Day Four: Caves and Sand

We headed out from Stevens Inn in Carlsbad, NM, straight to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Let me preface by saying that I’m claustrophobic. I’ve managed my anxiety through many caves, including Mammoth Cave National Park, Ruby Falls Cave, Fantastic Caverns and a half-dozen roadside cave attractions over the years. It’s not my favorite thing to explore.

So it wasn’t looking good for me when the first thing one must do to enter the cavern is to take a long elevator ride from the visitor center at the top of the mountain to the cavern below. If memory serves, it was something like 900 feet, so it’s a very similar experience to riding an elevator to the top of a city’s largest skyscraper – except down.

Once the doors open and we made our way through the expository displays, we were greeted with the most expansive underground view imaginable.

I’m glad I brought my DSLR camera, because it was a great place to practice low-light photography and there were just so many incredible sites, aided by artistically placed lighting throughout. I never felt claustrophobic inside Carlsbad Caverns, and I was overwhelmed with the sacred silence of the ages. The cave was filled with wonder, and the wonder filled me fully. I had to remind myself to take it in without the camera and be present in the moment to appreciate the awe. Also, low-light photography is difficult, so I should have lowered my expectations.

That dramatic lighting, though…

Much like landscapes, cave formations are better appreciated in all their glory in person. I highly recommend a visit to Carlsbad Caverns. Do it already.

After an exit through the gift shop for tacky tourist Christmas ornaments and postcards, we were back on the road. We gassed up and hit one of those fabulous little gift shops on the edge of National Park entrances. They’re usually fun, and this one earned a few of our dollars.

White Sands National Park

The drive to White Sands National Park wasn’t too far, so these two are definitely do-able on the same or subsequent days, unless your the type to hike every trail, climb every mountain and ford every stream. We’re okay with just hitting the highlights, though, and if a site is worth a second visit for further exploration – we will return.

White Sand NP is named after the white sand dunes throughout the area. We used the National Park app over the bluetooth connection in our car to take the driving tour and learned all about the history, geology and ecosystem of the White Sands. We then set out to find the easiest hike. We had learned the lesson about how difficult it is to hike in sand at the Great Sand Dunes National Park late last year. The Great Sand Dunes and White Sands’ dunes are made up of different sand, though, and this was a bit more firm.

Because these dunes are smaller, people are more capable of getting lost, and we explored the land following blue trail markers standing up in the sand. It felt like a scene out of the Legend of Zelda. My bottle had water and not a fairy, though.

Like Great Sand Dunes, some people – especially those with children – opted for sand sledding. The gift store even sold saucer sleds for such occasion. We, being of middle age, opted out of that experience.

We chose the trail that highlighted the ecosystems of desert and grassland colliding, which is where I found this tree that looks like he’s trying to escape. I may paint this guy soon:

The sun was setting after our hike, and we had to make it to our dinner plans in Las Cruces, where a former employer of mine lives. We had a lovely time catching up over dinner at Luna Rossa Winery, where my husband and I sampled a flight of their red wines, which were worthy of revisit.

After all that driving, all that hiking, all that visiting and all that wine, we made it to bed very early, as Santa Fe was calling…

Up Next: Day Five: Santa Fe

Previously: Day Three: Terlingua to Carlsbad

Day Three: A whole lot of highway

We woke up at the Terlingua Ranch Lodge Resort, had breakfast at the Bad Rabbit Cafe and hit the highway, as we needed to get back up to Carlsbad.

Marfa area

This was a long leg of the trip – mostly a driving day – so we were easily attracted to roadside distractions. How could we come all this way and NOT visit Prada Marfa?! (We’ll get back to that.)

Aside from gas and food (Allsup’s became our go-to stop on this trip), our first stop was the Marfa Lights viewing station. It’s basically a rest stop built with a view of the mysterious Marfa lights. I won’t go into detail about them, but I’ll include this photo if you’d like to read the explanation on site:

Was it worth the stop? I guess. We had to pee. It was daylight, so the mystery lights weren’t visible. Maybe if the timing were better I could have seen them, but we all know how my luck is with nighttime viewing, as evidenced by the previous night’s cloudy dark sky site.

We then followed the road in to Marfa, a charming, artsy railroad town with some beautiful architectural gems.

The downtown area had a ton of galleries and shops that were mostly open during the weekend. One of the few open shops greeted us by asking: Why are you visiting on a Tuesday?

Great question. There was not much to do here on a Tuesday. Maybe I’ll return on a weekend and see all the art.

We headed north to our mid-road destination: Prada Marfa!

It’s art. Interpret as you please. I’m happy we saw it and peeked in the windows.

On your way between Marfa and Valentine (which is much, much closer to Prada Marfa), keep your eyes to the sky as the border patrol flies a surveillance blimp in the area. It was pretty cool to watch it dipping in and out of the clouds.

Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Then we headed up to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, where we hiked the McKittrick Canyon nature trail. I’ll admit to being disappointed. Guadalupe Mountains NP is primarily a hiking destination. We weren’t prepared for a long hike, and high desert mountains aren’t my favorite landscape. It just wasn’t for me.

This next part is where you learn from my fail. We took a detour to the Sitting Bull Falls without doing much research. At about 20 miles out of our hour-long detour, we saw the first sign informing us that the place was closed early in the week. We were enjoying the scenic drive through open range, so we decided to press our luck. We were disappointed in our quest to chase waterfalls, but the landscape and the canyon leading to the closed entrance to the falls was breathtaking and attracted a fair few van lifers along the way.

Carlsbad

We headed back up to Carlsbad, where we dined at the YellowBrix Restaurant, which had some tasty and THICK pork chops. Finally we wound up at an upscale and updated motor lodge: Stevens Inn, where we capped off our day with desserts and decaf.

