The Big Room at Carlsbad Caverns is 750 feet below the earth’s surface. According to posted information, this cavern is approximately 8.2 acres in size (more than big enough to fit six football fields).

I stopped to take many photos and not one of them can portray the feeling one has while walking amongst these giant underground monoliths that were formed one drip of water at a time over millions of years.

My feature photo is of a stalagmite that’s over 60 feet tall. That’s the height of a six story building!

My entire walk through this massive and marvellous display of Mother Nature at her finest took the better part of two hours.

The cavern is eerily dark, with only the lights illuminating the formations to guide you on the stone pathway. I found myself often holding onto the handrails to feel steady on my feet as the sometimes slippery and wet path wove through the cavern and took inclines and declines along the way. It’s also hauntingly quiet because tourists are advised to whisper or speak softly due to the extreme echo effect the cavern provides.

I often wondered how hubs was doing and where he was, because at the beginning of the journey through the cavern, he said we’d each have to do it at our own pace because his trick knee wouldn’t allow him to take as long as I’d need to take photos.

Photo Note: The artificial illumination made it difficult to get good captures with my iPhone camera. In hindsight, I wished I had spent some time learning the best settings for the caverns while using a manual focus third party camera app on my phone. I also wish I’d had someone snap my photo by this stalagmite to better show the relative size. Hindsight is sometimes 20-20 in life, and often in photography.

“(Carlsbad Caverns) …. should not exist in relation to human beings. Something that is as remote as the galaxy, incomprehensible as a nightmare, and beautiful in spite of everything.”

Ansel Adams