Sunday, May 15, 2016

We left Las Cruces, New Mexico this morning and headed for El Paso.  The rain and lightning storm was gone.  As we've made our way through Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and now Texas, I continue to be amazed at how different the terrain is even though all these states are dry arid landscapes.  The mountains in NM today were very jagged, but the farther east we went, the flatter, more Mesa-like they looked.

I keep expecting Texas to become tabletop flat, like it was around Victoria, TX, when I visited my sister there in 1971, but it hasn't.  We are in Sonora, Texas, tonight, about two hours from San Antonio.  It's rolling hills here, but very rocky.

We lost at least an hour today because neither of us looked at the map thinking we knew exactly where we were going.  By the time we did, we were way past where we should have left I-10 and headed on a more northerly route from El Paso to get to the Guadeloupe Mountains National Park on the border of New Mexico and Texas.  I was navigator and Stella was driving so I wasn't doing my job very well, but as we zoomed up a state highway that we had no plans to take, we decided it's part of the adventure.

That National Park was different than any we've seen before in that there were no admission fees, no bookstore or gift shop, and the campground was right close to the visitor center.  It's more geared to people who are interested in geology, I think.  It's beautiful, but to get the most out of it you need to hike it.  The view was amazing.  They are studying visibility there and the effects of man made pollution.  The information said that on the clearest days, usually in the winter, you can see as far as the curvature of the earth and I believe it.  Even today, you could see miles away.

We proceeded to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, about 20-30 miles away.  Bat guano stinks.  Just a warning.  The elevators are not working, meaning you have to hike back up the way you hiked down.  In total, it's a 3-3/4 mile hike.  The rangers are very specific that you need to realize you have to hike back up so you should decide how far to go before you turn around.  Stella had been here before so she didn't go too far.  I kept going but turned around when the stairs started.  Up to that point, it's a switch-back path.  It's paved and a nice surface but steep.

Stella heard a man who worked for the Forest Service say that the elevators have not worked for a year now and that, basically, the repair cost is the obstacle to getting them fixed.  It would have been fun to have been there at sunset to see the "bat flight" occur.  They have an amphitheater in front of the entrance where you can see the thousands of bats leave for their night feedings.  There were lots of swallows flying around the entrance and I think we were the only two people who knew they were swallows.  Most of the people who mentioned them called them bats.

It was about 2:30 when we left there and we didn't get to Sonora, TX, until 8 pm so it was a long day, but a good one.  We came through another rain and lightning storm, then it cleared for awhile and was getting ready to storm again when we got in our room.

Yesterday was a 465 mile day, I think.  Today was longer.  We have about a five hour drive to Houston tomorrow.