Caves

I don't remember if it was before or after we visited our first cave on the trip, but I recall the time Dad read me a story about, Jim White, who discovered Carlsbad Cavern. It was a book we found at the library and Dad read the story to me in chapters over a couple of weeks, I remember the book became due in the middle of reading it and we had to renew it, I was suspicious of this whole "renew" business and didn't understand the concept of borrowing books and I became concerned that the library wouldn't want us to keep the book beyond the time agreed upon on the little card stuck in the inside cover. But, we got to keep the book for another week and Dad read me the whole story about how Jim White found and explored the strange and forbidding cave that had bats flying out every night that made the all locals superstitious and fearful. I was fascinated by the story and the pictures of stalactites and stalagmites that adorned the cave, and I wanted to someday see this Carlsbad Cavern for myself.

The first cave we ever visited was with Mom and Dad on one of the early years on the trip, I don't remember the name of the cavern but I think I visited it again when I went on the trip with Dad in 2000 and shot the video, that would be Grand Canyon Cavern. But the first time I remember taking an elevator way down underground and emerging into a chamber that eventually led us through narrow passageways and a large cavern. The tour guide led the group on a maintained walkway and the trail was not difficult with only a few narrow passages. The cave was well lit and comfortable, however there were none of the stalagmites and stalactites I had heard of being in caves and had seen in pictures. I was looking forward to seeing these stalactites and 'mites, but in fact the cave was kind of plain and didn't really have any interesting rock formations. However, the thing that most interested me, and I remember most clearly was the dead bobcat. Apparently the bobcat had fallen down the cave and died about 100 years ago and was found mummified, this was one of the main attractions in the cave and was displayed behind a roped-off area next to the path for all the tourists to see. For me this was defiantly the most interesting item in the cave and during the rest of the tour, when I was getting bored, I wanted to go back and visit the dead bobcat again for a better look. Years later when I visited the Grand Canyon Cavern with Dad the tour took us by a dead bobcat, and this is what sparked my memory again about the first cave, realizing this was either the same cave, or every roadside cave attraction had to have a dead bobcat section included on the tour.

The tour continued and the ending event was to take us into a vast chamber and gather the group for a picture (to be sold later when we returned to the surface). But before they took the picture the tour guide demonstrated what it was like to be in total darkness by turning off the lights in the cave. Yes, it was very dark down there and I don't think anybody would be able to find their way around in that much darkness. And before they turned the lights back on there was a flash of the picture being taken, resulting in a photograph of a bunch of disoriented tourists nervously smiling in the depths of a cavern. We returned to the top the same way we came down and a few minutes later got to look at the picture of our group in the cave. They were selling prints for what Dad thought was an exorbitant price, and it really wasn't a good picture of us anyway, so of course we passed on buying the picture. We always passed on buying the picture.

Another cave we visited in later years was "The Ice Cave". This cave was a little less formal than the other cave and the infrastructure was more primitive. There was no elevator leading us down into the depths of the Earth, merely a door in the side of a mountain in the middle of the desert. We took a short hike on a trail through a volcanic field of lava rock, it was barren and hot and they included some mannequins of Indians posed in authentic situations along the trail. Apparently the Native Americans used the Ice Cave to store meat and other food like a refrigerator back before the white man came and took the cave over as a tourist attraction. We came to the door to the cave, which was nothing special, and the tour guide gave a little talk before we entered the cave, announcing that we needed to enter and exit the cave quickly as to not keep the door open to long and eventually thaw out the cave (like a refrigerator). So we entered the cave and it was indeed cold, especially in contrast to the outside which was about 100 degrees. The atmosphere was dark and wet and we didn't see much ice at first needing to walk through some terrain first. The cave itself was volcanic and the ice was leftover from ice-age glaciers and survived buried deep within the mountain, it was kind of ugly actually. When we got to the ice, there wasn't much there but it was amazing that it lasted this long. The ice was dirty and embedded in the walls of the cave and there remained evidence of the Indians digging out sections to store food. Again, the tour guide turned off the lights (this seems to be a theme with cave tours) but instead of taking a picture he brought out an ultra-violet light to illuminate the ice, which brought out bright, vibrant and psychedelic colors in the ice formations, this was my favorite part of the tour. The guide then went on to show us what the light does to his eyeglasses, giving them the same groovy colors as the ice, and apparently is a phenomenon particular to the Ice Cave. On the way back to the door leading outside, someone asked a question why there wasn't any icicles, the guide went on to explain, and indicating with his flashlight toward the ceiling of the cave, that there used to be one icicle but it fell off because of the constant opening and closing of the door, This made me think that the Ice Cave was melting.

