Our absentee ballots have been sighted ... unfortunately they still are not in our possession. We expect to receive them - overnighted - tomorrow. Hopefully we'll receive them while the post office is still open - we'll fill them out and overnight them right back. If it's too late, we'll have to take them with us as we drive south. We'll find a Fedex office somewhere on Monday morning and 'FedexSameDay' them back to Florida. Hope springs eternal ...

So, we are REALLY enjoying Carlsbad. I've never been to Carlsbad Caverns National Park before - so Jim is reveling in the fact that he has! Even though he doesn't remember much about it :-)

First we took in the sights above ground. They say this area is an ancient sea. It's not too hard to imagine ...



We were supposed to see thousands of bats fly out of the cave at dusk .. but, they had already flown when we got there at about 5:15. They are in the process of migrating south right now. I guess the majority of them have packed their little batmobiles and gone. There's a one-way scenic drive on a dirt road that we enjoyed.



Then, there's the cave! Here's the entrance:



It truly exceeded all my expectations. I think the thing that made it SO special is that they let you go thru without being in a group with a guide. We did all this walking by ourselves. And, there was hardly anybody there. At several points we had the place all to ourselves. Yet, we rented the audio tour so we still had the benefit of a tour guide telling us history and descriptions of what we were seeing. Here's what we saw:
















"Awesome" does not begin to describe it. Check out the official website for some more photos and information.