And Covid, Day 6. Every day I feel a little bit better. The problem is that it's a *little* bit. I'm ready to be back to normal and hating the wait. I did go into town to the grocery store today. I was going to wait until Monday and go after work - but realized that by the time I finish my shift I will likely be really dragging and want to come home. My problem was that before I went on the trip I ate down the fresh food in the fridge, and finished the milk, with the idea that I would go shopping within a day or two of coming home. Today is Day 8. I've got plenty of food in the pantry, and of course eggs, but I've been wanting milk and fresh stuff.
I found a cool video a guy made of our BnB, and especially of the old silo. Still can't believe we did that.
So - Carlsbad Caverns. As soon as we decided that we were making this trip, both of us wanted to go to Carlsbad. For one - it's a gorgeous and impressive cavern, and I do love caverns. But more importantly - it's nostalgic for both of us. We came here a few times as kids. And Bob and I came here some 50 years ago. It's a couple of hours from Roswell, so we got up and headed out Thursday morning.
I can't believe that I was the Adult and the Voice of Reason this time. Mike had read about a special tour - the King's Palace. It's a limited tour, but there was a chance that we could have taken it. I pointed out a couple of things - it didn't start until 2:30 in the afternoon, which would have had us getting back to Roswell after dark, and we really needed/wanted to spend more time talking to Gary (our real reason for going). Also, we had done a lot of running up and down stairs in the bunker, and a lot more in our crazy exploration of the old silo, and our old bodies were feeling it. The King's Palace is a bit more strenuous than than normal walk.
Still regret it a little.
Heading to the mouth seemed oddly familiar after all these years. We were passed by a family with excited, somewhat noisy kids. When the mother gave us an apologetic look, I laughed and said "I was that age my first time here."
I am lucky that Mike and I travel at the same speed - slow. It's only about a mile walk down (it seems like a lot farther - it's a bit of a slope - 20 degree average but sometimes steeper) and we got passed by a lot of people. But our goal wasn't to get to the bottom - it was to walk the walk, and look at everything.
I was surprised at my reaction when we first started down- the acrophobia was triggered.
You can see the handrails zig-zagging down - and I was feeling it. Which was odd - but eventually I figured that I was still a little weirded out from out adventure in the silo. There, if you fell - well, let's just say that would have been a bad thing. So once again looking down into a pit sort of triggered me, even though this was on a path, and if you fell, well, you'd land on the ground at your feet. I soon got over it.
I like the way they lit the caverns. Instead of having general lighting, it was for the most part quite dark, with spotlights on the natural features. (It reminded me a lot of how we used to light the sets when we did the Haunted Trail)
I didn't take too many pictures. I don't like being one of those jerks who keep flashing the camera in dark areas. My camera does have a nice "night shot" feature, but the pictures tend to come out looking like moonscapes. So I mostly contented myself with just looking - I can find plenty of good pictures on the web. But here's a shot of looking back and saying goodbye to the cavern opening.
A least one good set of stalagtites
And, as being that my "light airplane reading" was some Lovecraft, I definitely had to take a picture of the formation that I promptly decided was Cthulu.
We made it down to the bottom, and were quite disappointed that during the middle of a weekday in off season, there weren't enough tourists to merit having the underground snack bar open. We had a quandary. We still wanted to walk through what is called "The Big Room" (about another mile). On the other - we were both a little tired from the previous day's adventure, and by our east coast internal time it was after 2 in the afternoon and we were hungry. There is an elevator up to the surface - so we came up, had a sandwich, and headed back down.
Even slow strolling comes to an end, and we had the couple hour drive back to Roswell (alas, just missing the sunset, which happened behind us). Back to another lively evening with beer, Raul's cooking, and Gary's talk. Gary is partially disabled - we never got the full story, but there are back injuries and a hip replacement involved, and he walks with difficulty. So, he engages his mind with research. I loved his enthusiasm when he would talk about hours of research to find one small piece of a puzzle, when something would click into place and suddenly he would rub his hands in satisfaction and say "Ooooh, I got you now."
Eventually it was 11 o'clock New Mexico time - meaning 1 a.m. east coast time, and we gave up and crashed.
The next day would be homecoming.
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