After doing a search of Carlsbad Caverns threads I haven't found answers to a couple of quick questions. How much time do we need to do the Caverns justice? We're not hikers, but want to be able to enjoy them as fully as possible. (I have arthritis and can't do very long stretches or too many stairs.)
And, along the same lines -- if we stay in the area the night before and do the Caverns the next day, would leaving the area and traveling towards Santa Fe be a mistake or should we stay another night and wait until the next morning?
Thanks!

Oops. Forgot. Do we need to make advance reservations for early July?

Don't know about reservations and hopefully the parks web sites will be back soon since the courts shut them down for some transgression.

If you take the tour of Carlsbad that goes in the main entrance, you have a considerable steep walk into the cave itself. I suggest not doing it if you have arthritic joints that hurt.

I hope that the tour of the main room where you go down the elevator and return the same way is still available as a half trip. It takes a few hours, depending on the crowd. You miss some of the cave this way, but there is still plenty to see.
I think you could continue on after your tour; I have two or three times.
We spent the night before the tour in Carlsbad, went early, and then went on.
If you stay the second night, you could go back to the cave at dusk and wait for the bats to exit. It is quite a sight. We went as part of a Ranger led lecture. Most interesting. I hope that lecture is still on the schedule.

Thank you. I have some concern about where we might stay on our way to Santa Fe if we leave later in the day.

we went in Oct......you can take the elevator down which will save an hour or more of walking time. touring the main room will probably take you 3 hours at most and there are no stairs. the bat flight is good..although they are so small the flight looks more like a black mist rising from the cave. can't really advise you on the drive to sante fe. we drove from carlsbad to alamogordo,..then alamogordo to sante fe. it's a long trip and there aren't really any accomodations between the major cities...just lots of desert.

Topping

Going there this weekend. Anyone have any updated advice on lodging, dining, cave tours? Anything else we need to be aware of? Thanks!

On our drive back from Colorado to Texas, we stopped in Carlsbad for the night. (which is about 20 miles from the caverns. You may want to stay closer) We stayed at the Days Inn and actually got a decent room (HUGE with King bed, nice size bath, good bed, fluffy pillows.) All for $59. Two doors down was the No Whiners Diner. Good, reasonably priced food and excellent service.

We drove from near Telluride to Carlsbad. Took us about 12 hours. (Should have been less, but due to construction on some roads, stopping here and there...)

We visited Carlsbad Caverns in April. I had been there before, but it was so long ago that the Park Service has changed the style of access to the caverns.

The natural entrance is now done as a self guided tour. No longer do large groups of tourists follow the ranger down the walkway. Going in the natural entrance involves a long descent on the paved walk to the big room.

The big room itself is a separate tour and visitors may take the elevator down and tour at their own pace. It is a relatively flat walk with informative plaques along the way.

There are also some tours that are extra in terms of cost. We took the Left Hand Tunnel, which I recommend.
The ranger who led our walk supplied candle lanterns. The idea is to use only the lanterns going in to enable a feeling of what the early explorers of the cave experienced.

There are other fee=based, ranger=led tours. Some of these require some effort, and are designed for those who are physically fit.

In town, we stayed at the Day's Inn. It is a normal motel about 20 miles from the Cavern entrance. The motel at White's City is expensive, and the drive back into Carlsbad itself is uncontested.

We took the big room, King's Chamber, and the Left Hand Tunnel tour one afternoon, stayed overnight, and returned the next day to walk down the natural entrance and look around some more.



Carlsbad is in a desert area and there is not much around it.

We enjoyed visiting the park and I hope those of of your who go in the near future will have an equally good time.

I really enjoyed my visit to Carlsbad Caverns (back in '96). Especially loved the bat flight at night!!! Highly recommend it!

I stayed in Carlsbad the evening before I went to the caverns. I found that there were no great accommodations so I asked to see rooms at every establishment; some were rather terrible. I settled on the Holiday Inn, which was the best that I could find but still not great (the usual next-door neighbor who smoked and watched TV all night, lots of vehicular traffic, etc.); I also had a free breakfast, which was good. After spending half a day in the Caverns, I drove to El Paso; driving to Santa Fe in a day would be a problem and, as has been noted above, there is very little along the way.

Actually, it was the Best Western we stayed at in Carlsbad, not the Days Inn. (Confused by another post topic...) Not all the rooms are the same. We stayed in 232.