Day 19 – To Big Bend National Park

The others on this RV trip with us are not going to Big Bend NP so we are leaving Carlsbad this morning as early as we can because we have quite a distance to go to get to our campground in Texas.  We are taking route 285 heading into Texas.  On our way, we pass this drilling rig.  Not sure if it is for oil or water; since we have seen a number of water tankers while driving.

Shortly after passing Pecos, Texas, self appointed home of the world’s first rodeo, we had this view of our road. 

As we are getting closer to Fort Stockton, we have views like this.

One of the ranches we have past. 

After passing through Fort Stockton we switch to route 385 south, how about this view? 

Route 385 takes us right into Big Bend NP and we reach the perimeter of the park.  The entrance station is only about ½ mile from this sign, but the Park headquarters is still 29 miles from here.

As we begin to get close to the Panther Junction Visitor Center and where we will need to turn south on the park road, Carmen was able to get this picture.  That is Panther Junction at the base of the mountain.  Not sure, what we thought we’d see here, but this is NOT what we expected, it is way more.  The desert and mountains here are really nice looking.

We have to go through this tunnel, on “dead man’s curve” and it doesn’t look like we will fit, so we take it slow and check to make sure we go through okay.  We go down the middle with no problem.  The only thing, when you are looking at the mountains, you don’t know if they are in the US or Mexico.  Oh by the way, from Panther Junction (the Visitor Center) it was another 23 miles to get to the Rio Grande Village campground where we will park the motorhome.

Shortly after passing through the tunnel we park the RV at the Rio Grande Village campground.  It is late so we have just enough time to park and get set up before it gets too dark.  

Day 18 – Carlsbad Caverns

Heading south on route 62, we are on our way to the Carlsbad Caverns NP.  Carmen took this picture and got the two Carlsbad billboards, one telling us that we can eat at the caverns.  You can also see one of the many pump rigs we have seen.

When we get to Whites City we turn west on route 7, Carlsbad Cavern Highway.  We begin to see the ruggedness of the countryside and can begin to imagine what the caverns will look like.

Some of the small caves along the cliffs we have seen on our way to the caverns.  You can easily imagine that these were used by ancient people for shelter. 

We are now at the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns and the visitor's center.

Some of the flowers that are still in bloom here at Carlsbad Caverns, I think this one is a Perennial Rockcress.

You can either take the elevator down to the main cavern to begin your tour or start the tour by entering the “bat” cave or travel a couple of miles through other caves and caverns to the main cavern room.  The Bat cave is where the bats come out in the evening to catch dinner. 

Beginning the mile plus hike to the main cavern begins with a steep drop (there were several drops actually) as you can see from the pictures.  These caverns are huge, miles long, wide and high.

From inside the cavern entrance looking back up the way we just came down. 

Not in the cavern for very long, we come to a number of formations like these two pillars.  

Some of the formations have been given names.  This one is called the Whales Mouth.  You can see the resemblance to the baleen mount of some whales.

Now we are going even deeper into the cave system.  Here we must go down another 8 switchbacks before getting to the walkway on the bottom. 

Here’s Carmen in one of the passageways between caverns.  Carmen knew she would be cold, so she is wearing her insulated shirt.

This is a group of stalactites, icicle-shaped formations, hanging from the ceiling of the cave roof.  Scenes like this have become commonplace in the cave system.  

We have reached the “Big Room” and make our way to the restrooms.  Also located here is the elevator that will return us to the surface and the snack shack.  You can see from the map that the end of the cavern is still a little over ½ miles away. 

There are many formations in the cavern, too many to show in this blog.  But, some like these are great to look at.

Some of the formations we’ve seen that kind of “run” down along the wall.  This picture is a little blurry, but I wanted to show different formation.

In one of the “rooms” you get a sense of the size of this place. 

We came to another of the large rooms with formations, here with columns. 

Some of the “ribbon” formations located in the cavern.

Formations take on all kinds of shapes, stalactites, stalagmites, ribbons, and columns all can be seen here at this location.

We came upon these two huge columns.  For the column to get fat like this on the bottom there must be more water than usual dripping from the ceiling.

