Before our visit we had no concept of the size of the caverns. Sure, we'd visited caverns and even a "Mammoth Cave" in the past. This visit, however, required a two mile hike down into the bowels of the earth. The epic scale of the various "rooms" in the caverns was hard to comprehend. After two hours of hiking (all downhill, luckily, after all we'd already done four miles before breakfast) we'd seen more stunning rock formations than we could count. In fact two hours in, we were beginning to feel the onset of "rock fatigue", it was time to find the elevator and surface for some lunch. In one respect, it was lucky that we'd picked the early spring for our visit, the caves were very peaceful and there were no long queues to ascend to the surface in the elevator. We did pass three young, brave souls who were doing the caverns in reverse, elevator down and hike back up to the surface. Our only disappointment was that the timing of our visit was too early for the return of the cavern's resident bat community from their winter migration to Mexico.
Phil heads down into the mouth of Carlsbad Caverns
Weird rock formations, resembling and named after a Baleen Whale's mouth
The "Bottomless Lakes" State Park, close to Roswell was not our first choice. We'd stopped at another park, about 50 miles further south at Brantley Lake but decided to push on further north when we found that the Lake was unpromising for fishing. Around twenty five miles into our onward journey, having passed twenty five miles of absolutely nothing on back roads, we began to wonder if we'd made the right decision. The area seemed deserted. It was easy to imagine that aliens could land here and nobody would ever notice! It turned out that we'd taken the back route into the park and after passing nobody at all for a very long time, were delighted to find the campsite did actually inhabited.
Early next morning we were off to Roswell to check out the "International UFO Museum and Research Center". The town's fame was rooted in an alleged alien crash landing in July 1947. After our visit we were really none the wiser whether the alien landing had occurred or not, whether there was a government cover-up or not, but it was fascinating nonetheless. Between its opening in 1992 and 2001 the museum had welcomed a million visitors, so there was obviously still plenty of interest in the alien intrigue!
Friendly Alien on Display
Hope we don't meet a weather balloon on a dark night!
We spent a couple of days at the park, which was truly peaceful until the wind started to howl. Fortunately after a noisy night in a windy canyon, we'd learned to point Harvey nose to the wind, just as Anju also likes. This way we didn't have to enjoy the sound of the hatch cowls filling with wind and lifting, flexing Harvey-the-RV's's aluminium roof all night. Harvey was so small compared to the size of our beautiful campsite that we were able to turn him into the wind, no matter what its direction! We pitied our neighbours, a family spending a noisy and wet night in tents.
After cycling down to the base of the dam and nearly killing our unfit selves on the steep return trip, we were ready to head for home but still had to negotiate our way past the crazy dogs. We tried in vain to find an alternative route, pushing our bikes on dead-end gravel trails through the park, startling the resident deer in the process. Finally armed with a handful of small rocks each, we decided to run the canine gauntlet.
By now the wind was howling again, slowing our progress to a crawl and we were mightily relieved to find the dogs locked in!
Scaring the Deer at Sumner Lake
New Mexico was famed as being the nuclear test ground of America and we felt we couldn't pass through without finding out more at the city's impressive National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. We learned about the Manhattan Project, to create the world's first atomic bomb, which was tested at the nearby Trinity site in 1945.
"Fat Man" and "Little Boy" Atomic Bombs dropped in Japan in WWII.
Effect of atomic bomb testing at Trinity Site - Desert Sand converted in the blast to solid green rock called trinitite.
After our northerly diversion, it was time to head west again and we pressed on along I-40 into Arizona until we reached Flagstaff. We had planned to spend the night there but changed our minds on seeing the mounds of snow still piled by the side of the road. With another storm system forecast, we didn't want to risk being snowbound, particularly as the over-priced campsite in the town did not provide bathrooms in the winter, or anything else much really.
Despite having covered three hundred miles already, we continued. Now we were headed due south and finally landed in a small town called Camp Verde for the night. As this town was the location of the Montezuma Castle Cave Dwelling National Historic Landmark, we decided we'd better check it out.
Montezuma's Castle
Don't like the look of that white stuff - let's head back to the desert!
Next we approached Phoenix, described in our guidebook as "The Blob which is taking over Arizona". Here we managed a little retail therapy, kitting Phil out for future hiking expeditions. As we drove around the new ring road, Phoenix seemed remarkably un-blob-like but certainly the urban sprawl spread for tens of miles.
One more night in Arizona was spent in yet another windy spot in Tonopah, where we were handily located to press on westwards into California the next day....