Touring the Living Desert Zoo & Gardens State Park

Carlsbad, New Mexico

The Living Desert Zoo & Garden State Park, located in northern Carlsbad, New Mexico, is a zoo and botanical garden filled with displays of plants and animals native to the Chihuahuan Desert. This is an indoor/outdoor living museum that was both informational and fun.

Once you turn onto Skyline Road off of 285 North it is about a mile to the visitor center and parking lot. If you have a New Mexico State Park Pass entrance will be free. Otherwise the cost to enter is $5 per person. We stopped in the gift shop and purchased some postcards to mail home to the grandkids.

Once you exit the visitor center, the cement paved walking trail is a total of 1.3 miles round trip back to the starting point. I am pretty sure we walked further than that with all the backtracking we did. Make sure you wear good walking shoes for this hike and bring along a bottle of water at least. Today the sun was warm, the temperature was in the high 60’s, and the breeze was light. It was a great day for a walk.

The first section of the park is the Sand Hills. This is a short walk through plants and vegetation which are clearly marked with signs. The trail then leads to the Aviary Exhibits section.

In the Aviary section we saw a huge Common Raven, a Burrowing Owl, and a Golden Eagle. These were the best exhibits. That is the largest Common Raven I have ever seen. There is also a walk-through aviary section filled with more common birds found in the desert habitat.

If you have followed along on some of our other desert adventures the past few months, you will know that I have struggled to get a photograph of a real road runner bird. You can read about that plight here.

Today I succeeded in capturing not one, but two live road runners on camera. They may have been in a cage but I still got my photos. And these two were beautiful large road runners.

I videotaped them running around the cage. Road Runners are also called Chaparral Birds and can run upwards of 26 miles per hour. They are found in the south-central United States and Mexico, usually in the desert. We have seen a ton of them in the past few months.

Moving on through the bird section of the zoo, we saw Swainson’s Hawks, Harris’ Hawks, and Turkey Vultures before entering the Gypsum Hills.

Selenite is the pure, crystalline form of gypsum rock. The blazing white dunes of White Sands National Monument are formed from selenite eroded by wind. I can’t wait to get to White Sands. We plan to make that drive sometime this month also.

We have been in the Chihuahuan Desert for a long time and I have not seen this beautiful rock anywhere else yet. It is gorgeous to behold.

There is a Gypsum Sinkhole just around the corner from the Selenite rocks. Gypsum deposits erode easily and are dissolved by flowing water. Sinkholes can easily lead to the formation of underground caves and caverns. We will be headed to Carlsbad Caverns in the next day or two.

The next section we walked through was the Desert Uplands, which are transitional areas between higher juniper zones and lower desert grasslands. The uplands are usually the driest part of the desert. The trail then led to the Arroyo section of the desert.

The arroyo is a dry creek or stream that will seasonally fill with water after sufficient rains. This is where flash floods are common during thunderstorms.

We saw some large javelinas roaming around in their penned in area. This is the closest we have been able to see any of these creatures. Usually they are along the side of the road and run away as Rich zooms by at 75 mph. We watched them for several minutes.

Moving on through the park we saw a majestic specimen of an American Bald Eagle, alone in his cage. We felt bad for him wondering why he was in captivity instead of able to be free, but were glad to be able to see him up so close. He was not bothered by our presence and watched us as we walked on by.

There was an inside nocturnal exhibit about bats, but no bats on display. We are under the understanding that there are bats at Carlsbad Caverns and I will most definitely write about them at that time.

The Black Bear was not out and about for photo opportunities and we were told that she is 18 years old and sleeps a lot. Although it would have been cool to see her.

We were also not fortunate enough to see the Mexican Wolves today. We could tell they were probably sleeping in their dog house.

On to the animals that we did see…

There were two Elk lounging in the shade, a Mule Deer, and several Bison. The Pronghorns were nowhere to be seen. I don’t think I have ever seen a Pronghorn.

There is a really nice indoor reptile exhibit with good specimens of all the different kinds of snakes found in the desert, even the Diamondback Rattlesnake, which was cool to see up close.

The funnest exhibit where we spent the most time was the Prairie Dogs. They were eating canteloupe and trying to scare off a gray squirrel who had invaded their space.

One thing we noticed about all of the animals at the zoo were that they all looked pretty plump compared to some of the animals we see in the wild. I guess they are fed pretty well in captivity.

We saw some Bolson Tortoises and a hatchling cage, and there were some painted turtles and spiny softshell turtles in the pond.

On to the cats…when we entered the mountain lion area we didn’t see anything at first. We sat down on the bench to take a break in the shade, and it wasn’t long before she made her entrance. She paraded by us to the right and then back to the left. It was as if she knew we were there.

We sat on the bench for several minutes and watched her pace back and forth. As we moved on down the path, we found a pair of Bobcats.

The Living Desert Zoo & Gardens became a state park in 1971. It has got to be one of the best places to see in the town of Carlsbad. I highly recommend this place to everyone. It was interesting, beautiful, and awesome. I am glad we went to see it.

I took a lot of photos today and only included some of them. I hope I gave you enough of a taste and some good information to entice you to visit this place for yourself.

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