Travel Update 22

We started out this week in southeastern New Mexico after having just visited Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns. From there, our next stop was White Sands National Park. We spent most of a day in Alamogordo, getting Aiden some exercise after a long day and a half of driving.

We decided to only stay in White Sands for one day since it started raining. That night it rained a lot and it started leaking in through the front window of the sleeping area. The bottom of the mattress was soaked that morning. Luckily the next few days would be pretty dry and warm. We stopped at a campground in the Gila National Forest where we decided to do some early spring cleaning. We took a full day to get all the bedding out, clean the dried over-the-cab area, reorganize some cupboards, sweep the whole RV, and most importantly caulk around the front window where we thought the water was most likely getting in.

The drive, both to and from the the campground, was the most picturesque we've seen since leaving Idaho back in October. It felt so good to be in actual mountains again. We even saw some old snow on the side of the road.

As we descended to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, we started noticing a funny smell and shortly after saw some smoke coming up from the front tires. Turns out we had been going downhill for quite some time and Andreas had been on the breaks for most of it. The breaks were overheating. We were able to pull off the road and let the breaks cool down a bit before deciding it was best to get to the monument, where they would at least have a phone if we needed to call Good Sam (our roadside assistance). We drove there incredibly slowly, using our breaks as infrequently as possible, shifting gears to slow down, which we should have done from the start and a good lesson for our upcoming mountain driving.



Luckily there was no noise or grinding when the breaks were smoking, so we are very sure they just overheated and needed a break. The next morning the smell was pretty much all gone, only noticeable on the sweatshirt Andreas wore to get the video. We still took it slow, but the breaks worked fine while driving the next day with no issues. We'll get them looked at the next time we find a place that will do a free break inspection on our vehicle, but we're confident in their functionality.

We ended the week by driving Tucson, AZ. Here we'll be heading to Saguaro National Park and catching up with some friends and family in the area!

White Sands National Park

White Sands in the newest National Park. It's so new that it was still a National Monument when we left on our trip in August. As you can see, that haven't even updated the signs yet.

Several of our friends and have family sent us to @SubParParks on Instagram. She made park posters for all of the national parks with the text of their worst review. They are all amazing, but white sands it particularly spot on.

@SubParParks

To be honest, that review is what makes this park amazing. In the middle of a valley in southern New Mexico, there are miles and miles of white sand dunes. Once you are in them, the dunes are all you can see in any direction and it's magical. The trails have to have sticks marking the path so that you can find your way, any semblance of a trail would be quickly blown away.

It was a bit rainy the day we were at the park, which probably made it slightly less spectacular than it is when the sun is bright on the sand but it was still fantastic. 

The white sand comes from gypsum that was deposited at the bottom of the permian sea 280-250 million years ago (mya). 70 mya the the gypsum that had been deep under ground got pushed back up into mountains. From then until about 12,000 years ago the gypsum dissolved and ran down into the basin into a large lake. As the weather started to warm, the lake evaporated leaving large gypsum crystals which have then been broken down by, primarily by wind, into the very small sand particles that are present today. 

The sand there today is very fine and soft. Guests are invited to hike off into the dunes as long as they are taking precautions not to get lost (which would be very easy to do!). One of the favorite activities is to bring a sled and slide down the dunes. We unfortunately didn't have a sled but did enjoy hiking barefoot along one of the "trials" and trying to slide down some of the steeper hills on our bums. 

The park is also a great place to watch evolution in action. Many of the species in the park are close relatives to those found just outside of it. The park species have adapted, over time, to be more and more white, blending into their habitat. This makes for some incredible, white lizards and moths, which blended in too well for us to see on our visit.

We decided that this park was really a must see if in the area, but it doesn't really have enough to do to plan a trip solely to see it. It was incredibly different from anything we'd seen before, but we were happy with our day trip to see it.  

