{"id":77,"date":"2009-07-19T04:49:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-19T04:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/?p=77"},"modified":"2009-07-19T04:49:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-19T04:49:00","slug":"the-bats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/?p=77","title":{"rendered":"The Bats!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_rfIXlgkzrtE\/SmKn84oA7LI\/AAAAAAAAAMM\/950RlzR9VJo\/s1600-h\/P1010138.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_rfIXlgkzrtE\/SmKn84oA7LI\/AAAAAAAAAMM\/950RlzR9VJo\/s320\/P1010138.JPG\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a>We drove over to the caverns this evening to watch the flight of the bats.  Tonight the bats started flying at about 8:20.  The bats circle in the bowl of the cave entrance for a while before they take off over the hills.  Almost like popcorn in an air popper &#8212; swirling around until it&#8217;s ready to fly out.  This means the best seats are ones that give you a view down into the bowl of the cave entrance.<\/p>\n<p>It was a great show.  I felt it was more impressive than Austin&#8217;s Congress Street Bridge bats have been recently, though the ranger says that colony is twice as large as Carlsbad&#8217;s.  There is a scenic drive from the park entrance to the parking area at the visitors&#8217; center.  It is about a 6-mile winding drive.  At the beginning of the program, the ranger warned us that the lightning detectors were picking up strikes 3-8 miles out, and if they got close she would call of the program.  Well, all went well, and we were treated to a great light show on our drive back as lightning lit up the sky across the horizon.<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_rfIXlgkzrtE\/SmKn8mawfPI\/AAAAAAAAAME\/-ZxeiSFcDXo\/s1600-h\/P1010122.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_rfIXlgkzrtE\/SmKn8mawfPI\/AAAAAAAAAME\/-ZxeiSFcDXo\/s320\/P1010122.JPG\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We drove over to the caverns this evening to watch the flight of the bats. Tonight the bats started flying at about 8:20. The bats circle in the bowl of the cave entrance for a while before they take off over the hills. Almost like popcorn in an air popper &#8212; swirling around until it&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}