Trip out West - Carlsbad Caverns and
Roswell in New Mexico


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Date and Location Description

Day 5; Tuesday, July 3rd
Carlsbad Caverns

Carlsbad Caverns!
This was our reason for stopping in Carlsbad in the first place.  Rick had heard of the famous caves of Carlsbad at a visitor center on his first road trip out to Oregon five years ago and we thought it’d be a fun addition to our trip and boy was it!

I’ve been to Howe Caverns in NY but that’s nothing compared to Carlsbad! 
First off, you can just walk right in! There is an elevator down for those who don’t want to or are unable to make it down on their own, but the Natural Entrance is worth the walk!

During the day the place is swarming with cave swallows, at night there’s bats.  There’s even a sort of amphitheater right by the natural entrance for bat viewings that run in the evenings.

The natural entrance route is only a mile long, but it’s pretty steep in spots and has some rather tight switch-backs. (It takes you down about 750 feet!)  It’s really fun descending out of a hot, dry, very-much-a-desert environment into this chilly, dark, damp place.  And the formations! Oh, simply incredible.  Breathtaking stalagmites growing up from the floor and stalactites clinging to the ceilings.  Massive limestone structures that seem to ripple and churn – agelessly solid and yet delicate at the same time.  In fact, even with people not touching the formations, there’s still impact from people being down in the caves.  Lint from their clothing has started collecting on the structures, causing a hazy layer of dark “soot” to form on the outer surfaces.  The Parks Service – in a desperate effort to maintain these natural beauties – is installing along the walkways, low “curbs” that seem to be stemming the lint flows.  How odd that something as simple as clothing lint could be so destructive!

After arriving deep within the caves, Rick and I decided to take the long self-guided tour around the lower caverns (this was another 1 mile walk).  It was well worth the walk as the scenery was beautiful (they light the stone structures for effect).

We weren’t very travel-hardened yet though, so after that hike we took the elevator back up.  I had forgotten that caves stay pretty much in the mid-50’s all year round and hadn’t thought to bring along a sweat-shirt or anything of that sort.  It took a little while for me to thaw out again.  Still, it was great fun :)

Day 5; Tuesday, July 3rd
Roswell, NM

This was not the end of our day however.  It was rather early in the afternoon when we returned to the surface, so after hitting the gift shop, we hopped back in the car and drove up to Roswell.

That was a great stop as well!  As you might expect, the town really capitalizes on the alien theme.

We checked out the UFO museum and enjoyed root beer floats at the “Cover-up Café”.

As it so happened, we ended up missing the big 60th anniversary party to celebrate the “landing” of the UFO in Roswell by just a couple of days.  We actually counted ourselves lucky.  I had a feeling it would have been as nuts as Salem Massachusetts on Halloween!

We took pictures to our hearts content and then said farewell to Roswell and pointed ourselves towards Albuquerque (the place we wanted to stop that evening).

We had a couple choices on how to get there: we could do the northern highway rout – which would get us there quicker; or we could do the more scenic western route that took us past some mountains and through lava beds.  We took the scenic route.

I had never seen old lava flows up close before.  It was very impressive and so worth the added drive time!

This had – understandably – been a pretty intense day though; so by the time we got to Albuquerque we really wanted to stop for the day.  Unfortunately with a casino in the area, hotel prices were higher than what we were willing to pay (this ended up being a common theme on the trip), so we drudged on a bit further north and were rewarded with more choices in our price range.  We did some quick shopping around and settled on a Super 8 Motel before calling it quits for the day.

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