) for Robbie, Phil and me.

Coming up:
Apartment photos, roadtrip video and 2012 resolutions!