We finally take the elevator back up to the surface rising 754 feet or 75 stories.  Up on the surface we can see quite a distance from the top of the mesa we are on.

Here a lone Ocotillo (I think that is the name for this plant) dessert plant looks over the other plants near the welcome center.

We head back to the campground and settle in for the night.  Shortly after getting back to the campground we were treated to this sunset.  Tomorrow we leave for Big Bend National Park in Texas. 

Day 17 – To Carlsbad

While the others will take a more direct route to Carlsbad, Carmen and I are going to go a little out of the way and take a detour up to Lincoln, New Mexico, home of Billy the Kid.  So we head north on route 54 then turn north on route 70.  Then, we traveled west along route 380, the Billy the Kid Scenic Byway through Lincoln County. 

We stopped in the town of Lincoln and home of the Lincoln County war. 

Here is where Billy the Kid escaped from the Lincoln County Sheriff’s jail (above the courthouse). 

Not much is open, since it is the middle of October and way past tourist season, so we did not stay very long.  After walking around town and taking a picture of some of the old buildings, supposedly as they existed in the 1870’s, now tourist shops.

Leaving Lincoln, we are heading to meet up with the others, and will pass through Roswell.  Back on route 380 east we come across a group of Pronghorn Antelope.

Later as we near Roswell, Carmen took this picture of the longhorn bull.

Also, we passed some horses, not sure if they are wild or just out in the field.

Did I say we were going through Roswell, home of the alien crash in 1947?  We, or should I say I, had to stop and of course go into the UFO Museum.

Inside the museum we looked around at the different stuff and had to get a picture with some of my new friends.

After a visit to the UFO Museum, we were leaving and had to get a picture of Carmen with some sort of alien encounter.  Not a believer, she finds this amusing.  We stop for lunch before continuing on our way to Carlsbad.  We still have a little way to go before we get to our campground in Carlsbad and will probably get there in time for dinner. 

Day 16 – Three Rivers Petroglyphs Site

After leaving White Sand Dune NM and the White Sands US Army Missile Museum we headed to the Three Rivers Petroglyphs site.  It is around 5:00 pm when we get to the site and have a couple of hours before we have to leave.

Here we were able to see some really good defined petroglyphs on the rocks.  Is this suppose to be the sun?

This looks like a pyramid or house with smoke coming from the chimney.

This rock has a number of petroglyphs.  Something that looks like a beetle, an animal walking on its two hind legs, and others.

Ha!  I got my lizard picture almost right away.  He wasn’t very cooperative and wouldn’t look at the camera.  Do you think maybe he is camera shy?

This looks like a sun again, but with a cross inside.

Some geometric design, but what I thought really interesting was the big foot on the left.  Bigfoot was around back then also.

This was an interesting grouping, it had another sun, a bird, and what looks like a lizard.  Even they wanted to have pictures of lizards.

I cannot even imagine what this might be.

This is definitely a bear; or a mountain lion or is it just graffiti. 

Here’s Carmen on the trail, looking for more petroglyphs.

Look!  There are lizards all over the place here.  This is the sixth or seventh one I’ve seen.  First, I can't find any, now they are all over the place.

At this site, many of the petroglyphs are geometric in nature, like this one.

Now what is a zebra doing in North America?

Your guess would be as good as mine for what this is.

Is this a man chasing a velociraptor?

Now this is definitely a mountain sheep or an antelope with a couple of arrows in it.

Here are a couple of large rocks which have many pictoglyphs.  Either the person who did the big hand in the center had 6 fingers or he couldn't count.

From the top of the hill we have a great view of the surrounding countryside.

Although we still had more of the trail to go, we left so we could meet Shirley and Rick for dinner.  On the way back, we got a rolling picture of this car.  Someone is ready for a Mad Max scenario.  

Later that night, after it was really dark, I had very little ambient light with very dark skies so I took a number of pictures and created an overlay.  The results is this star trail picture with the north star in the center of the circles.  That is the back of my motor home on the bottom.  

Tomorrow we are heading to Carlsbad to see the underground caverns.