Finally one year, I was able to visit Carlsbad Cavern. I was on the trip just myself and Dad and we had planned from the beginning to visit the cavern, I was excited and looking forward to connecting the actual cave with all the stories and pictures I read about over the years.

I realized that we weren't going to be able to see the bats flying out of the cave, being that it happens too late in the day and we needed to push on after seeing the cavern, but I had convinced myself that the gift shop was going to sell souvenirs of real stuffed bats or a real bat encased in plastic for a paperweight. In the past I had always collected souvenirs of real animal parts or preserved specimens, like the baby octopus in the jar of formaldehyde I got in Big Sur and kept for many years, or the various rabbit pelts, raccoon tails, I even had a coyote paw for some time. One item I always wanted but we never bought, (because of the price) was the mounted head of a Jackalope, which was a hare with antlers, a creature that adorned many touristy gift shops and was the subject of hundreds of postcards. For many years I was convinced these creatures were real, which Dad continued to encourage this belief (like Santa Clause) and he often would engage us by having us keep out eyes open for a jackalope on hikes. But days before we arrived at Carlsbad Cavern I would remind Dad that I especially wanted to get a "stuffed bat" and we were to set aside funds for this item. I now suspect Dad was only humoring me and was aware that no such item existed in the Cavern gift shop, and indeed there was nothing in the gift shop coming close to a stuffed bat, even the fake bats were hard to find.

Carlsbad Cavern was a National Park and the attraction was very big, highly organized and crowded with visitors. You could take a guided tour if you wanted (for an extra cost) or you could take a self-guided tour that wandered through the various sights in the cavern. We of course opted for the self-guided tour that allowed us to see things at our own pace and not have to deal with other people so much. You start at the top entrance where Jim White and earlier explorers entered the cave via a barrel and pulley, which has since been modified to allow tourists to easily hike down a trail of switchbacks, which eventually led to the main cavern rooms. This cave was more of what I imagined a cave to be like, with lots of stalactites and stalagmites, the cave was lit in various fashions to best display the different formations. The cave was huge and there was lots to see with park signs directing visitors to the various scenes and formations. One area Dad pointed out that I remember was "the bottomless pit", and he told of how when he visited the cavern years ago the tour guide tossed a rock down the pit and you couldn't hear it hit the bottom, suggesting that it was falling forever so deep that there was essentially no bottom to the pit. This time we were forbidden to throw anything down the pit to test this, given that people would probably throw anything down, rocks, garbage, children... and eventually fill the pit up with debris. We meandered through the cavern and although the space was enormous we still had to navigate through and around crowds of people. One of Dad's tricks was to find a guided tour and follow at a nonchalant earshot distance, getting the benefit of the tour without having to pay, and allowing us to abandon the tour when it got boring. We found a guided tour and pretended to not pay attention but followed at a safe distance for awhile, gaining valuable information along the way. This time there was no dead bobcat on display.

We saw about as much as our patience could take and decided to get a treat at the famous snack bar in the cave before taking the elevator back up. The snack bar was of course expensive and limited but we got a token beverage and made our way to the top where we were met by the visitor center and forced to exit through the gift shop. Again, I searched for the stuffed bat paperweight to no avail and left the gift shop empty-handed. Dad contemplated staying for the "bat show" but it would be many hours before it would happen, and then we found out that there was a chance the bats could give a disappointing showing, so Dad decided to not stay after all. We continued on our trip, the Carlsbad Cavern experience fulfilled.