Saturday, April 19, 2025
This date had been on my calendar for nearly eight months. Not only would it be another "free national parks admission day" compliments of the U.S. National Park Service, but it was also the day I was planning to do the caves tour at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Because admission into the caves is on a scheduled and ticketed basis, I needed to be sure to hard-wire this visit months in advance. With timed entry tickets available 30 days in advance on Recreation.gov I made sure the early part of my travel plans were set. What I wasn't sure about was whether or not I would be arriving to Carlsbad early in the morning or later in the afternoon, so I bought an entry ticket for both 10:30am and 1:15pm just to hedge my bets. For just the $1 reservation fee, it was a easy spend. At it turned out, I was able to navigate my first few days in order to overnight in Hobbs, NM on Friday night, so I was able to easily make Carlsbad early the next morning.
If you are planning to go to Carlsbad Caverns, I highly recommend booking your timed entry ticket in advance. While yes, there are limited tickets available "day of" on this particular Saturday, they were sold out for the balance of the day by 12:30pm.
The photo above is the 9:30am admission group receiving their ranger's briefing before heading down into the cave via the "natural" entrance. This is a quarter-mile moderate hike into the Big Room where the self-guided trail begins. For those of us with physical limitations (gimpy knees, heart and/or respiratory ailments, etc) there is also an elevator from the visitor center down into the Big Room. While I was tempted to do the natural entrance hike (after all how bad can it be if it's just a quarter mile?) . . . I did the elevator down and back up to assure I was able to enjoy the caverns safely and continue on the rest of my road trips. After all, I still had three weeks to go and didn't want to get hurt or ill the very first weekend out.
The photos I took hardly do justice to the beauty and variety of formations found here! I did take the shortened route avoiding the area where rangers caution folks with mobility issues. Even then, the "short cut" back to the Big Room required a fair amount of steep walkways. It was interesting to me that NPS describes this route as "level" and while there was a paved path was was level, it was anything but flat. I was happy I had my hurricane walker/seat as there were several times I became short-winded and needed to stop and breathe before continuing on. I was very happy to have made it however . . . it was so well worth the effort!
TIP: If you are mobility challenged, be sure to pick up the "Accessibility" guide in the visitor center. The Big Room Trail Map/Accessible Route Map was very helpful to me. While the path up to the Rock of Ages is not wheelchair or walker accessible, I did go that route back to the Big Room. The photo of me below is at that point of the trail.
Here is a collage of some of the photos I got inside the caverns . . . I hope folks enjoy them.
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