#136 Carlsbad Caverns National Park

This was the entrance to the boondock road. As it turns out people love Caliche and pay high prices for it. It really just fancy dirt.

We arrived at Carlsbad Caverns. The area is arid but not quite dessert. There are free-roaming cattle and horses that wander by the RV making a living off what looks like dried-up grass. It’s about 100 during the day and when we wake up and it's about 60. It's almost enough to run the heat for a while. By 10 am the heat returns. and hangs around until around 10 pm. If it's 100 in mid-May I assume it gets really hot in July. We will enjoy being 700 feet below ground where we will need coats to stay warm at 55 degrees.

We found a nice little Boondock on free camp. It was down a little road called Whites road in a town that’s very close to Carlsbad Caverns called Whites City. My assumption is blacks or not allowed but more likely that a man that owned all the land was most likely named Mr. White. We went down the road aways and I think the coordinates would have us gone further but we saw the coolest turnaround which was perfect for us so. I just backed in and called it. It a nice place even though it's basically a desert. The following morning India saw some horses go by and I thought that was really cool. Wrong. A horse walked up by the truck and looked in my mirror on the driver's side. I didn’t think much of it but I heard a loud Whinny horse sound. They all galloped off and I saw that mirror was now cracked and had not been before they came by. I didn’t see it happen but I assume he saw his reflection and wanted to fight, that is, my mirror.

We went on up to the Carlsbad National Park which was probably a 10-mile road. It's normally about $20 to enter of that we use our annual parks pass so that's kind of cool. You enter from the exterior of the building and return in an elevator. It's all straight up from the gift shop area. I suspect that if a person has a physical issue they can just take the elevator straight down and up. We went in and as you’re walking you can tell it’s a huge cave opening and there’s a noticeable downward slope. Right at the entrance, there's a lot of bats and birds and stuff.

Someone said if you come back in the evening around dusk you could do see the 1000 bats leaving the cavern to go eat. We walked down and for a long time, all did fine. I have to say that is a little bit hard on India's knees. Not right away but about an hour later she was wishing for something motorized.

I have been in caves and I've been to Linville caverns a couple of times. The ones I've always been to were a narrow passage not much bigger than a person. You might open up to a small room with cool rock formations. Let me tell you this place was enormous.

After a while, you get to a really big room. When you get into the largest part it's the size of 6 football fields. I had no idea. There was a self-guided tour and we learned a lot. It went on and on. Some stalactites were hanging down maybe 60 feet long from the ceiling. There were cylinder-shaped rock formations that I’ve never heard of. We finished a long loop, went up the elevator, and emerged into the gift shop. At some point an hour and a half later Miss India’s knees had left us. Savannah and I offered support on her left and right as she was in a lot of pain. I told her, this stinks but we can’t stay down here. I provided a valet to retrieve her after that. We walk regularly and still do. Either we were out of shape or it was the grade but it was unusually hard on her that day.

We went back to the campsite and chilled. The next day we went to the north of Carlsbad as they had a public dump station there. We found another boondock called Avalon Lake. It was a reservoir for the town. A nice place to have dinner and some sleep. Not a destination, but a great free place to stay.