John & Allison's Adventures Down South: Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Nov. 9th, Carlsbad Caverns National Park
I was pretty stoked to go to see this site, unlike John, who has had a couple of not so happy experiences in caves, due to claustrophobia. I was sure that due to the enormous size of the caverns he wouldn't be bothered as previously. I was wrong. Actually, John was starting to get "the sweats" before we even got up to the caverns and was having serious second thoughts about going in at all while we were talking to one of the park personal. She was explaining the two ways to get into the caverns, one, a walk down 1 mile that takes about 1 hour, called the Natural Entrance Route or the elevator which takes about 1 minute. I strongly suggested that John take the elevator as the park ranger did say there were three areas that were about the width of a hallway in a typical house on the other route. I had reservations when John said we would do the 1 mile route.
We walked to the natural entrance and it's a big opening which made John feel pretty good, so away we went. Inside the cave the temperature is always around 12C and 90% humidity. It had an unmistakably cavey odour and it was fairly dimly lit but enough to see where you're going.
We wound our way down into the cave. The path was good with handrail all along so even in the steeper parts, pretty easy going. All was going well, until the first narrow passage. John literally ran through it. The passage ended in a fairly large opening so he collected himself and we continued. The next narrowing was the same but longer and by this time there was no turning back as we were closer to the Big Room than to the entrance. One more "hallway" to go, so even though the Big Room was really big, John had had enough and decided he wasn't going to continue. He opted to go and sit by the elevators and wait for me to finish the self guided tour. We agreed that he had option to head up without me if necessary, which he did.
I enjoyed the marvels of the cave by myself and met John above ground.
The rest of the park, outside the cave, is also very pretty and we found a nice spot to have our picnic.
We thought we would cut through Texas to get back home as we were practically at the border and it was a shorter route by mileage. Well, the short cut was not that pretty, as a matter of fact it was down right blah and when we got to El Paso there was no bypass so time wise it took us longer than if we had gone back the pretty, mountain route. Who knew?!