Up next: Day Four: Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands

Go Back: Day Two: Dipping into West Texas

Day Two: Off to west Texas

We woke up and pet the host cats at Fiddlers Inn in Carlsbad, NM, and took a short walk to Blue House Bakery and Cafe. The Inn had given us a breakfast voucher, and we were excited to try a local bakery. Unfortunately, I made bad choices (I was still learning about the heat of NM food), but so many of their baked goods looked amazing.

Then we loaded up and headed south, because we had a date with a National Park!

On the way to Big Bend National Park, we found Marathon, Texas. It’s a cute tiny town with a French Grocer that was home to the most eager greeter I’ve ever encountered. He was a Boston terrier named Otis, and we enjoyed a game of tug while my husband purchased our sandwiches for a picnic along the highway.

We noted in the car that the health department laws in west Texas are quite different than where I come from.

We also noted a great deal of border patrol activity and witnessed … something. Let’s just say guns were drawn. We knew we definitely weren’t in Kansas anymore.

Big Bend National Park

The road to Big Bend National Park and the drive within the park to facilities was also long. This might not be the best roadtrip for people with bad backs or small children with short attention spans.

The park features desert mountain views, lots of driving and lots of hiking opportunities. We opted for the St. Elena Canyon hike, which is a fairly difficult, but short hike. It’s definitely not handicap accessible, and there are some tight spaces and a couple steep grades with difficult footing. No extra equipment required, but water is necessary out there.

The St. Elena Canyon is carved by the Rio Grande, which is on the border with Mexico. The hike takes you along the U.S. side of the shallow river, while park rangers and tourists kayak along the water. The trail ends at a canyon dead end, though several more prepared hikers continued hiking up the river. The Mexican side of the canyon was sheer cliffs, so there wasn’t much worry about American tourists escaping south.

After the hike we drove around the west side of the park and did not make it to the areas on the east side of the park because of obligations later in the week. We left a great deal of the park for a later visit, but we did enough to add some stamps to our National Park Passport book and to justify scratching another park off our National Park scratch-off map.

If you haven’t caught on, my husband and I are nerds for the National Parks.

Terlingua, Texas

We headed up to Terlingua, Texas for dinner and had another “not in Kansas anymore” moment as we arrived in this west-Texas Oz-land.

As I understand it Terlingua was a company town that became a ghost town and then got discovered by tourists. It is home to under 100 people but hosts an annual chili contest that draws 10,000 people. Thus, the town has more camp and RV sites than one might imagine – many of them decorated and awaiting the return of the chili festival, giving the town a peculiar vibe – like that of a cluttered living room the day after a party.

It’s said to be a ghost town, but it’s lively enough that I’ve declared it a zombie town.

Terlingua is dotted with art shops and restaurants, with a steady flow of visitors looking for services not available in the park. We arrived at a highly-rated restaurant that had a 90-minute wait thanks to tour busses arriving just before us. We opted instead for La Kiva, which hit the spot with fried catfish and peach cobbler. The entrance to the place was a descent into the underground and the decor felt cavelike, rustic and charming. The bar looked like it could be a lot of fun, if we weren’t getting up early the next morning.

Our reservations were at Terlingua Ranch Lodge Resort, which was about half an hour outside of Terlingua at the end of a long dirt road. I accused my husband of luring me to my demise as we passed our dozenth Gadsden flag. There were van lifers, RV lifers, people who appeared to be homesteading and even weekend biker camp sites. I admire people who give it a go off the grid like this, even though my lack of cell phone service did give me a ping of anxiety from time to time.

The resort host greeted us, showed us to our cabin and informed us of our wifi info (THANK GOD) and dining option: the Bad Rabbit Cafe, where I started the next day with nearly perfect biscuits and gravy.

But I get ahead of myself.

One of the primary reasons for our visit was the fact that this area is an International Dark Sky site. I’ve longed to return to one ever since our first visit to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. We’ve tried a couple other times to hit dark sky sites, but we tend to visit them on rainy nights, as was the case with this particular site.

Since it was dark and rainy with no cell service and no television, I thought I’d have to resort to writing this travel log in real time. The good news, though, was that the Lodge wifi was impressive enough that we were able to stream a couple shows in our DVR backlog.

I still would rather have watched the Milky Way, spotted constellations and been abducted by a UFO.

Up Next: Day Three: Terlingua to Carlsbad

Go Back: Day One: Roswell and Carlsbad

Day One

I had hoped to break this up post up into a bunch of smaller posts from day to day, but so many of my evenings have been early to bed because we’ve run and driven ourselves ragged. I have a little gas in my tank, so let’s see how far I get.

Roswell

After landing at ABQ, we rented a car and headed to Roswell in search of aliens. And boy howdy, we found ’em.

I didn’t take enough pictures, but the whole town understood the assignment: embrace the theme, because it brings the green. Great place to find souvenirs. Didn’t stick around long, though.

Carlsbad

We spent an evening in Carlsbad, NM, near Carlsbad National Park, but this was just a waypoint as we headed the next morning to Big Bend National Park.

We stayed at a cute little inn called Fiddlers Inn that had upscale-feeling cabins around a well-kempt courtyard that was heavily patrolled by three nearly-friendly cats. The owners were helpful via text, letting us know that two were friendly, and the most friendly one was named Oreo. And Oreo might try to come into our room.

Oreo was definitely welcome in my room, but he was uninterested. Nothing worse than a snooty cat. But hey, it was the only place we stayed with complimentary cat service, so beggars can’t be choosers. When I open my own travel villa, I’ll be sure to train the cats to be friendly to all my guests.

Up Next: Day Two: Dipping into west Texas