Friday, June 3, 2016

Day 6: Caves and UFOs

After an extraordinary 3 days of weather, it was time to check out the extraterrestrials.

We stayed the night in the small town of Fort Stockton in the far west of Texas. It was the type of place where nearly vehicle was a truck and there were Mexican restaurants on every other corner - good ones.

The morning guidance did not look promising. A cutoff low was stuck over east Texas dumping copious amounts of rain, but very few storms were to be strong. In fact, the low was wrapping in dry air on its backside that was likely to limit instability in our area, and to top it all off a cold front had pushed through the area.

We decided that sightseeing would prove more beneficial than chasing, so we headed back west to New Mexico.

The first stop were the Carlsbad Caverns. Pictures really don't do this place justice. The cave is MASSIVE - and the entrance is dramatic. You first drive on a winding mountain road, gaining over 1,000 feet in elevation up a series of windblown switchbacks. The view from the top of the caves provides a vantage with visibility of well over 100 miles in any direction.

The descent into the cave is a 1.2 mile half-tunnel, half-trail where you drop over 750 feet. Not for the faint of heart nor weak of legs!

That winding gray is the path down into the caverns. Birds were flying in and out of the cave, providing the only sounds.

Stepping off the path? Not a good idea. A 200 foot drop awaited at the aptly named "Bottomless Pit". Ladders from expeditions in the 1920s and 1930s still hung in some spots, untouched for nearly 100 years.
They call this Nipple Rock. No idea why...
My first national park experience was an amazing, peaceful one. A steal for only $10 admission fee, I highly recommend it! A member of our group who lives near Mammoth Cave said it puts that place to shame. If you think caves are creepy, smelly and full of bats, this will definitely change your perception. (The entrance smelled like a pet store, other than that it was fairly subdued.)

After a few hours there, we headed to our second and final stop in Roswell, NM. Being a bit of an ET buff I was excited to see all the kitschy alien stuff, and it didn't disappoint. Everywhere from the credit union to the gas station had little green aliens out front, although it wasn't quite as pronounced as it could've been.

A typical street corner in Roswell.
Today once again looks quite boring near us weather-wise. With the trip's unofficial end looming tomorrow evening, we've pretty much seen all we're going to see. We're headed for a second day of sightseeing, to the nation's second-biggest canyon - Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo. We'll stay the night there before driving back into OKC tomorrow. I'm scheduled to fly to Tampa via Houston on Sunday so I'm hoping the flood waters subside a bit - I only have 55 minutes to make my connecting flight!

Oh yeah, and this.

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