Day 15: To the bat cave!: Carlsbad Caverns, Whites City, NM

How cold is it? Well, cold enough in that there van. It was 10.2 C inside when I rustled out of bed this morning. That’s not too bad. Mr. Ted says: “more clothes, less covers”. But Mr Ted, it’s 21 when we go sleepy time. It was so cold the memory foam mattress topper on my bed was rock solid everywhere I was not laying on it. These temperature swings are not well moderated in an “insulated” tin can. The colour changing cup I got from my colleagues in Australia was indicating cold.

Morning walk was up the loose gravel road until I found a gluch. That is what I am calling it! Not a super brisk walk as footing was tricky and ended at 3.5 km.

While Mrs Milddogs relaxed this morning, I watched the first Formula 1 race of the season. It’s a bit weird to be out in the desert and have enough connectivity to stream a race. Post race we got ready and headed over to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Our cavern entrance time was 1330. It is a short drive of about 20km from here. In fact, we can see the park buildings from our campsite as the roads take you North and the Southwest. We fretted over what to do with Amy. The park has a kennel. The van has AC and a generator. In the end we took the safe bet and put her in the kennel for her first time in 6 years. Aside from the disinterested / rude staff the kennel seemed acceptable. Amy barked and we think we could hear her in the cave 750 below. We all survived this traumatic experience.

I’ve been doing a lot of “wow, this is amazing”. Here comes some more. Wow. You must experience Carlsbad Caverns. You just must. Bring a decent camera and take your time. You owe it to your self to not give your children flashlights. Thank you. Pictures may be worth 1000 words, but no picture can do this place justice. Here are some anyway.

We were in the cavern for ~ one hour and 45 minutes. We did all of the routes that were open. The big room is big. We “cheated” and took the elevator up. Not really cheating that much as we had to get back to pick up Amy before curfew and walking back up the 700 feet of elevation change was not going to be fast.

Post cavern experience we headed back to the BLM land we stayed on last night. Our previous spot was available but it was so windy there was a lot of blowing dust at that spot. We moved down the road and took a spot on the windward side of the road with less exposed dirt.

For dinner we had leftovers from yesterday. Post dinner we took a walk out into the desert where I had found a cave. We did not explore it but Amy was very interested in the smells coming from it.

Yesterday’s close was courtesy of Mrs Milddogs.

Tomorrow we are heading over to Pancho Villa State Park in NM. TO get there we will drop back down to Texas, back through El Paso and east to the State Park. It is very close to the Mexican border. It has showers and electricity and water. Unknown if it has decent cell coverage. We shall see.

So far we have been 2 full days of dry camping. We have not depleted out batteries (driving and solar charge them and we don’t use much power. We follow ABC when driving. Always be charging! And when the sun is beaming on the solar panels we charge things up. The fridge runs on 12 volts but doesn’t use much power when it is cold in here at night. Since I won’t run the furnace on propane, we don’t need to worry about how much battery the fan is drawing. For fresh water we have not yet used 1/3 of a tank. We have 5 gallons of drinking water in containers in the van. Grey water tank is pretty much empty and I won’t talk about the black water tank. Let’s just say we have plenty of capacity left there.

Oh boy is it windy tonight.

Out!