This is going to be a wasted effort, but I'll show you the pictures anyway. Carlsbad Caverns is one of those things that you must go see for yourself. You won't see anything like it, ever, in your entire life. The pictures capture about 10% of how amazing it was. Also, you must go in the off-season. The "weather" down in the cavern is always the same, 53 degrees and dark. So go during winter when there are no/few tourists there. Part of what makes the caverns neat is to sit and listen to the water drip, or just listen to nothing. This is hard to do when there are annoying families running through like mobs, with kids making noise and parents making more noise in an attempt to get them to make less noise.

This is the "natural" entrance. You can enter the caverns one of two ways. The first is to take the elevator straight down 700 feet or so. Maybe it's 800. It's far. The second way down is via the natural entrance, where you walk in, and down along a series of walkways. This is a better way to enter as you enter the cave on a human time and distance scale, and can better allow your ears, eyes, and mind to stretch and try to absorb what you are experiencing.

Blurry, but hopefully demonstrative. Hold your mouse over the image above, and you should see pointers telling you what you're looking at.

The problem with these photos is that there is no sense of scale. What you're looking at here is huge, and stretches back very far into the distance, but it's almost impossible to tell.

The "restaurant." You pick something out, and they microwave it.

Here is our lunch. Note all the empty tables. Like I said, you want to be here in the off-season.

The men's room. Totally cool.

Back to the tour...

These things are about 60 feet tall...

Freud would have a field day with the notion of all these phallic symbols being stuck down in a deep, dark, cave.

This is what you want to avoid. Packs of families making too much noise.

The railings give a slight sense of scale.

Ok, that's it. From there we headed towards White Sands.