March 4, 2013 Alamogordo, New Mexico

We are heading west. It was a windy day, 30-40 mph winds, lots of dust. The bus was rocking. It was in the 80’s.

A statue of cows and cowboys in Artesia, New Mexico. Behind the station is an oil refinery. They have artesian wells so there is lots of agriculture and lots of oil, s oil wells. Main street Artesia- they have fruit trees blooming. 

Hope, NM. We passed a rest stop right before Hope, 2 picnic tables, no grass, no trees, no bathroom. This brown building to the right has a sign- Craft Shop-free restrooms. Good marketing. We started up into the mountains and saw ponderosa for  the first time in along time.

Then, GASP, snow and firs and spruce. Then a ski area, Cloudcroft. They have had a bad year, not much snow and too warm to make snow. They are closed now.

It is straight downhill from Cloudcroft to Alamogordo. The wind was whipping the dust , wiped out the view of the valley.

The white sands were blowing past us. We passed this pistachio tree place with a giant pistachio out front. Lots of pecan and pistachio orchards in this area.

We are staying tonight at a harvest host winery. Tularosa vineyards. The vines are still dormant, and dusty today.  In the tasting room, Jack, Chris, John and David. David owns the winery. Jack is the bartender for tastings.

In the evening the wind died down,everyone but us left, the sand dropped out of the air and the colors  wonderful.

We are parked in the pistachio orchard, and there are pecan trees in front of the winery, I picked up two bags of pecans.

March 3, 2013 Brantley Lake, New Mexico

We stopped in Carlsbad WalMart parking lot to check our emails etc. and I had an email from my sister that if we were in Carlsbad to pick up some things for the museum in Shoshone- which is were we are headed. Seems there was a complete set of Desert Magazines, published from 1935-1980.

So we went to visit this lovely lady Clara May. She lived in Shoshone at one time, moved to Carlsbad where her husbands family lives and they had a ranch.  Her cousin still lives in Shoshone and works at the museum, and so does my sister. Clara May wanted to donate the magazines but needed someone to take them. We loaded up 7 boxes- filled the whole back seat of the car. Had a nice visit with Clara May. She is a good old country, desert kind of woman. She invited us back anytime.

I looked at a couple and they are very interesting. Then we headed to our camp spot for the night at Brantley Lake state park. It is about the only place around Carlsbad to camp-other than long term kind of places the oil workers live.

The water is a little low in the lake, drought and all. But a lovely campground with hook ups. Above is the bus in the campground. I think those trees are the only ones for miles. I got a nice bike ride with a strong headwind, good workout.

March 2, 2013 Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

We camped in some free BLM land. No hook ups, just parked in the desert, quiet and dark, all by ourselves. We took the bus to the caverns, John did not think the bus would be safe just left in the desert.

John with two aliens in White City. White City is the tourist trap at the turn off for the caverns. We walked into the natural entrance to the caverns. Right at the entrance is an amphitheater that you sit in at dusk to watch the bats come out of the cave in the summer. There are thousands of bats, it takes  up to 2 hours for them to come out there are so many. I saw  it years ago and it was awesome. They don’t let you take photos, talk or move, might scare the bats. Cloud and after cloud of bats spiral  out the cave into the sunset to eat bugs. All you can hear is the wind from their wings. Very beautiful. In the winter they have migrated south, so we missed them this trip.

Here is a map of the walk down. We followed the blue line. The green is a tour of the Kings palace you have pay extra for. At the bottom are rest rooms, a gift shop and café with cold salads and sandwiches. They don’t allow you to bring food, they say the odor entices animals from above to come down, then they get lost and die.

It is a mile and a half walk ,mostly in the dark, down  a steep 800 feet to get to the big room.  We had an audio tour that pointed out the highlights and gave us some of the history of the caverns. The big room is so HUGE that it is impossible to take pictures. There is not enough light and it is just too big to capture.

The Big room has 600,000 square feet of floor space. It is comparable to 14 football fields. It is the largest known limestone chamber in the western hemisphere. The ceiling is 255 feet tall in the highest spot. It is a 1. 5 mile walk around it. It is lit in an theatrical  style, to show off the best parts and rest is dim like a cave. You can only stay on the walks and you can’t touch any of the  natural features- they are too delicate and our skin oil can damage them.

Mostly I could only get photos of the smaller wall stuff. These two guys are in the hall of giants in the middle- huge.

There were stalactites hanging from all of the ceiling above us. This one on the right was John’s favorite.

The right photo is the chandelier and the totem pole.

The cavern was discovered by Jim White, a 16 year old cowboy who came investigating what he thought was smoke rising from the desert. It was clouds of bats. He came back with lanterns and ropes. and explored. It was years before anyone believed him and came to see it.

For years they mined the bat guano (poop). The early tourists had to ride down 17 stories in old guano buckets, then climb down on wooden steps and ladders made of wire and wooden rungs. They only had lanterns for light. The lanterns did not light much, they did not see most of the features and were mostly in a dark pit. Then they had to climb back out. Now days the park service has built nice smooth walk ways, installed electric lights and the elevator.

You can view stalactites, stalagmites, columns, soda straws, draperies, lakes, bottomless pits, cave popcorn, cave bacon, figures, animals,and various other speleothems. Speleothems are cave decorations. It was incredible. You can’t take photos of it that do justice, or describe it, you just have to see it. It took us over 3 hours to walk down and tour the big room. After that we took an elevator up the equivalent of 80 stories back up to the visitors center.

March 1, 2013 Pecos, TX to Carlsbad, NM

Heading out of Texas. Very flat in this part of Texas, no mountains, hills or even much of anything green. I think when it rains there are more green, but not much rain here. Took us 16 days to cross Texas. BIG state.

This sign is in the bathroom at the Escapee RV park. I am not sure I can stay somewhere were they need a sign about Depends.  I hung the new masterpiece, here it is pictured with the old one. Fits the spot better.

Also at Escapee RV park we saw this woman returning from the shower. I hope she disposed of her depends properly. You can really see in this photo how tight they packed the RV’s. I went to the city park looking for the zoo they said they had, but it was just empty cages. I talked to a park employee- a huge man whose nametag said  Chilli Bo. He told me that the zoo is closed and the mountain lion, llama etc. were all at a wildlife refuge now. He said the buffalo went to Taylor’s ranch out of town, lots of room for them to roam. I asked about the prairie dog village also supposed to be there and he said it is also closed, no mention of what they did with the dogs.   In the park I saw a sight I have never seen, a couple piñata poles.

A view of west Texas out the window. Texas is about oil and oil products. New Mexico state line! We entered a new state and a new time zone- mountain time.

John  at the low point of New Mexico- at the Pecos river on the 32nd parallel, which is the border between Texas and New Mexico. Also at the low point was this gas compression station. More oil well stuff. There were pipes saying they were CO2 lines. Guess they mine it too.

Downtown Carlsbad, New Mexico. Could be any small town big box store area. And Happy’s restaurant.

We are boondocked (free camping, no hookups) in the BLM dispersed camping area. All by ourselves so far. No lights, no sounds, just desert.

Cholla cactus  blossom, seeds on a bush, fossil, pink flowers, coral bean seeds. They have big red beans in them, I collected some to use in my pine needles, but looked them up and the beans are poisonous so I returned them to their native desert. Cockle burrs, yellow flowers and more fossils.

Yellow flowers, a question mark grass, a Perry’s lip desert fern, fossil, sotol and I think these last two are datura seeds, the last one opened up looks like it has a brain in it. They make a wonderful liqueur from the sotol. Like Tequila. Very smooth, very dangerous.