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We stayed up fairly late stargazing. The weather was completely clear and we had an unobstructed view of much of the sky. The bathroom building is a fair distance away, and whenever we walked over, we'd stop and watch the bats feasting on bugs drawn by the lamppost. I tried (futilely) to take some pictures of them, but on my way back, I saw something moving and froze. It turned out to be two javelinas, nosing around the campground! In the morning Adrienne saw a tarantula and pointed it out to me. We also saw several little lizards.
We spent pretty much the whole day at Carlsbad Caverns. We started out with a hike down through the natural entrance, caught a ranger-led tour of the King's Palace loop, and visited the Big Room on our own. We returned to our campground for long enough to cook dinner, and then headed back for the bat flight program. There was also a scheduled "Star Party", where they'd set aside one of the parking lots and put up some telescopes. However, by the time it was dark, a storm was rolling in, and the telescopes were pretty much useless.
We're now hunkered down in the tent, having put out all of the guy lines. Seems like the forecast is for wind, but not too much rain.
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