2nd Stop - Carlsbad, NM

Well, we made it to Carlsbad yesterday.  The trip was about 300+ miles and most of it was in direct or cross winds that were 30+ MPH.  Not a good day driving-wise, but we made it.  Alot of the time we had sagebrush or dirt/dust drifting accross the road.

Most everyone knows that TX is a big producer of:

and:

but did you know that they also produce:

I guess we learn something every day!

We found our CG and settled in.  I got the DISH out and started setting it up, and, low and behold, I got it to work.  However, since we are traveling, we have to call DISH each time we stop so we can get the settings that we need (azimuth, elevation, and skew), and, if we want local channels, we have to tell them where we are.  Fortunately, there is a special 1-800 # for RV'ers like us.

Today we went to the Caverns and took the Big Room self-guided tour.  It took about 11/2 hours and we walked about 1.25 miles.  Very impressive.  Here are a few pictures:

The elevator takes you down 750 ft (about the height of the Empire State Building); it takes about 1 minute.  Once down there, you can take a number of tours, but we took the Big Room tour.

It was quite dark in there so most of the pictures that we took were too dark to see anything clearly.  We saw some people going down into a hole to do some cave exploring.  They were wearing headlamps, gloves, kneepads, etc.  Not sure if this was the one, but one of the tours advertises that: "The route is slippery, muddy, and may require and ascent of a 15 ft slope using a knotted rope."  Another said:  "You will be required to crawl long distances, squeeze through tight crevices and up slippery passages."  We thought about doing one of them for maybe a 'nano-second!!'

Tomorrow we are off the Deming, NM for a stopover before driving in to the Phoenix area on Friday where we will stay the weekend.

Stay tuned...