december 7, 8 2014

December 7, 2014

We shook the dust of Pecos off our feet early. Our bodies and brains are still on East Coast time. So, off to Carlsbad Caverns! This is a detour to the north, then back diagonally to route 10 in El Paso tomorrow. As soon as we crossed into New Mexico (and the next time zone) it got even earlier and we were in Carlsbad early enough to catch Mass at a small local church. They were very welcoming to visitors – the deacon came up to us and we had to talk into the microphone, tell who we are and where we’re going. A little uncomfortable for Opa Henk, I myself however love talking into microphones ;)  The other church visitors were pipeline guys, there’s a pipeline being built in the area. It’s oil country.

There’s a little RV campground at the base of the National Park road, where we stayed overnight. Quite adequate for self-contained RVs and people who don’t spend much time on the actual campground. The campgrounds in town may be more fancy but they’re all full because of the pipeline. This campground worked perfectly well for us so we were happy. We had dinner at the restaurant and that was very tasty for a decent price. And good service ;)

But first we went to the Caverns NP. An experience we will never forget! There are multiple caves and each cave has sooo many levels and side arms. They’re still discovering more chambers as we speak. There’s an entire cavern further into the NP where they don’t let visitors in, even if you’re a scientist you can’t just go in; they’re keeping that one just for research. The photos are unbelievable.

We looked at the 3-D model of the main cavern in the visitor center and chose one of the simplest tours for the afternoon: a lantern tour of the “left hand tunnel”. An hour and a half with the ranger and three other people in a twisty-turny cave, unpaved path, stubby candles lit in our old-fashioned lanterns, this is how the tunnel was discovered and explored way back when. It was awesome. No big rooms in this section, rather a lot of squeezing past stalagmites and alongside small pools. We spent some total dark time in a somewhat wider spot to listen to and experience the darkness. 

The most interesting formations were small warts of deposit on all sides of stalactites and stalagmites, growing in all directions – not downwards. They don’t even know why. They think maybe bacteria got in on it. They’re researching this in the other cave.

After the tour there was enough time left for us to do the Big Room, a 1.25 mile paved path through ONE veeeery veeeery large cave. This cave is the size of 14 or so football fields. Lots of awesomeness here, plus unbelievableness, grandness, catchyourbreathiness and mindbogglingness. All beautifully lit, tall ceilings with stalactites and straws and draperies, wide floors with dwarves and fairies and toothy monsters, tall droopy

 melting ice cream cones, small windows into the smaller spaces beyond filled with popcorn-decorated formations, dripdrips into crystal clear little pools - and on your head. Opa Henk took almost a hundred pictures, hoping some would be good, and to our surprise they all came out sharp. The flash pretty much wore out the battery…

We must go back another time to look around the many other cavern sections!

December 8

The Carlsbad Caverns NP is only a half hour from Guadalupe Mountain NP, and it’s on our way to El Paso. So we planned our first stop there. After a leisurely morning – well, it included trying to wash the sticky mud dust off the sides of the RV – we got to Guadalupe Visitor Center by 11 AM. We packed a lunch and walked about 45 minutes up the Devil’s Hall trail, found a rock to sit on for lunch, and then returned. A lovely bit of exercise in the clean fresh mountain air. Opa’s terrible cold gave up trying to make him miserable about halfway and he’s been feeling much better ever since.

The road being straight and quiet we pushed on to the east side of Tucson, got there around 9 PM, at a new and definitely Super WalMart. Halfway the afternoon we decided to make another detour tomorrow, via Lake Havasu, which to our surprise adds only a half hour of driving time. Opa called a retired colleague, he’s home and we’re invited for dinner. So tomorrow’s goal is to camp overnight at Cattail Cove State Park, just south of Havasu City. We were there before and it’s an excellent little park and campground.