Travel

Batman Would Feel Right at Home in This Cavernous National Park

Robert Pattinson, come on down!

evenfh/Shutterstock
evenfh/Shutterstock
evenfh/Shutterstock

Welcome to National Parks Uncovered, where we’ll help you discover the beauty of America’s most underrated-and least-crowded-national parks. from sweeping landscapes where you can get up close and personal with mountains, glaciers, and volcanoes to sunny paradises hiding out near major cities like Chicago and LA. To find out what natural wonders you’ve been missing out on, check out the rest of the package here.No offense to Batman, but the Dark Knight’s bougie bat cave can’t hold a candle-or a flickering, old-fashioned lantern-to the tunnels of New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

Sure, Gotham’s caped crusader might have butler service and more gadgets than James Bond, but that’s nothing compared to the serene majesty of these caves, where hundreds of thousands of Brazilian free-tailed bats take up residence and help tick all the boxes for that quintessential caving experience. Dark, ominous descent into the unknown? Check. Unexplained dripping noises and bottomless pits? Check, check. A nightly migration of bats, swirling upward from the cave in such mass amounts that they collectively resemble a library-quiet tornado? Check!

Hidden away in the Guadalupe Mountains, Carlsbad Caverns’ immense underground labyrinth of sprawling caverns-including the aptly named Big Room, the largest cave chamber in North America-pre-dates humanity by a couple hundred million years. They took shape as sulfuric acid dissolved limestone rock, steadily creating pockets and caverns filled with stalactites, stalagmites, and other geologic eye candy.

Long known to the Mescalero Apache and Zuni Pueblo Native Americans, in 1898, cowboy Jim White became the first credited explorer to venture deep into the caves when what looked like a plume of smoke billowing from the ground caught his eye. (Spoiler alert: that “smoke” was a swarm of bats.) Designated in 1930, Carlsbad Caverns is now one of America’s oldest national parks, established to preserve the vast limestone chambers and subterranean splendors.

All that, along with its far-flung middle-of-nowhere locale in southern New Mexico-affirming this state as a trippy dreamscape-might make this sound like the premise for a horror movie (or at least a campy Batman sequel with nipple suits). But Carlsbad Caverns is a place of pure awe, an underrated, overlooked national park where the only thing to fear is the FOMO you’ll have if you don’t go.

Where is Carlsbad Caverns National Park?

Located in deep southern New Mexico, Carlsbad Caverns sits not far north of the Texas border and Guadalupe Mountains National Park. A pretty far toss from New Mexico’s better-known cities-Carlsbad Caverns is about 1.5 hours from intergalactic Roswell and nearly five hours from both Albuquerque and Santa Fe-the nearest town is (appropriately) Carlsbad, New Mexico, which sits 30 minutes north.

The best time to visit Carlsbad Caverns National Park

One of the biggest benefits of visiting a national park that’s mostly underground is that you pretty much know what you’re getting into weather-wise, no matter the time of year. Sure, the forecast on the surface can fluctuate pretty dramatically-after several visits to Carlsbad Caverns, I’ve warded off heat exhaustion in the summer and bundled up in the snow in the winter-but the temperature inside the caves is about 56°F year-round, free of precipitation or wind.

In the summer, when southern New Mexico turns into a broiler with temps inching towards 100°F during the day, the caves provide a cooling respite, especially since thunderstorms tend to emerge abruptly in August and September. Winters can see snow and ice but are typically pretty comfortable, with temps lingering in the 50s.

Spring rain can add some vibrancy to the desert flora, but also make some of the hiking trails a bit muddy and slippery, while fall fluctuates between lingering heat and brisk pumpkin spice vibes. In general, fall and winter are optimal for avoiding weather extremes and summertime road trip crowds; just be aware that the park’s famed nightly bat migrations only occur through mid-fall-ish before the critters migrate south for the winter.

Westend61/Westend61/Getty Images
Westend61/Westend61/Getty Images
Westend61/Westend61/Getty Images

Witness the real-life Bat Cave (and its 700,000+ inhabitants)

Yellowstone has bison and grizzly bears. Everglades has crocodiles and alligators. Redwood has Bigfoot. At Carlsbad Caverns, the iconic resident critter is the bat. While roadrunners, javelinas, and rattlesnakes dwell on the stereotypical desert surface, it’s the sea of teeny-tiny bats in the cave that has come to be synonymous with Carlsbad Caverns-after all, without them, Jim White might never have come across it.

There are actually several bat species that reside here, but it’s the enormous colony of migratory Brazilian free-tailed bats that takes top billing. With numbers in the hundreds of thousands, sometimes as high as the population of Seattle (~770,000!), they put on quite the show each evening in the spring, summer, and fall months.

