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Why is it when things are going well something happens to change all that? It appears that I might have to cut my road trip short due to an unforeseen medical issue. I'll know better on Monday when I speak to my doctor on whether I have to go home to take care of this issue or if perhaps I can find a doctor on the road to deal with the problem. I'll know more on Monday, but in the meantime let's continue with my adventures.
Thursday, I left San Antonio at 8am to start my travels to Albuquerque, NM. As I mentioned in my last blog, there are parts of northern Texas which are quite beautiful. There are also miles and miles of cotton fields, oil fields, and cattle ranches. I've never seen so much open space. Halfway to my final destination, I stopped for the evening. Yesterday morning, I left Lamesa, TX to head toward my next adventure - Carlsbad Caverns. I decided that I wanted to make a stop or two before I arrived in Albuquerque. Thanks to an early departure and gaining an hour of time when I crossed into New Mexico, I had plenty of time to explore my first, and what turned out to be my only, stop.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park is a United States National Park in the Guadalupe Mountains in southeastern New Mexico. The park contains over 119 caves. Three caves are open to public tours. Carlsbad Caverns is the most famous and is fully developed with electric lights, paved trails, and elevators. Slaughter Canyon Cave and Spider Cave are undeveloped, excepted for designated paths for the guided "adventure" caving tours. The primary attraction of the park is the show cave, Carlsbad Cavern. Carlsbad Cavern includes a large cave chamber, the Big Room, a natural limestone chamber that is almost 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide, and 255 feet high at the highest point. It is the fifth largest chamber in North America and the twenty-eighth largest in the world. It's approximately the size of 14 football fields and is beautiful!
In addition to the beauty of the caves, the Carlsbad bats are a major attraction for visitors. Seventeen species of bats live in the park, including a large number of Mexican free-tailed bats. The Mexican free-tailed bats are present from April or May to late October or early November. On summer evenings, the park has a bat flight attraction where visitors can watch the exodus of the bats from the cave on their way out to hunt for food. I hear it's an amazing scene, which sadly I couldn't see. Mostly because the bats are still in Mexico for the winter.
When visiting the cavern, there are two ways to enter. The first is to take an elevator down to the Big Room, the second is to enter through the natural entrance and walk a mile and quarter of a switch back ramp-sidewalk that takes the visitor 750 feet below the surface. Stupidly, I went through the natural entrance. I keep forgetting that my lungs are compromised and I really shouldn't over exert them. I'm an idiot, but I took it slow and stopped for regular breaks. Despite the effect on my body, it was well worth the walk to see some of the most stunning views. My entire visit took 2.5 hours to walk the entire path that has been laid out by the park service. 
I departed the cavern around 12:30 to head north to Albuquerque. Along the way, I drove through Roswell which was going to be my second stop, but I was tired and changed my mind. The only thing that I thought I might visit while in Roswell was the UFO Museum, but I heard that all visitors had to have a full examination including an anal probe and I decided to just keep trucking. Roswell was surprising because they didn't have nearly as much UFO/alien paraphernalia as I thought it would. There was the odd green alien in front of a hotel and an Arbys with a sign saying "aliens welcome", but otherwise it was a fairly normal looking town.
I arrived at my hotel in Albuquerque at 6pm last night. It was 8 hours of driving and 2.5 hours of exploring a cave which made for a very long, very exhausting day!!
Check out all my photos of Carlsbad Caverns on my GART photo site! Time to explore Albuquerque and visit with some friends.
Current travel stats:
San Antonio odometer mileage: 97,533
Odometer mileage in Carlsbad Caverns: 98,034
Miles driven to Carlsbad Caverns: 501
Total miles driven to date: 5,045
States driven through: Texas and New Mexico
5 comments:
You might need to slow down a little. You might be putting too much stress on your body.
Yeah, probably. I feel like absolute shit today. Maybe I should spend the day laying on my bed.
I agree with Tom. Take care of yourself. You did not miss anything in Roswell. The museum is pretty cheesy.
It looked pretty cheesy, but cheesy can be fun.
Believe me, it took all of 15 minutes to go through and most of the exhibits were hand made out of cardboard and plastic figures like an 8th grade science fair project in the 50's LOL,
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