Visit to Carlsbad Caverns National Park

We went to Carlsbad Caverns National Park on Tuesday. We got to see the exhibits and an informational movie, but the thought of climbing down 750 feet (75 story building) and then walking around and having to climb back up 750 feet was more than we thought we could do. We'll come back to see the caverns when the elevators are working again!

Patti talked with a park ranger - it seems that the main elevator had its motor get burned out (not specified why). It was built in the 1970s and parts seem to be hard to come by. There are two older elevators (about 100 years old) that may be able to be repaired more quickly - they have not been in use and the structure that keeps them in a straight line up/down has several cross bars (40 out of 200) which have deteriorated to the point of being non-functioning. A company has been engaged to correct that, and I think they currently hope to have those elevators back in service by the end of May. The elevators have not been in service since November 4.

In researching this, Patti found that the motor was overhauled in 2007.
http://www.nps.gov/cave/learn/news/20071029_elevator_motor_overhaul.htm

TripAdvisor seems to indicate that the primary elevators were out of service in 2011, but the secondary elevators were used.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g143018-i4829-k4418908-Elevator-Carlsbad_Caverns_National_Park_New_Mexico.html

This is information about the current outage.
http://www.currentargus.com/story/news/local/carlsbad-caverns/2016/02/24/caverns-elevator-repair-pushed-back-may/80863520/
It is interesting because the lady at Carlsbad seems to say "the problem isn't funding" but the Secretary of the Interior seems to imply that the deferred funding of projects in the national park service may be a contributing factor.

She wasn't trying to find all this history on the elevators, but rather "what happened when it failed? how did the people get off?" One of the articles mentioned that only one of the two primary elevators has a motor problem, but that they cannot use it because there would be no failure plan (no way to evacuate passengers if the second elevator failed). So, our guess is that somehow passengers would transfer from one elevator to the other in case of a failure.

Regardless of the elevator issue, we still enjoyed the park:

On the road in to the visitor's center, we stopped at an exhibit of an Indian Rock Shelter (cave) that had an "intermittent water hole" nearby. Mescalero Apache were in this area.

 

The exhibit area in the visitor's center had lots of photos of the caverns. The writeup for this one said:
"Carlsbad Cave National Monument located 30 miles S.W. of Carlsbad, N.M. is the largest and most spectacular cave in the world. Good Trails and Electric Lights, etc. Good roads leading to it."
This succinct paragraph appeared on the first promotional photo cards produced by Ray V. Davis n the early 1920s as he worked to coax visitors out to the cave he loved.
Dated 1923, this may be the earliest photograph of the Natural Entrance in existence. Note the figure of a man wearing a light-colored hat in the right foreground. It is likely that this person is Jim White, who shared Davis' passion for the cave, and worked with him to promote the caverns.

These were for sale in the gift shop (we didn't buy one!). Does Jimmy remember that either Granny gave us one of these, or had one in her house on Irisdale Ave?

The view from the parking lot was magnificent.

Patti was enjoying the view.

Looking back toward the visitor center. The flag is blowing straight out. They had warned of high winds arriving on Tuesday, and the weather people were right!

Since we decided that we didn't want to hike down into the cavern, we had noticed a 9.5 mile driving trail and had picked up an informational sheet about the things to see on it.

We took Walnut Canyon Desert Drive.

 There were many beautiful flowers along the drive.

This bush is about 2 feet tall.

The flowers are about the size of a fist, reminded us a little of Lantana, but we aren't sure.

This was at Rattlesnake Canyon Trail overlook. Near the bottom of the picture on the left is Lechuguilla (lay-choo-GHEE-ya) with a reddish colored Prickly Pear Cactus growing around it (flat paddle-shaped pads). The taller plant above those two is Sotol (SO-toll).

Dwayne was busy taking pictures - Rattlesnake Canyon Trail overlook is just behind him.

Close up of a very small plant. The flowering plant was about 6" across, the blooms like tiny violets.

Blooming Ocotillo (O-ko-tee-yo). The information sheet said: The Ocotillo is well adapted to the fickleness of desert conditions. Much of the time it appears to be plain, thorny sticks reaching up to the sky. Following rain, it quickly sprouts leaves. Its bright red flowers, in blossom from April to June, are one of the most eye-catching in the desert landscape. Dry spells will cause the plant to lose its leaves again, only to re-grow when enough moisture is available. This cycle may be repeated several times in a single year.

We saw this bloom a little ways away from the road - it was a low-growing plant, not sure what it was.

Another picture of the bloom we saw from the road.

This flowering bush was about 3' tall and wide. It almost looked like Texas Sage, but the flowers were different.

This is a Yucca (YUK-a), we think a Soaptree Yucca which is the state flower of New Mexico.

One of the limestone cliffs along the road.