Stalagmites, Stalactites & THAT Spider

Day 13; Roswell & Carlsbad Caverns; 15th July



Apart from the whole waking Emily up in the middle of the night because I dreamt there were snakes in the tent, I had a great sleep.
Until Emily woke me up ... early. Very early. 
Because we had such a long driving day, we had to leave at 7:30. 
Gross! 

We were continuing through "New Mehico" and heading to Roswell for a pitstop.
Roswell was one of the places Emily was really looking forward to; it turned out to be a bit of a dump if I'm honest.
Roswell is a town with alien stuff everywhere because there was allegedly a UFO crashed there years ago. I mean it was good to stop by for an hour as a lunch stop but literally don't spend anymore time there; there are better places to go!
So with our hour to kill in Roswell I think everyone headed for the UFO museum. They clearly put a lot of work into 'getting' these articles and pictures and 'confessions' but tbh I'm not sold and its load of bollocks if you ask me.
The gift shop was great though, even got us a blow-up mascot called Audrey :)


Ready to leave we headed on for Carlsbad to visit their famous caverns.
It was a steep winding path down into the caverns which led us 750ft below the earth's surface!
The paths were covered in (what we thought was) bat shit.
"Batshitcray, aint it Jay"

The rocks in the caverns were so impressive!
tiny bit more lighting would have been ideal to really see how big they were, but I suppose when you're that far underground light may be an issue.
Im not gonna lie though, a lot of the stalagmites looked like giant turds.






& the razor sharp stalactites hanging above our head were a little daunting. A small rockfall or tremor could have easily set them off!
The caverns were pretty cool, and you could see where both stalagmites & stalactites had formed and continued to grow and were almost touching to become massive pillars.
A lift back to the surface we were heading back to camp for a quick dinner in time to return to the caverns to watch the thousands of bats fly out at dusk to go hunting.


I went for a shower back at camp and made friends with two kids in the bathroom. They seemed pretty cool for like 6/7 years olds; I wanted to impress them so I was telling them all out our trip and what we've done so far. We really hit it off. I was hoping for an invite to their tent for a sleepover so we could braid each others hair and paint each others nails. It never came :(
Back at our camp a few of us sat round waiting for dinner and one of my new bezzies comes running over; yeeeeey maybe she's coming to invite me for that sleepover.
Nope.
She was carrying a plastic bag and says to our group:
"Wanna see something scaaaaaary??"
In a really cute little-girl american accent.
So we're thinking, ha ok, probs some tiny fly or bug, bring it on ...

She opens the bag ... WTF!
Basically Aragog! The biggest dead spider MONSTER i've ever seen!
Colin's already jumped out of his seat, and the rest of us all backing away from the devil child with the spider.
& then for good measure
"I found it over there but they're everywhere in this grass"
*pointing at the very grass we're standing on*

arghhhh!
Frantically searching the grass for any signs of movement!
The little shit! 
Thought we were friends.

Quick chow down on some stir fry (with a few feet off the ground to avoid the grass) and it was back in the bus back to the caverns to see some bats!
At the top of the windy path into the caverns there is a big seating area and it was pretty packed with everyone waiting for all the bats to start flying out.
It was quite dark & cloudy so visibility wasn't great but when they started coming out it was awesome!
Sooooo many bats all flying out over our heads into different directions to go hunt.
It was one of those things you'd never think to research or go to do so i'm glad it was part of our trip because it was crazy to witness.

In the not-so-distant distance however, was something not so awesome. A massive lighting storm. It was creeping closer and closer and I was getting pretty panicked that no one else was freaking out at how close it was! At last someone said it was time for our group to go so I'm basically running to the bus to get to safety.
The drive back was insane with so much lightning filling the sky!
It kinda freaked me out a lot and I wanted to avoid being outside at all costs so snuck off to bed for an early night and sulked over being afraid of lightening.
I was just grateful at that point there were no mammoth spiders or rattlesnakes in my tent or I would have just died there and then. 
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