Most of the bats live up to 1.5 miles into the cave, flying out silently into the night to feast on insects and help reduce your bug spray expenses. The only flying mammals on Earth, bats like these weigh a scant half-ounce with whisper-thin wings as long as 11 inches.

As they flutter up from the cave’s natural entrance each evening, their collective mass resembles clouds of smoke or an eerily quiet, jet-black twister. Totally harmless to people, the mysterious migratory, roosting, and feeding habits of the colony is a topic of endless fascination for park rangers, scientists, and Batman fans alike.

Each night from May through October, park rangers host free Bat Flight Programs at the amphitheater area of the cave’s natural entrance, where visitors can learn about the bats before their flight. Just before the bats emerge, rangers remind everyone to put their cameras and phones away and remain completely quiet so as not to disrupt these delicate creatures, who are accustomed to total darkness and silence.

There’s something spectacular about witnessing such a feat of nature without any distractions whatsoever, an experience right on par with spotting your first bison in Yellowstone or seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time.

Peter Unger/The Image Bank Unreleased/Getty Images
Peter Unger/The Image Bank Unreleased/Getty Images
Peter Unger/The Image Bank Unreleased/Getty Images

Descend a mile below Earth’s surface with subterranean hikes

Beyond the Bat Flight Program, there’s much to see and do at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, including fun on the surface for anyone who might be too timid for spelunking. The most popular and iconic attraction is the mere process of entering the cave via The Natural Entrance Trail and descending into the depths along a winding 1.25-mile trail that takes you 750 feet below the desert’s surface.

As long as you’ve got good hiking shoes with a firm grip, you’ll be in for a treat as you zigzag through the cave’s broad amphitheater entrance, into the literal Twilight Zone (the term used to refer to the portion of the cave where natural light from the surface dwindles and mixes with total darkness), and down through various caverns and speleothems, formed slowly by dripping water over the course of a million years to create stunning formations like stalactites, ribbons, curtains, and hunger-inducing cave “popcorn” and cave “bacon,” which look exactly how they sound.

A note: As signage points out, this is roughly the equivalent of hiking the Empire State Building, so mentally prepare accordingly! And luckily, if descending the equivalent of the Empire State Building isn’t your cup of tea, there’s also an elevator that takes guests both down and up.

Doug Meek/Corbis Documentary/Getty Images
Doug Meek/Corbis Documentary/Getty Images
Doug Meek/Corbis Documentary/Getty Images

The Natural Entrance Trail, like all other self-guided trails, is illuminated by periodic lamps (ya know, so you don’t collide head-first into the 200,000-ton Iceberg Rock), and it culminates at the Big Room Trail.

If there’s one thing you do in Carlsbad Caverns, make it this 1.25-mile loop through a chamber so massive and stunning that it’ll blow your mind whether it’s your first visit or your fifteenth. The largest cave chamber on the continent-big enough to host the Super Bowl-it’s been nicknamed “The Grand Canyon with a Roof Over It.”

One glimpse at this spectacular subterranean wonderland will show you why: At nearly 4,000-feet long and 625-feet wide, it’s a mostly flat, wheelchair-accessible tour de force of cave formations with whimsical names like Rock of Ages, Giant Dome, Painted Grotto, and Fairyland. Along the way, you’ll pass crystal-clear cave pools and wooden ladders dangling into eerie black pits, and you half expect Gollum to scurry out at any moment.

Beyond the show-stopping Big Room, if you want to explore more of the cave, you’ll need to join a ranger-guided tour to see other, more intimate chambers like King’s Palace, Left Hand Tunnel, or Hall of the White Giant. At .75 miles of flat terrain and wide-open space, King’s Palace is the easiest and least intimidating, while Left Hand Tunnel is a blast from the past, with visitors carrying lanterns and experiencing what the caves are like in total darkness. The Lower Cave tour is a deeper and more strenuous version of the lantern-lit Left Hand Tunnel on 1.2 miles of unpaved trail. For the truly adventurous, Hall of the White Giant entails crawling through tight passageways, climbing ladders, and squeezing through formations like Matlock’s Pinch.

Sean Pavone/Shutterstock
Sean Pavone/Shutterstock
Sean Pavone/Shutterstock

Make time for fun above ground

If the idea of spelunking deep beneath the Earth’s surface makes you shiver, you’ll find claustrophobia-free alternatives on the surface. While the underground caves rightly get most of the attention at Carlsbad Caverns, the park actually has some 50 miles worth of hiking trails through the Chihuahuan Desert, and considering a majority of visitors skip right to the caverns, you’re likely to have them all to yourself.

