April 16 – 19
Picasa pictures link: https://picasaweb.google.com/107097369989809012646/SWTrip2014Part2?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCICFz6v9hZTW_wE&feat=directlink
After a one night stop in Ft. Stockton, Texas, we headed
into New Mexico to Carlsbad. After a drive through the desert with endless
views of oil and gas wells, we arrived at the RV park and got setup for the
evening. This area of the country has so much oil production it’s amazing! The
town of Carlsbad is mostly inhabited by oil and gas workers, with some tourism
for Carlsbad Caverns.
The next day we headed to Carlsbad Caverns for a couple of
tours. After going through the Visitors
Center, we walked down to the natural entrance. This allowed us to do a
self-guided tour through parts of the cavern with trails that head down to the
Big Room area. We spent about 2.5 hours viewing this part of the cavern. The amazing
formations are so beautiful and such a treat to look at. It’s so hard to
imagine how these mineral forms were created over 10s of thousands of years ago!
We had lunch in the café at the Visitors Center, then proceeded to the meetup
spot for our guided tour of the Kings Palace rooms. The Ranger was a great tour
guide and was an experienced caver. He offered so much information on the cave geology,
what’s in the cave and what’s not. We were fortunate to have this Ranger as our
guide. This part of the cavern is a separate wing that had smaller rooms, but
was much more decorated with formations than the other parts of the cave. What
an amazing place! We had considered staying until dusk for the bat flight, but
the guide did advise us that this time of year the bats are migrating and there
may or may not be many bats. After this
tour, we followed another range up to the observation deck of the Visitors
Center. Here we were able to see great views of the valley below. He described
much of the geology of the area and the caves. He pointed out landmark
locations in relation to the Big Room and the Bottomless Pit sections of the cavern
below. He also explained how this land was once under a sea and the mountains
were a huge reef. What a wonderful day for a tour of these amazing caverns!
The next day, we again headed south to the Guadalupe
Mountains National Park. There were several great hikes there and the prime
landmark is El Capitan, which is the second highest peak in the Guadalupes. We
spoke with the rangers to advise us on trail conditions and decided to go on
the Permian Reef Trail. This was an
amazing hike which was 4 miles to the peak. We only hiked up about 2 miles, as
the trail was steep and the elevation gain was about 1000 feet. We stopped to
eat our lunch there and we decided to head back down. Kurt was determined to go
to the peak, so he continued upward. Debbie, Rick and I headed back to the
trailhead. Kurt did make it to the top and took some more great pictures. He
met us back at the trailhead about an hour later. This was such a great hike, and we all enjoyed
our first desert/mountain hike on this trip. There will be many more to come.
The next day we had planned to go mountain biking on some
local trails near the town of Carlsbad, but we woke up to a thunderstorm. We
hunkered down for awhile and Kurt said he couldn’t sit around in the camper any
longer, so he drove back to Carlsbad Caverns. He wanted to see it again, and to
hike back up and out the natural entrance. He really enjoyed it the second
time.
Later we had Happy Hour and began preparing for our
departure the next day. We will be heading to Alamogordo, New Mexico.
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