Willy 's post on underwater mailboxes reminded me of my own experience mailing postcards at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. At the end of the tour, before you head up the elevator to the surface, you can buy a postcard, write a "Wish you were here missive," affix a postage stamp and drop it in a U.S. mailbox. There's an ink pad and message stamp so you can add, "Mailed at 750 feet underground."

Since Carlsbad is a wet cave, I seem to remember a certain dampness about this endeavor. Mailing a postcard isn't the only thing you can do underground at Carlsbad. There's a restaurant/snack bar as well.

Mailing a postcard and eating lunch underground aren't really the reasons to head here; the caverns are enough. In the summer, if you stick around until dusk, you can watch the hundreds of Mexican free-tailed bats swarm out of the cave's entrance. These bats are what tipped off, cowboy Jim White in 1901 that there was something unusual in the distance. He thought he was seeing smoke.

For someone else's account of mailing postcards, check out Carlsbad Caverns National Park on Tour of America Airstream Life's Web site.

Filed under: Hiking, North America, United States