New Mexico May 2004Part III: Roswell and Carlsbad
   We spent a couple of hours at the Living Desert State Park north of town. A very nice place! Included animals - an aviary and reptile area along with badgers, deer, prairie dogs, javelinas, mountain lions, bison and more. Once again, I wanted to take pictures of all the desert scenes! I had already fallen in love with the ocatilla (below center) and cholla (below right) as we started seeing them as soon as we arrived in the state - sadly they don't grow nicely in Iowa! :)    We spent Monday night at the Continental Inn, had a delightful supper at the Pasta Cafe and were up ready to leave early Tuesday morning. We drove the half hour down to Carlsbad Caverns, getting there about 8:30. We started in the cave, taking the "natural entrance" route - walking into the cave via the outside entrance rather than taking the elevator down! Another awesome experience. Not all of the pictures worked because of lighting issues but it didn't stop us from trying.     
  
 When we left our little oasis, we moved on to Artesia (where John bought a new straw hat), through Cloudcroft (with a very pleasant boardwalk area lined with nice shops) and a storm over the Sacramento Mountains. It was only torrential for about 10 minutes but certainly different! Lovely vistas as we drove across - again, very different from the desert we'd been in for 10 days. Ended up in Alamagordo where we were going to spend some time at White Sands. Click here to go back to Part 1. . . . |
Sunday May 16: We got to Roswell about 5:30 PM and were a little
surprised to learn that it is now a "dairy capital!" Interestingly, we
did see lots of cows as we drove
around in that area of New Mexico but not a single milking barn. We've
lived in Wisconsin and there are also dairy farms in Iowa but we've
never met one that didn't include a barn! Perhaps those cows had to
hike a
very long way to get milked. We checked in at the motel, had supper at
Applebees then drove out west of town so John
could watch a sunset on 6 Mile Hill where he lived as a child for
several years. We actually found the house he used to live in (above
right), met the folks who live there now and they were very welcoming.
Invited us in to see the changes they had made
and told us the stories of who had lived there over the years. We
caught the very end of the sunset behind El Capitan from the backyard
(below left) and went back the next morning to get a daytime picture of
the same view.(right) 
He
assured me that, rather than being lonely way out there for a little
boy, it was a wonderful playground. He has great memories of finding
"treasures," tracking lizards and getting to know
various kinds of cacti (example below left). Monday morning we spent in
Roswell - visiting the Museum and Arts Center, finding his old house on
Norris Place (below center), the Presbyterian Church they attended
(below right) and both schools he went to while living there. El
Capitan Elementary was built toward the end of the 1950's and was
supposed
to double as a bomb shelter. The walls are all very thick and there are
no windows. Really. We had a good lunch at Schlotsky's Deli and then
headed on down towards Carlsbad.
We
had lunch in the underground lunch room which (surprisingly, to me)
wasn't too abominably expensive. And after lunch we did the only thing
I'd really count as a "mistake" on the trip. We decided to take a hike
along the Juniper Ridge trail! It was over 100 degrees. We aren't
totally stupid so had plenty of water and sunscreen. But we should have
just climbed up to the ridge and back down - that would have been about
2 hours and gotten us the nice views (left), the neat flowers (below)
and the desert landscapes (below right). However, they promised an
"overlook" so we did the whole darned trail looking for something that
we considered an overlook
and never found it. That was about 7 miles through a very rough, rocky,
cactus filled area and were really wiped out when we got back down. 
So
we were totally hot, dusty, starving and miserable. And the visitor
center and restaurants had closed already. So we drove back down to
White's City and had a quick light meal with lots of iced water at the
Velvet Garter. Then we drove back up to the Visitor Center for
the evening bat flight! That was worth doing. Somewhere around 500 bats
came flying out of the cave at sunset. Before the bats, we were
entertained by swallows swooping and diving as they collected their
evening meals. As they wound down, the bats started out - it was
incredible to
watch them pouring out. They didn't pay any attention at all to us -
just flew in a great swarm off to the southwest.
Wednesday May 19 we started out at Sitting Bull Falls. I had a hard
time tracking down a waterfall in New Mexico but we found one! Its
primary interest was that, because of the presence of the water, the
plantlife around the area was totally
different than the desert areas. It wasn't much of a waterfall (left)
but there was a nice pool at the bottom (right and below) and we spent
some time with feet in the water and looking at the vegetation.