Trails range from short and easy (Walnut Canyon Overlook), to moderate (Lower Rattlesnake Canyon), to masochistic marathons (the 100-mile Guadalupe Ridge Trail, which connects Guadalupe Mountains National Park with the eastern entrance of Carlsbad Caverns National Park for one epic desert thru-hike).

And when you inevitably get hungry-whether post-spelunking or post-hike-Carlsbad Caverns Visitor Center has one of the better visitor center dining options in the National Park Service, with cafeteria-style breakfast and lunch items that go above and beyond by sourcing most ingredients locally for the likes of Hatch chile quesadillas and barbecue tortas.

The cave also has a small cafe just outside of the elevator bay, with basic snack items, drinks, and sandwiches. Trust us: There’s really something special about eating a yogurt parfait 750-feet beneath the Earth’s surface in the bowels of North America’s quintessential bat cave.

What to know before you go

Like any national park, preservation and protection of the natural environment are of the utmost importance. In a fragile ecosystem like Carlsbad Caverns, this primarily concerns the delicacy of the cave formations and its winged residents. This is why cameras, lights, and noise are strictly forbidden during bat flights: to ensure the comfort and safety of the animals, and to ensure they don’t abandon the park for quieter confines.

Another crucial thing to be mindful of is White-Nose Syndrome, a lethal fungus that’s killed millions of bats across the US. Though harmless to humans, you can easily transfer the fungus into Carlsbad Caverns if you’ve visited another cave recently. That’s why it’s strongly recommended you don’t wear shoes you’ve worn into another cave or at least thoroughly disinfect and wash the soles of said shoes.

It’s also important to protect the cave by not touching its walls. The oils on your skin can cause erosion and discoloration on cave walls, altering the natural process of formation. Similarly, don’t throw coins (or anything else) into cave pools-save your wishes for a fountain. As sturdy, firm, and resilient as this underground realm might seem, it’s all too easily affected by humans and foreign elements, so tread carefully and leave it better than you found it.

Where to stay near Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Whether you’re hoping to camp, park an RV, or stay in a cabin or hotel, there are plenty of lodging options in and around the park. Primitive backcountry camping is the only option inside the park, though there’s a small campground and RV park just outside the park entrance in White’s City.

Most of the amenities will be found in the nearby city of Carlsbad, where campgrounds, Airbnbs, inns, and hotels (including budget-friendly chains) abound. For a boutique option, The Trinity Hotel is your best bet. It’s a gorgeous, historic, brick-clad building that first served as a bank in 1892, and has since been converted into an intimate inn with nine rooms and an all-day restaurant slinging rib-eye steaks, manicotti, and chicken Marsala, along with New Mexican wine and beer.Want more Thrillist? Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat.

Matt Kirouac is a travel writer with a passion for national parks, Disney, and food. He’s the co-founder and co-host of Hello Ranger, a national parks community blog, podcast, and app. Follow him on IG @matt_kirouac.

Travel

Ditch your Phone for ‘Dome Life’ in this Pastoral Paradise Outside Port Macquarie 

A responsible, sustainable travel choice for escaping big city life for a few days.

nature domes port macquarie
Photo: Nature Domes

The urge to get as far away as possible from the incessant noise and pressures of ‘big city life’ has witnessed increasingly more of us turn to off-grid adventures for our holidays: Booking.com polled travellers at the start of 2023 and 55% of us wanted to spend our holidays ‘off-grid’.  Achieving total disconnection from the unyielding demands of our digitised lives via some kind of off-grid nature time—soft or adventurous—is positioned not only as a holiday but, indeed, a necessity for our mental health. 

Tom’s Creek Nature Domes, an accommodation collection of geodesic domes dotted across a lush rural property in Greater Port Macquarie (a few hours’ drive from Sydney, NSW), offers a travel experience that is truly ‘off-grid’. In the figurative ‘wellness travel’ sense of the word, and literally, they run on their own independent power supply—bolstered by solar—and rely not on the town grid. 

Ten minutes before you arrive at the gates for a stay at Tom’s Creek Nature Domes, your phone goes into ‘SOS ONLY’. Apple Maps gives up, and you’re pushed out of your comfort zone, driving down unsealed roads in the dark, dodging dozens of dozing cows. Then, you must ditch your car altogether and hoist yourself into an open-air, all-terrain 4WD with gargantuan wheels. It’s great fun being driven through muddy gullies in this buggy; you feel like Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park.  As your buggy pulls in front of your personal Nature Dome, it’s not far off that “Welcome…to Jurassic Park” jaw-dropping moment—your futuristic-looking home is completely engulfed by thriving native bushland; beyond the outdoor campfire lie expansive hills and valleys of green farmland, dotted with sheep and trees. You’re almost waiting to see a roaming brachiosaurus glide past, munching on a towering gum tree…instead, a few inquisitive llamas trot past your Dome to check out their new visitor. 

