For the last two weeks of May the temperatures here in the New Mexico desert have been frequently exceeding 105 degrees (40.5 C). I know everybody says "it's a dry heat", but once at that temperature, and above, it's HOT! Our poor old RV air conditioners just can't overcome the solar gain being put into the rig every day. We are fully broadside to the glaring sun all day long. Temperatures in our living area are hovering around 84 deg by mid-day and we don't get below 80 again until after 9:00 pm. They will continue to run a good part of the night to get the temperature down to its set point of 75. The bedroom being a much smaller area does a little better by about 5 degrees. We have taken to putting a fan at the top of the steps and having it blow air from the bedroom down into the living/galley area. It only makes a small difference but we're taking anything we can get.
My brother and his family are coming to Roswell for the Memorial Day weekend and we are looking for something to do that won't give everybody heat stroke. Lucky for us Carlsbad Caverns National Park is only about an hour south of us. We're headed underground!
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Carlsbad Caverns on the approach to the Big Room.
Look real hard right in the middle and you can see people, gives a little perspective on scale. |
We achieved our goal of doing something out of the heat, temperature in the cave was about 68 degrees while outside it was 105. But we were not the only ones that had this idea. There were throngs of people, you didn't do anything without standing in a long line. And the longest lines of all were the ones waiting for the elevators. It seems that the primary elevators have been out of commission for months and that there was only one of two alternate/freight elevators working. Our tour of the entire cave didn't last as long as the line for returning to the surface. My brother and his family opted to do the one hour walk out of the cave but this was not an option for Cyndee. Her knees just wouldn't be able to do the incline up and out.
But it all worked out, the wait in line gave us an extra two and half hours of agreeable temperatures. We still got out early enough to get back to Roswell and start dinner before it got dark.
The next couple of weeks the heat continued and we kept looking for things to do that would minimize the heat. Gaining elevation was about the only answer other than going back to the cave. So we headed for Cloudcroft, NM. Cloudcroft is a quaint little mountain town about an hour and a half from Roswell. Its record high temperature for the month of June is 89 degrees, with an average high of 74. Yeah, we'll drive an hour and a half for that.
The town sort of has two main streets, the one that is the main road through town and another just off to the side that is only a few blocks long. But this is the one that has all the shops and eateries that tourists like us are interested in. We dove in and and went in any shop door that wasn't locked. At one point stopping at a sandwich shop and taking our purchase to a table on the wooden sidewalk outside.
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Old West Charm.
Downtown Cloudcroft, NM |
Just on the outskirts of the town is an old abandoned railroad that once served the community and provided a way for the people in the hot deserts of El Paso and Alamagordo to get to the cooler climes of the Sacramento Mountains. The trains ran from 1899 to 1947 at which time the rail was abandoned in favor of improved roads that could handle both cars and heavy trucks. The rail line itself was stripped of its materials and the trestle fell into disrepair. In the following decades the rail line was converted to hiking trails and the trestle itself has been rehabilitated. No trains run on this few hundred feet of track, it's just fun to look at.
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Mexican Canyon Trestle.
This is the tallest trestle built on the route from Alamagordo to Cloudcroft.
Constructed in 1899, the trestle is 323 feet long and 60 feet high.
All of the trestle's original timbers, including posts measuring 12" x 12", were cut from local Douglas-fir. |
While on the trestle viewing platform, if you turn and look due west, the distant horizon becomes bright white and featureless. You realize that you are looking about 35 miles away at White Sands.
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| White Sands National Monument as seen from Mexican Canyon Trestle |
We are now in countdown mode for departure from New Mexico. When June is done, so are we. We'll be pulling up and heading first for Texas and then by July 9th we'll be in Kansas. Texas will be for some much anticipated time with family and Kansas for some dreaded time at our camper's factory/repair center for some serious repairs.
