Next Stop, Carlsbad, NM

We are really enjoying Fort Davis but our time here has come to an end all to soon.  We are on our way to the next leg of our return engagement to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad, NM.  Actually, the exact place is Lakewood, NM, you would not even call it a wide spot in the road.  The only thing that identifies it as a town is the Post Office which is a single-wide trailer on a dirt lot.  The only permanent fixture is the flagpole that is cemented into the ground.  But about a mile away is "The Ranch", an RV park that is one of the private campgrounds in the Escapees organization that we belong to.

Even though we are several hundred miles north of our winter post in Big Bend, this is still the Chihuahuan Desert.  SKP's The Ranch is midway between Carlsbad and Artesia, NM.

The Ranch is what is called a Co-Op.  Escapees owns the property but they let long term leases to individual lots.  The lease holders build pads for their RVs, outbuildings such as mini-barns and sheds and landscaping.  Most folks will live at the campground year 'round and others will pop in for a few weeks to a few months a year.  But in their absence Escapees will rent their lots to campers passing through like us.  We got lucky and were coming through just when they were having a "special", $50 for a whole week.  You better believe we were all over that.

Knowing that we would be at The Ranch long before leaving Fort Davis we contacted Escapees Mail Service and had them send our mail to General Delivery at the tiny trailer Post Office of Lakewood.  We should be able to pick it up a couple days after arriving.

Wind has been a dominant influence on everything for days and on our moving day it still is.  But for the first time I can ever remember it was going to work in my favor.  We are going to be going due north for our entire trip and the wind is coming out of the due south.  Even with 22,000 pounds of trailer connected to 9,000 pounds of truck I finished out the day at 12.4 mpg.  That is a huge change from my normal 8.8 mpg when towing.

Neither of us have been one to enjoy wind.  We grew up in the Texas Panhandle and wind is your constant companion.  It is a factor that has to be worked in to your everyday life.  But mostly it was just wearisome.  Enjoying the wind's assistance in moving us down the road is a huge departure for us.  But it went right back to being wearisome as soon as we stopped and got set up at The Ranch.  And sadly the wind speed only increased with each passing day.

But never mind that, we had tourist stuff to do.  Carlsbad Caverns is calling our names.  Cyndee has never been to the caves and John was last there in 1964.  The caves have not changed much in 50 years but then, geologically speaking, that is a miniscule fraction of time.  Short of some major catastrophe there just has not been enough time for anything to change.  However, how the Park Service presents the caves to the public has changed a lot.  The lighting is all different and in the process of being changed again to LED lights as I write.  Gone are the colored lights, no more blue, red and green rock formations.  Everything is strategically lit with either cool white fluorescent or warm white halogen.

Something else that has changed is the visitor center.  It is much bigger now and the interpretive sections are really well done.  If you go, give yourself an extra hour or two just to take in the visitor center on the surface.  It would be worth your time.  The snack bar 750 feet below the surface is still in operation but is just barely a shadow of its former, 1964 self.  But that is okay, it was always a little too "institutional" for me.  The cafeteria style restaurant in the visitor center is way better and surprisingly affordable.

And of course, Cyndee's favorite, the gift shop was good to.  It ranged from kitschy little trinkets all the way up to obscenely expensive pottery and turquois jewelry.  Which, by the way, Cyndee found the perfect necklace to go with the earrings she found in Sedona, AZ.

There are self-guided tours and there are Ranger-lead guided tours.  Some of the guided tours are pretty intense requiring the use of headlamps and getting on your belly to squeeze through tiny spaces.  Spaces narrower than John's shoulders are wide.  We won't be doing one of those tours.  But the King's Palace tour can be done standing up and is well lit.  That is the tour we will take.

King's Palace

The Queen's Chamber on the King's Palace tour.

It took a couple of hours for the guided tour and it ends at an intersection in the subterranean trail system of the guided and self-guided pathways.  From here one has the option to return to the surface or take the self-guided tour.  We opted to continue on to the "Big Room".  And big it was, the trail that made a loop through the big room was over a mile long.  There were interpretive boards along the trail describing how many football fields would fit end to end or how many 747 jumbo jets could be stacked in this single chamber.

Looking across a 90' deep shaft to a structure known as The Totem Pole.

I'll let you write your own caption for this one.



 Driving in from Lakewood, taking in the Visitor Center and spending almost six hours underground we had used up almost all the hours that the caverns were open for the day.  We hiked over to the natural entrance of the cave to see about entering the cave that way and then walking through the big room again to the elevators.  But when we got to entrance there were rangers there stopping people from entering because it was too late.  However we did get to approach the entrance to see the bat flight amphitheater and walking path into the natural entrance.

Bat flight amphitheater at the natural entrance to Carlsbad Caverns.

The relatively new paved walkway into the natural entrance.

Another thing that Carlsbad Caverns is famous for is its nightly rise of the bats.  They number in the hundreds of thousands and from a distance appear as a plume of smoke pouring from the ground.  But the bat flight is seasonal.  The Mexican Free Tails are migratory and move south to Mexico and South America during the winter.  Here at the end of April we are just a few weeks early for the return of the bats.  Winter seems to keep hanging on and the bats are keeping to the warmer climes for now.  We have to be a long ways from here for the summer and by the time we head back this way in the fall the bats will have already headed south.  Maybe we can get the timing to work out in 2015.

This evening, on our way back to the camper we are going to enjoy some dining fare that the town of Carlsbad has to offer.  Carlsbad is big enough that they have many of the big chain restaurants like Chili's, Applebees and Red Lobster.  But we will be taking in a local place.  We are going to look for one that has a lot of pickups parked in front of it.  Always a good sign in these parts.