I had heard a lot about Carlsbad Caverns, but until I visited I didn’t really understand the scope of it. The caves are so big that tours actually start from more than a mile inside the cave - a steep 45 min hike downwards along the Natural Entrance trail.
The sheer scope of the cave system was overwhelming and words don’t really do it justice. I’ll let the pictures below speak for themselves. At the end of the day, I stuck around for the evening bat exodus. The rushing sound of hundreds of thousands of bats exiting the cave is something I won’t forget. Unfortunately, the bat flight viewing area is under strict light and noise discipline so as not to affect the bats’ behavior, so I don’t have any pictures of this.