A group of Arizona Trailblazers joined in on a four day road trip to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.

Known as the “8^th Wonder of the World” Carlsbad Caverns is an underground series of passages and caves 750 feet below ground.

There are numerous tours available for the visitors who wish to explore this underground world of stalagmites, stalactites, and helictites.

The group toured the Big Room which is a huge cave the size of 14 football fields, the Natural Entrance, a one mile walk down into the caves, and the Left Hand Tunnel, a historic ranger-guided lantern lit tour on unpaved trails through an undeveloped section of the cave.

Two club members also toured the Slaughter Canyon Cave. In addition to touring the caverns, the group visited the amphitheater to witness the bat show.

During the spring and summer months, a colony of over 300,000 Mexican Freetail bats leave the cave at dusk in search of food and visitors may sit and watch their exit.

This year celebrated the 60th anniversary of the famous Roswell Incident: the discovery of a “flying disc” at a ranch in July 1947.

The next stop was the New Mexico Museum of Space History near Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo.

The museum has displays of space artifacts, man-made satellites, missiles, rockets, and space suits, as well as an outdoor Air and Space Park.

The final stop was the White Sands National Monument. Located in the Chihuahuan Desert in the Tularosa Basin lies the world’s largest gypsum dune field.

The White Sands encompass 275 miles of desert with brilliant white dunes.

The Dune Drive allows visitors to drive into the heart of the dunes and explore the area if they desire. The park is surrounded by the White Sands Missile Range, a testing site for experimental weaponry and space technology.

Photos courtesy of Barry, Michael, Sheila, and Joe.