To fully capture the awe of inhabiting a geodesic dome for a few days, a little history of these futuristic-looking spherical structures helps. Consisting of interlocking triangular skeletal struts supported by (often transparent) light walls, geodesic domes were developed in the 20th century by American engineer and architect R. Buckminster Fuller, and were used for arenas. Smaller incarnations have evolved into a ‘future-proof’ form of modern housing: domes are able to withstand harsh elements due to the stability provided by the durable materials of their construction and their large surface area to volume ratio (which helps minimize wind impact and prevents the structure from collapsing). As housing, they’re also hugely energy efficient – their curved shape helps to conserve heat and reduce energy costs, making them less susceptible to temperature changes outside. The ample light let in by their panels further reduces the need for artificial power. 

Due to their low environmental impact, they’re an ideal sustainable travel choice. Of course, Tom’s Creek Nature Domes’ owner-operators, Cardia and Lee Forsyth, know all this, which is why they have set up their one-of-a-kind Nature Domes experience for the modern traveller. It’s also no surprise to learn that owner Lee is an electrical engineer—experienced in renewable energy—and that he designed the whole set-up. As well as the off-grid power supply, rainwater tanks are used, and the outdoor hot tub is heated by a wood fire—your campfire heats up your tub water via a large metal coil. Like most places in regional Australia, the nights get cold – but rather than blast a heater, the Domes provide you with hot water bottles, warm blankets, lush robes and heavy curtains to ward off the chill.

nature domes port macquarie
Photo: Nature Domes

You’ll need to be self-sufficient during your stay at the Domes, bringing your own food. Support local businesses and stock up in the town of Wauchope on your drive-in (and grab some pastries and coffee at Baked Culture while you’re at it). There’s a stovetop, fridge (stocked as per a mini bar), BBQs, lanterns and mozzie coils, and you can even order DIY S’More packs for fireside fun. The interiors of the Domes have a cosy, stylish fit-out, with a modern bathroom (and a proper flushing toilet—none of that drop bush toilet stuff). As there’s no mobile reception, pack a good book or make the most of treasures that lie waiting to be discovered at every turn: a bed chest full of board games, a cupboard crammed with retro DVDs, a stargazing telescope (the skies are ablaze come night time). Many of these activities are ideal for couples, but there’s plenty on offer for solo travellers, such as yoga mats, locally-made face masks and bath bombs for hot tub soaks. 

It’s these thoughtful human touches that reinforce the benefit of making a responsible travel choice by booking local and giving your money to a tourism operator in the Greater Port Macquarie Region, such as Tom’s Creek Nature Domes. The owners are still working on the property following the setbacks of COVID-19, and flooding in the region —a new series of Domes designed with families and groups in mind is under construction, along with an open-air, barn-style dining hall and garden stage. Once ready, the venue will be ideal for wedding celebrations, with wedding parties able to book out the property. They’ve already got one couple—who honeymooned at the Domes—ready and waiting. Just need to train up the llamas for ring-bearer duties! 

An abundance of favourite moments come to mind from my two-night stay at Tom’s Creek: sipping champagne and gourmet picnicking at the top of a hill on a giant swing under a tree, with a bird’s eye view of the entire property (the ‘Mountain Top picnic’ is a must-do activity add on during your stay), lying on a deckchair at night wrapped in a blanket gazing up at starry constellations and eating hot melted marshmallows, to revelling in the joys of travellers before me, scrawled on notes in a jar of wishes left by the telescope (you’re encouraged to write your own to add to the jar). But I’ll leave you with a gratitude journal entry I made while staying there. I will preface this by saying that I don’t actually keep a gratitude journal, but Tom’s Creek Nature Domes is just the kind of place that makes you want to start one. And so, waking up on my second morning at Tom’s —lacking any 4G bars to facilitate my bad habit of a morning Instagram scroll—I finally opened up a notebook and made my first journal entry:

‘I am grateful to wake up after a deep sleep and breathe in the biggest breaths of this clean air, purified by nature and scented with eucalyptus and rain. I am grateful for this steaming hot coffee brewed on a fire. I feel accomplished at having made myself. I am grateful for the skittish sheep that made me laugh as I enjoyed a long nature walk at dawn and the animated billy goats and friendly llamas overlooking my shoulder as I write this: agreeable company for any solo traveller. I’m grateful for total peace, absolute stillness.” 

Off-grid holiday status: unlocked.

Where: Tom’s Creek Nature Domes, Port Macquarie, 2001 Toms Creek Rd
Price: $450 per night, book at the Natura Domes website.

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