And The ADVENTURE Continues...: March 4, 2016 Road trip to Carlsbad, NM and March 5, 2016 Carlsbad Caverns

Friday, March 4, 2016 Road trip to Carlsbad, NM

Our road trip to Carlsbad was uneventful. The terrain was mostly dry and barren. The only excitement that we had was seeing a longhorn going down the road on the wrong side of the fence but he looked determined to get to his final destination. We also saw a javelina. This animal looks like a small pig. It has adapted very well to desert life.

We arrived at the Brantley Lake State Park and we weren't too sure what we were getting ourselves into. There wasn't anyone at the entrance so we continued down the road hoping to find our site which we did. It turned out to be pretty decent for $14 a night. You could see the lake behind us and it seemed to be fairly quiet. We strolled around the campsites encountering a lot of small rabbits, one jackrabbit and a covey(group) of quails.

Tomorrow we are going to Carlsbad Caverns.

Happy Birthday to my brother's significant other, Penny.

Saturday, March 5, 2016 Carlsbad Caverns

The day started out with a fantastic sunrise. Always a good start to my day. It was windy and a little on the chilly side but that was fine with us. We arrived at the gate and see a sign that the elevator was down! We still decided to go and check it out. We were told that the bottom of the cave was some 800 feet down. No problem we had all day to make it down and back up. So off we went. As we came to the opening of the cave we could smell the bat guano but the bats were wintering in Mexico. We did manage to catch a picture of the cave swallows flying around the cave opening. It took us 50 minutes to make it 1.25 miles then another 50 minutes to explore the floor of the cave for 1.5 miles and then 1 hour to make it back to the top. This cavern I thought was huge. It had very high ceilings. It also had a little of everything in it. We saw stalactites, stalagmites, pools and other formations. It was well worth the trip down under the ground. As we were coming out of the cave we caught a glimpse of some type of hawk we think that it may have been a red tail but we will look at our pictures and see if we can really identify it.

We totaled 7 miles of walking today. Getting back to were we left off.

Tomorrow we are off to White Sands National Monument which is also in New Mexico.