Double Blind

Continuing on from my previous post nearly four months ago, I was in New Mexico late in September. I’ve had this post in the draft state, but will finally wrap it up here! You may wish to refer to the map in the previous post, as it gives the geographical locations of the various stops.

Stop #3 was at Carlsbad Caverns. The caves were gigantic and we signed up for a couple tours and also did the self-guided tour. The hotel we stayed at was in Hobbs, which is an oil town. The (small) cities in New Mexico have a very similar structure – very wide roads leading into the city and a relatively small downtown core. This is in contrast to most small towns in BC, where the geography usually restricts the urban development. When land is cheap (and flat), it makes urban planning rather easy.

There were many points of interest at the caves. We did the Slaughter Canyon Tour and this involved going to a separate entrance about 20 miles south of the main cave. It also involved a small hike up a hill in a creek valley.

Taking pictures inside the caves was somewhat difficult due to the lighting conditions, but I’ll try to post some anyway.

The really cool thing at Carlsbad Caverns was during the evening, there was an outdoor amphitheater that you can sit down and watch bats exit the cave in the evening. It was quite an interesting experience to be surrounded by tens of thousands of bats (small little things) as they emerge from the cave and fly opposite to the sunset. The other amazing thing is that not only could you hear them, but you could smell them! The odor of bats is unmistakable. It was a very nice and unique way to enjoy the sunset.

Just as a side note, after that evening the next destination was Las Cruces (west) and to get there the most efficient route was through El Paso, Texas. The highway between Carlsbad and El Paso (US-180) was very lonely – not a single gas station but the roads were very well maintained. At the state border line was a sign with a “Welcome to Texas”, a Texas flag, “Drive Friendly – The Texas Way” and finally on the bottom “Proud Home of President George W. Bush”. Now if you click on the picture, you will see bullet holes in the sign, which I found infinitely amusing.

The second picture was taken in El Paso at night – as El Paso is a border town (sharing a border with Mexico), there is a structure not too far from the border that displays a huge lone star (since Texas’ motto is the Lone Star State) that can probably be seen by aircraft and everybody on the Mexico side. Some people despise the American (primarily Texan) way of making everything big and grand, but I tend to consider it a culture all in itself.

During the trip, I added three confluence points to my records: 35N105W, 35N106W and 32N104W. 32N104W was probably the more interesting of the three since it was right along the New Mexico-Texas Border and it had only been explored once before. We managed to find a cairn that was setup by the previous explorers. All three were relatively easy to get to. I wanted to do some more confluence points of moderate difficulty, but just ran out of time.

Stop #4 (before we made the trip to El Paso) was in Roswell. Any science fiction fan knows that this is where a UFO crashed in 1947, and you just have to check out the downtown core:

It was always one of my things on life’s “to-do” list to visit this place. Other than the rather thematic downtown core, Roswell is just like any other New Mexico city in the area, just slightly larger (population is about 50,000). It also so happens that I have a friend that lives in the area who works for the oil industry and we explored the International UFO Museum and of course had to dissect an alien body:

The UFO museum was a total riot and I highly suggest that anybody in the Roswell area go visit it if they have a drop of science fiction blood in their veins and a couple hours to read the stories. The previous owners of Storyeum should take a lesson here. They also have a gift shop which I summarily proceeded to raid and buy infinite amounts of alien-related Christmas presents for my brother, including the infamous alien Christmas stocking.

We all ate at some Mexican restaurant on the north side of the city which was a pretty good way to conclude the evening. Much to my surprise, the food actually digested well and the trip back to Hobbs in the dark was routine.

Stop #5 was in the City of Rocks state park. What’s remarkable about this place is that it’s an outcropping of rocks that was deposited by a volcanic range nearly 30 miles north of the present location. As a result, it looks like Stonehenge times a hundred. The even cooler thing is that they let you climb the rocks and if you were not careful enough you could even kill yourself doing so if you fell off the wrong way.

A crowning achievement of mine is in the realm of photography – while running around the place, I discovered grasshoppers having sex. So you, my loyal readers, can see my debut as an Etymopornographer. I’ve got better pictures than this one, but I’m trying to sell the rights to them to PlayLarvae Magazine.

Climbing around the rocks and just surveying the vast landscape was both fun and spiritually uplifting.

All in all, this was a very enjoyable holiday. I would highly recommend visiting New Mexico for anybody that likes open terrain, unpopulated areas, long road trips and a healthy appreciation of nature. I wouldn’t mind coming back and taking a bunch of friends for an extended camping trip.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.