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.

Desert Southwest Trip, Tombstone; Chiricahua National Monument; Fort Bowie

 The next morning we got up and had our complimentary breakfast at the nearby restaurant.  Our waitress was very friendly and we struck up a conversation with her, and oddly enough, it turns out she was from Wasilla!  She grew up here and still has a lot of family here, and she even knows someone that we know!  So weird.

Anyhoo, after we ate, we took another walk in the neighboring streets cuz it was such a beautiful morning and the temps were perfect.  We decided we would take a walk to the famous "Boot Hill Cemetery".  Of course I was VERY interested in going there, but Chuck wasn't too keen on it because he found out you had to pay to get in there, and I think he thought it would be too touristy.  But we headed in that direction anyway and came upon a big cemetery that was not Boot Hill.  We walked around in there for awhile, and Chuck was on his phone trying to find out where Boot Hill was.  By the time he figured it out, a whole hour had passed and then he didn't want to go there anymore (he didn't really want to go there anyway so I don't think he was really trying very hard to find the right directions.) I am still bummed about that.

Instead of going to Boot Hill we went to check out the historical courthouse.  That was very interesting.   You can walk into the actual courtroom where a lot of interesting trials happened.

They had a lot of displays in there about various trials.  One famous one was about a young man who robbed a store and killed a few people in Bisbee (another town not too far from Tombstone).  His gang was sentenced to hang, but he himself was not because he wasn't actually involved in the robbery.  But they put him in jail anyway, and since he was so notorious, a lot of the townspeople wanted him hung, so the townspeople hung him from a pole which is just outside this courthouse.

Of course it was illegal to do this, so the coroner, as you can see, sympathized with the townspeople and fudged the death report and said he died of probable strangulation.

The whole courthouse was turned into a museum so there were a lot of interesting things there, including stuff about Wyatt Earp and some his personal belongings.

After spending time there, we left Tombstone and went to Chiricahua National Monument.

Of course we took tons of pictures, but I have to constrain myself here and just give you some ideas as to what it was like there.  It was really amazing.  I am still awestruck as to the formation of these rocks - how did they end up like that?  My mind keeps defaulting to the Flood of Noah's day, but how did these rocks get formed like this?  Some rocks are on top of each other and you can't help wondering why they don't fall off.

It was another hot day there, but it was "nice" hot.  Without the humidity, the heat there isn't that bad, so we were able to keep hiking without getting heatstroke or too exhausted.  The trail was very long and kept going down down down before it started going back up again.  There weren't very many people on the trail, but we were surprised that most of the people on the trail were older than us.  If they can hike this trail, surely we can!  We even saw an old guy wearing an Alaska shirt, so of course we stopped and chatted with him for a few minutes while his wife tried to catch up with him.

So after we were done with that trail, it was getting late in the afternoon, so we got in the car and headed towards our next destination towards Carlsbad.  But on the way, we happened upon a sign that pointed to "Fort Bowie".  We never heard of that place before, but being a brown sign (historical marker), Chuck turned down that road to check it out.  I was really surprised that he did that (without even asking me if I wanted to go there), cuz usually when he's on his way somewhere, he just wants to keep driving and get there.  Anyway, I'm really glad we went to Fort Bowie cuz I think that is one of my favorite parts of our whole trip.

We had to drive a few miles to get there, and when we got to the parking lot, we discovered it was going to be a mile and a half hike into the mountains.  Do we really want to do this after that long hike in Chiricahua?  Yes, let's do it!

Along the trail there are spots where they have historical markers for you to read:  stuff about trails where the U.S. Army led their wagons of supplies and whatnot.  There was also a spot where there are remnants of a little place where an old man used to live out there in the mountainous wilderness.  Anyway, about a half mile into the hike we came upon this cemetery. You have to go through a gate to go in there, but it's fully open to the public.  The tombstones themselves are not the original wooden ones which were rotting away, so they were replaced by these white ones so they are easier to read.  Interestingly, a lot of them give a name (or it would say "unknown") followed by "killed by Indians".  I would've gotten some closeups of these, but my camera battery died, so I had to rely on Chuck to take the pictures.

And this one here was an interesting unexpected surprise.

I wish Chuck had gotten a closer picture of it.  In case you can't read it, it says "In Memory of Little Robe, Son of Geronimo, Apache Chief, Died Sept 10, 1885, Age 2 Years".  They also buried the US Army soldiers here that died, but they later got moved to a national military cemetery in California and only left the civilians here.

Going to Fort Bowie was worth it just for this alone.  But I did not know that Fort Bowie was the place where Geronimo was kept prisoner and he also surrendered there.

Interesting how you can see that the mountains in the background match the mountains in the photo, so you know this is genuine. Wow, Geronimo was in this very spot! Anyhoo so it turns out that Fort Bowie was an Army Base that was stationed there because of the Indian Wars, especially with the Apaches.  The whole place is in ruins now and only the foundations of the buildings are still there, but there are markers at every one telling you what the buildings were.

There were lot and lots of remains to walk around and see, but that would be too many pictures, so this just gives you an idea.  A person could spend hours there.  It's hard to believe that place was once hustling and bustling with soldiers and Indian prisoners.  It was so interesting - I wouldn't mind going back there again.  And now I feel the need to go to the library and check out some books about Geronimo so I can learn more about it.

Close by, there are some more trails that lead you to the original Fort Bowie before this one was built.  It was a lot smaller.  You can see the ruins of it, but they don't have all the markers there so you know what they are - they pretty much leave you guessing.  That was interesting too.  Anyhoo, we got there late in the afternoon, spent another few hours in this place, and we still had to hike a mile and a half back to the car, so we figured we better start walking because we could see that the sun was getting closer to the mountain tops and would soon be behind them.  And I did NOT want to be roaming those desert hills in the dark!  (how would I be able to scan for spiders?)  The sun kept getting lower and lower and I have to say I have never in my life seen my shadow get that ridiculously long before!  We made it to the car just in time.

Chuck likes taking pictures of interesting flowers that he sees on the trails.

We also saw this beetle.  We don't ever see bugs like this in Alaska.

So that was Day 2.  Hopefully, to be continued soon.