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Carlsbad Caverns Room
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Despite being about 800 feet underground, Carlsbad Caverns is still higher than the highest point in Pennsylvania.
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The chamber floors alternated between impossibly craggy and impossibly flat. I guess that's what happens when salty water permeates through limestone over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.
tr.robinson:
Stalactites subject to a constant drip can grown about an 1/8th of an inch a year. Most don't have a constant drip and grow at a rate of about 0.0051 inches a year.
tr.robinson:
Speleothem or soda straws are tubular stalactites. Some extended over a yard which was kind of scary when you were immediately under them.
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Scale
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Queen's Veil
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The aptly named "Big Room" is over 4000 feet long, 600 feet wide, and 250 feet tall. It's huge. The kind gaping giant huge that makes you wonder what else the earth is keeping secret.
tr.robinson:
Stalagnates (columns). To give scale, the tubular stalactites at the top were up to several feet long.
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Lighting
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That's a reflecting pool not a hole
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Explorer's ladder