Episode #36: The Bat Cave, The X Files, and The Old West

Bear with me as I tell this story and I will tie this episode title in with this dad and sons trip we took to New Mexico in November 2006. Brad was 16 and Jacob was 13 years old. This is the third of these dad and sons trips the three of us would take together. The first was the hiking trip we took to Dinosaur Valley and Enchanted Rock in 1999 (see Episode #31). The second trip was taken a year or so later when I took them to Colorado which I will publish in a future post.

 

The first time I went to Carlsbad Caverns was in early summer of 1967 when I was almost 10 years old and on a family vacation. I thought my boys would enjoy this trip even though they were not too keen on it when I first started talking about it. When we got on the rode and drove that near 500 mile trip to Carlsbad NM it became clear it would be a fun trip. 

I took the photo below at the visitor center just before we take the walk to the entrance of caverns and we are told it will take about an hour and a half to reach the bottom. As you can see in the background the desert southwest is so massive, barren, and flat as far as you can see.

  

The following few pictures at the cave entrance and the stone benches are there for visitor seating to view the daily event called The Bat Flight as they exit just after sunset in search for food which consist primarily of insects. These bats will fly from 10-25 miles each night and will consume nearly half their body weight in insects daily.

When we came to Carlsbad in 1967 and I heard the tour guide first tell us how magnificent the bat cave was that we would see during our guided trip, I was a bit conflicted and hoped to see something like what I see on the TV show Batman. It wasn't anything like that and I felt cheated. I mentioned this to my dad and he just shook his head. As unbelievable as it may sound, between 250,000 and 500,000 Brazilian free-tailed bats fly out of these caverns each evening during the summer and during migration that number goes up to around 1,000,000 per day. When I was a kid on that first trip here, we learned a new word that day when the tour guide told us about how many bats there were, he also said that means there is a lot of bat guano. When I asked my dad what guano was, he told us in 'plain english' and of course we laughed and like the kids we were, Danny and I called everything guano for several days.

While the temperature is a pleasant and constant 56 degrees year round inside the caverns it is also very damp with a constant 90-100% relative humidity. This is how the stalactites which grow from the top down and stalagmites which grow from the bottom up are formed. As the humidity condenses into water and the droplets fall they carry the limestone minerals from the cave walls and ceilings and as they dry these minerals attach to the existing formation and grow, which reportedly takes thousands or hundreds of thousands of years to achieve complete growth.

The limestone minerals found in the water droplets is in solution rather than in suspension, that is why the water is crystal clear in the pool pictured below rather than grey or milky like you might expect.

After several hours here, I guess the magic of the caverns has worn off and the boys are ready to head out to our next destination which is north to the town of Roswell New Mexico.

The next portion of this trip will connect the Bat Cave to the X Files. If you are not familiar with the show The X Files, it was a TV drama about 2 FBI special agents that investigate unexplained cases that generally surround suspicion of the government hidden existence of extraterrestrials, aliens and UFO sightings. 

The only reason for this leg of the trip was the curiosity that surrounds the legend of the area and since it was only 75 miles away, I thought it might be an interesting visit. The Roswell UFO incident depicts a story about how the Air Force had recovered debris of a crashed balloon in 1947. However the conspiracy theory is that this was not a balloon, rather that of a crashed alien space craft. I had expected us to see an abundance of alien exhibits, museums etc. but was disappointed to find only a few of these options as we drove around town. The following pictures are of the 'museum' we chose to stop and look through. I guess you could check out the story of aliens here, then run next door for a haircut?

A couple of hours here in Roswell was all we needed and we were ready to head home. After a 150 miles or so I see a highway sign that catches my attention and decide on a quick unscheduled stop near Pecos Texas. This is where I tie The X Files to Old West into my story.

The sign describes the Historical Marker erected for the famous saloon keeper turn Justice of the Peace of the Peace in the late 1800s Judge Roy Bean. He claims he is the only law west of the Pecos (river). Though he had no legal training and his library contained only a single volume of the 1879 Revised Statutes of Texas, he would dispense 'justice' as he saw fit in his saloon with only the authority of the Texas Rangers to settle legal decisions in this remote part of the state. Since there was no jail, legal  decisions were usually rendered with a fine to the guilty party. Justice may be blind, but apparently it was also profitable.

While on that family vacation trip to Carlsbad in 1967 noted above, we made this same stop along the way. While we were there we took a photo of Danny and me on the steps of this same building. When the boys and I stopped and I recognized the old building, I suddenly remembered that photo, so I recreated it here below with my boys. 

This was a fun trip for sure and it just goes to show that two teenage boys can have fun on a trip when you spend over 20 hours cooped up in a car ride with dad. Parts of the long drive to and from were made easier for them with each one having their own music and headphones while appeasing the old man and his goofy ideas. I definitely enjoyed this time with them knowing how fast the years have passed since they were little and how the next few years will change for them and for us.

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