Two Top 10's in 2 Days!

First off, an adventure that made our top 10 adventure list.

We had been to several caves and caverns in the past year and thought we had seen some pretty cool stuff but nothing prepared us for what we saw at Carlsbad Caverns. Everybody we talked to says Carlsbad is really cool, but “cool” is relative. We had been to Kartchner Caverns, it was cool. We had been to Wind Cave, it was cool, but nothing prepared us for what we saw at Carlsbad, it was beyond cool!

All of our other underground tours had been guided. Carlsbad has a self-guided tour. Kartchner does not allow cameras, Wind Cave does not allow tripods. Carlsbad allows both. And bonus… it is free! So camera and tripod in hand we headed to take the self-guided tour. We were expecting a line of tourists shuffling along like lemmings while listening to screaming kids, what we got was the total opposite. Although there were other people there, we were pretty much by ourselves the entire tour. Every once in a while someone would pass us as we were taking our time taking pictures but even the kids that passed us were quiet as church mice.

The self-guided tour starts at the Natural Entrance just outside the Visitors Center. This trail is 1.25 miles and goes down 80 stories. You then get to the Big Room which is another 1.25 mile trail that is fairly level. Although the Big Room was the most spectacular, I would recommend walking the whole thing. Some people opted to take the elevator down and walk the whole thing up. I would not recommend that, those that passed us were huffing and puffing the whole way up.

The Natural Entrance

The path leading down to the entrance

We had googled how to take pictures in a cave before we arrived but those settings did not work out for me. Instead most of the pictures that turned out had exposures of up to 5 seconds. Thank goodness for the tripod! Here are some of the better ones that Barb and I took……

 What you don’t get from the pictures is a perspective of how big some of these formations are. They are huge. Some of the columns are 20 or more feet. If you look closely at this picture you can see me standing in the shadows and get an idea of how big some of them are.

Our journey up here was quite the adventure. If you are traveling up here from Big Bend National Park to Carldbad DO NOT take U.S. 285 between Pecos and the caverns! We have not been on a road this rough since leaving Alaska. The section between Pecos and Carlsbad is not only rough but it also takes you through some of the dirtiest oil field country that we have ever seen.

Our next adventure took us to Guadalupe Mountains National Park and it made our top 10 accomplishment list....  The Guadalupe Peak Trail, the highest point in Texas! Our friends Steve and Debbie are on a quest to hike the highpoints in each of the states they visit. They have seen some great sights and been on some great hikes. I don’t know for sure but I think this might have been our first “high point” hike but it will not be our last! And bonus, Steve and Debbie have not done this one so we have one up on them!!!!

It is described as a strenuous 8.5 mile round trip hike that climbs 3,000 feet. Allow 6-8 hours for the hike and be prepared with plenty of water, sun protection and food.

We thought this peak was our goal....we were sadly mistaken, this peak hides another peak even further away....

The first 1 1/2 miles are the most strenuous with a lot of stairs and switchbacks taking you up a steep grade. Combine this with the fact that our lungs and legs usually fight us the first 1/2 hour of any hike we do we thought we made a bad decision fairly early in the hike.

But we trudged on switchback after switchback watching the rig getting further and further away. We started out on the sunny side of the mountain and quickly took off our jackets but once we reached the shady side of the mountain the wind picked up and the jackets came back on. We kept our pace fairly slow taking short breaks at the end of each of the switchbacks. Those were our goals, get to the next switchback.....

Up and up we go.......

Once we got around the first mountain we our real destination!

All was going well until we were about 2/3's of the way up and I noticed Barb was slowing down and lagging behind. I stopped and waited for her, when she caught up she looked like she had been crying as her eyes were all watery. I asked her if she was alright and she said her eyes were acting funny, that she could see fine looking straight ahead but if she looked to the side it was like she was in the matrix. We had both been drinking plenty of water but we took a break, had a bite to eat, more water and carried on.

Almost there!

Her eyes continued to bother her but she refused to turn around and powered through. Before we knew it, we were at the top! It took us 3 hours and 20 minutes from the parking lot to the peak. We had climbed just over 3,000 feet and were now at 8,751 in elevation!

Look at Barb's hair, it was windy up there!

You can see forever! That is El Capitan right in front.

To the West

North.....

East....

There were two other couples up there, one from Alaska who were on a several month road trip and another young couple from Vermont who were heading west to hike the Pacific Coast Trail.  We ate lunch and talked with the other couples for about 30 minutes and headed back down the trail.

Much easier, much faster but you use different muscles going downhill so whole new aches and pains. Luckily, the rest at the top was just what Barb needed and her eyes were fine on the way down. 2 hours and 10 minutes later we found ourselves in the parking lot where we stumbled to the rig and took off our boots.

Headed back down......

Our rig is waaaaaay down there in the center to the right of the wash

We were sore and tired but very glad that we stuck it out and made it to the top!  

Our travel plans over the next month are forever changing and evolving. Our tentative plans from here are to head to Tucson (1/7) Casa Grande (1/11), then on to Organ Pipe (1/14), Yuma (1/16) and finally Quartzsite (1/20). If we are going to be in your area, send us a note maybe we can get together for a beer!