It’s Monday evening as I write this post and Beth and I are sitting inside our living room, I mean our tent, closing out another day. Before I recap our experiences over the last two days, I have to give a big shout out and thank you to our daughter Michelle. We’ve been having internet issues with our laptop and I was unable to upload the last blog. I had to enlist Michelle remotely and guide her through the process of posting so we could continue to provide our regular update. She said she is going to bill us for her services. I told her not to expect payment until August.
Last Friday, we checked in to the Pine Springs camground in Guadalupe Mountains National Park in West Texas. It’s about 45 minutes from Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico.
Upon pulling up to our campsite, we had an unexpected surprise. Our tent site was a walk in site, meaning we had to park our car and walk to where we needed to set up camp, about a 70 yard distance. That’s really no big deal, unless you are relying on using the car to provide the power needed to inflate your air mattress. We are. Surprise! We’ve mentioned before that we are sleeping on a queen-size inflatable air mattress since at our ages, we want to be able to stand up in the morning. Granted, we do each have a 1/2 inch yoga mat that we could sleep on, but that doesn’t really count in my book.
Shaking off our initial shock, we proceeded to unload all of our gear and got to the business of setting up our tent, which we did in near record time. Because we were expecting high winds during our stay in the park, we had stopped at a hardware store in Van Horn, Texas to purchase heavy duty tent stakes. The stakes that came with tent can probably on a good day withstand a 3-5 mile an hour wind. The stakes we bought looked like they could withstand a Class 1 hurricane, or take down a charging black bear, if needed.
The reality of sleeping on the yoga mat was weighing heavy on our minds. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a 200 foot extension cord to run from my car to the tent, so we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would be sleeping on the ground. As I made another trip to the car for more supplies, Beth had a brilliant idea. She said we could partially inflate the air mattress at the car and then carry it back to our site and place it in our tent. Because our tent doesn’t have a large opening door, we wouldn’t be able to inflate the mattress the whole way and get it in. We figured we could fold it in half like a big piece of bread and squeeze it through the zippered opening.
Whoever said “necessity is the mother of invention” was right. A partially inflated air mattress is better than no air mattress at all, so we partially inflated it before carrying it up to our tent. We were able to fold it enough to get it through the hobbit-sized door (remind me to contact the Coleman company to register a complaint on the door design when we get back) and our spirits immediately lifted. Beth laid down on the mattress and said it was ok. She was setting me up. When I laid down on it, I instantly rolled right off and fell to the ground. It wasn’t much of a fall but it became quite clear we would not be able to sleep on it.
It was time to go to Beth’s Plan B. Take the mattress back to the car and inflate it fully, then deflate it a little at a time until we could get it through the door. Easier said than done. I wish someone had been filming us. The fully inflated air mattress looked to be at least twice the size of the door. We had to find just the right balance of inflation and size so we could fit it inside the tent and still sleep on it. It was a big struggle, but thank God, after about 10 minutes of work, we managed to get an 80% inflated mattress into the tent. When we laid down on it, neither of us was propelled out and onto the ground. A major victory. Having solved the mattress problem, we settled in for a four night stay in a beautiful campground surrounded again by stunning mountain peaks.
Saturday morning we drove the 45 minutes to Carlsbad Caverns National Park to enjoy a day underground. We took the Natural Entrance tour and the Big Room tour, both self-guided, and descended 750 feet beneath the surface to enjoy an other-worldly enviroment of stalagtites, stalagmites, columns, and other unusual formations. It took us about 3 hours to complete the combined 2.5 mile tours, as we were in no hurry and wanted to get the most of our subterranean visit. Around every turn was another amazing site. It felt like we were in an alien world with deformed stone and rock creatures all around us. What a neat experience. While not anywhere near impressive, but still remarkable, is the fact that the National Park Service installed a paved path throughout the caverns, along with a handrail.
Having walked down into the cave, we decided to take the easy way up – the elevator. Yes, theNational Park Service also installed an elevator to shuttle people up and down the 750 feet distance from top to bottom. We completed our time Saturday with a walk around the 1.5 mile nature trail to view the vast dry Chihauhuan Desert spreading out in all directions and see the cave’s other natural entrance.
On Sunday, we drove back to Carlsbad Caverns as we had scheduled a ranger guided tour of the King’s Palace, an area of the cave that is not accessible without the paid tour. It was as equally impressive as Saturday’s self-guided tours, and we had the added benefit of gaining a lot of information from the very knowledgeable ranger. Although Mammoth Cave, Kentucky is the world’s longest cave system, Carlsbad Cavern has the largest room. It’s huge. And the cave is home to 17 different bat species.
We really enjoyed our visit to Carlsbad. All total, we covered about 4 miles of underground trails and spent almost 5 hours in doing so. Two thumbs up!
It was shortly after twelve noon when we finished our tour. Since it was Mother’s Day, I wanted to do something special for Beth since she was away from her children. Since we hadn’t had an opportunity to bathe or shower in about a week (unless you count Beth’s chair shower using our 5 gallon shower bag) I thought a shower would be a nice gift! Turns out, Beth had learned that the campground outside of the Park would allow non-guests to use their showers for a mere $3.00 a person. Now that’s my kind of deal and a perfect Mother’s Day present for someone crusty with 4 days of dust built up. We were both very excited at the prospect of getting cleaned up.
We drove to the campground office, plopped down the $6.00 for two showers, and proceeded to the bathrooms for a long overdue cleansing. It was the best $6.00 we have ever spent. While the accomodations were far from luxurious, actually they were quite spartan, or primitive, as Beth described them, they provided everything we needed – hot, running water. I even took the time to shave. We came out of the showers looking, feeling, and smelling like new people. I think Beth enjoyed her present.
Since it was Sunday, we had lined up an evening worship service to attend at the Sunset Church of Christ in Carlsbad. We were warmly welcomed by lovely friendly people at the service and they wanted to know all about our travel plans. Beth shared our website with some of the ladies so they could follow our blog.
On the way back to our campsite, we really splurged by stopping for pizza at Dominoes! We spent over $20.00 on a large pepperoni pizza and I even threw in a Minute Maid lemonade since I hadn’t had a cold drink in over a week. Warm water isn’t very satisfying. We ate the whole pizza and drove home on full stomachs and with more wonderful memories.
Monday found us back at our campsite in Guadalupe National Park where we spent the morninghiking the 7 mile McKittrick Canyon Trail. It was a beautiful hike through a very scenic canyon. Even in the heart of the desert, we encountered running water in several sections of a mostly dry creek bed. We even saw a brook trout swimming around in one of the deeper pools. At the end of the trail we reached an area called the “Grotto”, a limestone cave with the most unusual formations dangling from the top of it. That site alone was worth the 4 hour round trip as it was something we had never seen before. We were surprised that with the exception of about 15 or 20 small lizards and some birds, we didn’t see any other wildlife. That’s ok, though, as the natural beauty all around us more than made up for it.
The rest of the day was spent relaxing at our campsite, but I did manage to hike part of the Devil’s Hall Trail that was right by the campground. It, too, provided beautiful views of the surrounding mountains and canyons.
Tuesday morning we leave Guadalupe and head to our next stop, White Sands National Park in New Mexico. It will be the first time in about 9 days that we will sleep in a state other than Texas. We are looking forward to the next adventure. Stay tuned.