Travel Update 21

This week started out in Big Bend National Park, where we met a few people who we've run into before during our travels. The first was a couple from Virginia in a white travel van. We didn't get a chance to talk to them, but they let us know that they recognized us. The second was a woman from Washington, also in a white travel van, with a bus-like door. We ran into her shortly on the Natches Trace Parkway at the Merryweather Lewis Memorial. It's fun to recognize the same vehicles and to be recognized. Hopefully we'll run into some more repeats along the way and get to share some stories.

From Big Bend, we headed north towards our next two parks. We stopped at another roadside picnic area on the way up. The next day, we went and gathered a bunch of park info from both Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns before heading into the town of Carlsbad to watch the Ducks beat Stanford and all but lock up their Pac-12 regular season championship. In that game, Oregon's star player, Sabrina, became the only player in NCAA history (women's or men's) to achieve 2000 points, 1000 assists and 1000 rebounds in her career. We were glad that Carlsbad had a Buffalo Wild Wings for us to catch the game!

In Carlsbad, we spent a couple days catching up on our blog while staying at a campsite just out of town near Avalon Lake.

From there, we spent the two days hiking around the Guadalupe Mountains, followed by a day in Carlsbad Caverns. 

A few new national park stickers on a dirty RV.

On our way out of town, we decided to stay at Brantley Lake State Park. It was only $14 to stay for the night for which we got warm showers and a chance to test out plugging in our RV. Turns out, our RV is not a fan of grid power. The lights were our biggest issue, which seemed to overheat and quickly start smelling like burning. Without the lights on we could stay plugged in for a big before the 12V regulator box started getting warm and smelling like hot dog hair. So, we didn't stay plugged in long. Luckily the campsite was gorgeous.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Very close to Guadalupe Mountains, technically still in the mountain range, is Carlsbad Caverns National Park. There is also a small amount of hiking in this national park but we focused on the caverns themselves.

Unlike Mammoth Caves, Carlsbad Caverns allows self guided tours of the natural entrance and the big room. Which was extra nice for us because entrance on those tours falls under the park entrance fee and is covered by our annual pass.

 

We opted to walk in the natural entrance into the big room and then take the elevator back up. This meant that we started by descending 750 feet along 1.25 miles into the cave. It was pretty steep, but mostly pretty wide. It also takes you by some pretty cool formations like the Boneyard.

The main attraction is the big room. The tour around the big room is another 1.25 miles but this time mostly very flat. There are tons of cave "decorations", or speleothems, around.

 

 

There was also some left over remnants of early cave explorers, who took this ladder 90 feet down into the lower cave. A prospect Kathleen found terrifying. 

To get back up we took the elevator, which left from the "Rest Area and Lunchroom," an area of the cave that made us giggle. It was a complete plaza in the cave, with snacks and a gift shop that seemed super out of place.

They even had restrooms that looked like you were walking off into a deep cave tunnel, 

but were actually quite nice. 

The contrast here, made this part of the cave almost feel fake. More like a Disneyland cave than an actual cavern.

Throughout our tour we couldn't help comparing Carlsbad Caverns to Mammoth Cave. Overall, the Caverns are a lot more open. The big room is "mammoth" in a way Mammoth cave wasn't. The mammoth nature of Mammoth caves comes from the fact that they stretch 419 miles, more of which is still being discovered. But they can still feel very claustrophobic. The Big Room however is nearly 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide and 255 feet high at its highest point. As long as you can get past the fact that you are 800 feet unground, its really quite hard to be claustrophobic. There are also tight parts of the Caverns that they take guided tours too, but we didn't end up taking one.

The Caverns have many more speleothems, and are much more "spectacular," but they also feel much more "developed." While large sections of both caves are lit, a trip with a ranger into Mammoth Cave feels much more like an exploration. They will turn off the lights at one point in the tour letting you see and hear what the caves are naturally like. Meanwhile there a paved paths and handrails throughout Carlsbad Caverns, and everyone is viewing at their own pace.

Both of the cave parks we've seen so far have been incredibly fascinating and gorgeous. And also very different and unique.