Yesterday was a loooong day, but I enjoyed every minute!
My dad called me at around 5:15am, expecting my cell phone to be off. Well, I don't ever turn it off, so it woke me up, but that was good because I needed to head out early. I got organized and headed from Pecos, TX, to Carlsbad, ).NM. It's about a 1.5 hour drive. Along the way, I got to watch the sun come up, which was awesome.
Carlsbad is in a small finger of the Chihuahuan Desert. It's not desert, as I imagine..with sand and all. There are plenty of grasses and low lying shrubs, along with...you guessed it: cacti! It's also hilly here (I wouldn't go so far as to say mountainous. But it has a sort of beauty and charm all its own.
I didn't have too long to wait at the Caverns. At 8:30a, I went down, down, down...800ft to the rest area of the Caverns. The scale is simply amazing...the 'Big Room' alone covers over 600,000 square feet. First I took a latern-lit tour 'off trail' into Left Hand Tunnel, which you can't see normally. It is not electrified, and there is no paved trail. We had to jump over things, climb down things...pretty cool. I saw fossils and cave crickets...mummified bats and seemingly bottomless pits. We also got to do the total darkness thing. It's actually very serene, because it's almost totally silent too.
After that, I did a self-guided tour of the Big Room. Simply amazing. Some of the formations were huge, but some so small and delicate. I took lots of pictures, but only got a few decent ones...my camera is not at its best in extremely low light.
After that, I took the elevator up to the surface, and because it was still pretty early in the day, departed for White Sands. I was intending to do that the next day, but what the hell.
To get to White Sands, one route takes you back down into Texas to El Paso, then back up into NM. It's about 3 hours...and the cool thing is that when you leave Carlsbad, a mountain range is on your right. You drive completely around that section to the other side, where it's then on your left. I passed Fort Bliss and the White Sands Missile Range, which contains White Sands National Monument, as well as the Trinity site, where some of the first aboveground nuclear bomb testing was done. I also passed Holloman AFB. I kept scanning the sky for cool planes, like B-2s or Raptors, but to no avail.
White Sands was so cool. It's 275 square miles of gypsum sand dunes. Usually you don't find gypsum sand because it is so water soluble, but for some reason, white sands is the largest concentration anywhere in the world. It also doesn't hold heat as well as regular sand, so even in the heat of the day, you can walk on it barefoot. Once you drive about 10 miles into the dunes, they're all you can see. It was really peaceful and beautiful. I climbed to the top of some dunes...I'd say they were 75-100 feet high. The sand is blown into waves by the wind. Just gorgeous. I got some good pix.
After that, I drove to Las Cruces, NM, then headed up to Truth or Consequences, NM. I ended my day with an absolutely awesome Mexican meal. Then I collapsed into bed. It was the most driving and sightseeing I've done so far.
Today, I'm not sure what I'll do... I'm a bit ahead of where I thought I'd be. The leading option is to go soak in the hot springs here, then drive up to the Socorro, NM area and see the Very Large Array, which is a large collection of antenna dishes that together form a large radio telescope. For those of you who saw 'Contact' with Jodie Foster, the VLA is where she first heard the alien signal. Then I'll drive on to Albuquerque...depending on my mood and the time of day, I may start heading toward s Flagstaff, AZ.
It is awesome to travel at this time of year. It's not so hot yet, and at both places I went, there were only a handful of tourists. I hate crowds, so I am relishing this. I know it will get worse as the month goes on. Anyway, check out my flickr page for pix:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/katiejane1977/
No comments:
Post a Comment