Well so far today has been much better. We all woke up early 7 o’clockish and got ready to head to the caverns about 15 miles away. It was already hot. We arrived and checked in with our Ranger and waited for our instructions. After telling is the safety rules she handed us our lanterns and we were headed down the elevator shaft into the canyon. This was 754 feet down and it only took us about a minute to get to the bottom. We gathered around a round desk and lit our candles and were headed into the left hand tunnel. While in the tunnel we learned that this tunnel was made from sulfuric acid not water. The construction of the tunnel happened when water from an old ocean area came in contact with petroleum and created sulfuric acid. This took place about 200 million years ago. The structures that were formed are beautiful. You see stalactites, stalagmites, columns, things called drapes and some even look like bacon. There are water pools that are completely clear and almost don’t look like their is water in them at all. We walked in about a half a mile and turned around. We did what was called a black out, this is when we sat in a circle and blew out the candles and sat in the dark. We then had one candle lit and experienced what it was like when the cavern was first discovered. After leaving the cavern we shopped in the gift shop and then spoke to the ranger about coming back to see the Bat Flight tonight. Because of the recent forest fires the bat population has been down but hopefully by the end of the summer the numbers will be back up. The forest fires at Carlsbad cannon consumed 35,000 acres. It is truly a sad sight. We will be going back tonight to see the bats take flight so I will check back in and tell you about that later. Have a great afternoon.
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