Desert Southwest Trip, Carlsbad Cavern; White Sands; Silver City

I figured I'd better get more of this trip posted while I have half a chance.  If I keep putting it off things will start to get fuzzier and I won't remember things as well.  Problem is, I am always busy with gardening now.

So the next morning we drove to  (drum roll, please)..

Ta-DA!

I think this was one of Chuck's favorite parts of the trip.  Before we planned this trip I never even heard of Carlsbad Caverns, but I must've been living under a rock because apparently it's quite famous, and once you get down in there you can see why.  There is no way to describe it.

Am I really going to go down into that deep dark hole?  I am not the type of person who willingly gets swallowed up inside a big black hole. The tunnel goes down "75 stories", and the trail is 1.25 miles long because it's very much like a winding ribbon. The trail is really nice - they did a very good job making the trail.  It's easy to walk on and there's nothing to trip over in the dark (they do have the whole place dimly lit); it's even wheelchair friendly.  I have to admit that I was very scared to go down there.  In my mind, walking into a deep dark hole was like walking into a spider's nest and I was so afraid, I was covering my face because I was too afraid to look around at the walls, and I was clinging to Chuck like Velcro. I reminded myself of "Ron Weasley" when he said "why can't it be butterflies?" LOL! I seriously thought the walls would be covered with tarantulas, and the trail of course winds very close to the walls.  I was observing other people to see if anyone else was noticing any tarantulas, but everyone else was very calm and just enjoying themselves - this gave me a little reassurance.  And Chuck assured me there were no spiders down there cuz there was nothing for them to eat down there.  The further we went down, the more relaxed I became and by the time we got to the bottom, I was able to completely enjoy myself.

Interesting too, was the fact that it was a comfortable temperature down there.  They recommend you bring a light jacket - it stays a constant 56 degrees down there, even through the winter.  So we wore a light jacket, but after we warmed up from walking the trail we took our jackets off - after I was "sure" there weren't any spiders, of course.

So here are some pictures to give you an idea of what's down there.  At first when you go in there you can smell guano very strong.  But after you get a little deeper, the smell goes away.

 

We jokingly called this one "the 3 wise men".

Walking through there kind of reminded me of walking through "House on the Rock" in Spring Green, WI.  You just keep walking along and the displays keep changing.  It was really quite magnificent.

At the very bottom, they have what they call "The Big Room".  It's a very large flat area that expands horizontally instead of vertically, again lots and lots of displays to look at.

It was also comforting, though unnatural and "out of place" to find this at the bottom:

It's a concession stand where you can buy snacks and souvenirs.

They also had bathrooms down there that I was apprehensive about - imagine what a bathroom would be like at the bottom of a deep dark cave - but they were surprisingly modern and clean (no spiders!)

So when you get to the bottom, you have a choice to hike all the way back up the same way you came down, OR you can take the elevator.  I would've gladly hiked all the way back up, but Chuck decided he wanted to take the elevator, I suppose because he didn't want to waste time.

When we came back out at the top, we noticed this:

Apparently at night you can go there and be seated here in this outdoor kind of a theater, and when the time is right, you can watch a magnificent show of bats flying out of this cave (that would explain the stench of guano).  It's supposed to be quite an amazing thing to see.  I would definitely want to do that if I had the chance.

So we still had half a day left and didn't want to waste any time, so we headed over to White Sands National Park.  It was a 3 hr drive from Carlsbad so we had to get going.

We didn't take a whole lot of pictures there because it all looked the same.

Just miles and miles and miles of white sand.

(parking lot)

We didn't stay there very long because it was hot out.  It was pretty neat to see though.  Some people were sledding down the hills like it was snow.

So when we got done there, we headed over towards Silver City, but on the way we passed through some mountains. And at the top there was this little resort town called Cloudcroft.  I don't know why we didn't get any pictures of the town cuz it was a really nice little town with some really unique shops.  We went into a tea store and I bought some tea and we found a good place to eat there.  Then we went hiking on a nearby trail.  The temperature was absolutely perfect because we were at a higher elevation, so it wasn't so hot. Very pretty views there. 

After that, we headed over to Silver City.  When we got there we walked around in their historical district - did you know that Billy the Kid lived here with his mother for a short while?

interesting mosaic

We found an interesting coffee shop there called "Tranquilbuzz" - the whole place will filled with all kinds of weird memorabilia, including a life-size photo of Billy the Kid, which I regret that I didn't get a picture of.

As we were strolling the neighborhood, we came upon a Peeka lookalike, who quickly became our friend.  We felt bad just leaving him there, but figured he probably greets everyone who passes by.

Then we found a used bookstore and even though it was about 9:00 PM, it was still open, so went inside and found tons of books.  The old guy in there was very chatty and seemed eager to sell me a book.  He asked me what kind of books I like to read and I told him that I am fond of historical novels, so he recommended several different ones to me and I picked one and bought it, just because he seemed so eager to please me.  It's a book called "The Other Boleyn Girl", about Henry the VIII.  Good book!  Now that I've read it, I don't know what I want to do with it.  I guess I'll just hang on to it for awhile.

Anyhoo, another fun thing we did in Silver City is wave at Stephanie from their live cam.  Chuck knew where they have their live cam cuz he kept looking at it before we left for our trip.  So we went to the corner, found the camera, and then called Steph and told her to find us so we would wave at her.  It was a silly thing to do, but gave us something to laugh about.  I wonder what people must've thought of us standing there waving our arms at "nobody".

So that ended that day.  Next day:  Gila Cliff Dwellings.