Greetings! I'm Marc Guido, and welcome back to Grand Adventure!
We are boondocking in Carlsbad, New Mexico, where we're going to visit not
one, but two national parks in this episode. So stay tuned!
So we're dispersed camping in a BLM area that's known as Fence Canyon. We're
about a mile up a dirt road right off the US highway that leads for three and
a half miles right over to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. This has been a
marvelous spot to camp. I do need to caution you: the road is a little rough
getting up here, and it is a little steep, but with your time and patience you can
really get any trailer up here, although I wouldn't recommend it for a low
clearance motorhome. We've got nobody around. We've got beautiful views out
across the Permian Basin off the patio side of the trailer. Now if you're not
familiar with the Permian Basin it's a broad area about 300 miles by 300 miles,
approximately, mostly in West Texas but partially in New Mexico. Actually, the
Texas border is right down there behind us as well. That is the largest oil
producing region in the entire United States. It accounts for about 20% of all
the oil that's drilled in the United States, and while that Basin may look
like a dry barren desert right now in the daytime (and trust me, it is), at
night the area lights up like a city down there because they are just so many
oil rigs. Both the lights of the oil rigs and the flame coming out when they when they
vent the natural gas out of the oil well that comes out as a by-product.
It's really a pretty cool view, and the stars here ... you can see the Milky Way. The
stars are literally from horizon to horizon.
Somebody even left a wooden platform here at our campsite. It's like having
our own private sun deck!
Now this was supposed to be about a seven-hour drive from our last camp at
Canyon Lake near New Braunfels, Texas. If you missed that episode I'll put a link
right up here on the screen so you can go back and check it out. It turned out
to be over 10 hours. We had all kinds of little inconveniences getting out here,
not the least of which was I nearly ran out of gas. I didn't practice my own
advice and missed the last opportunity to get gas, and by the time I realized
that there were no gas stations ahead for 65 miles I was kind of screwed at
that point. We ended up actually having to drop the trailer at a ranch exit on the
side of the interstate, on the side of I-10, and actually continued unencumbered
by the trailer so that we would get better gas mileage and actually make it
to the next gas station, and then go back and retrieve the trailer. It turned out to
be a royal pain. I will learn, and hopefully you'll learn from my mistakes,
that out here in the West sometimes those gas stations can be awfully few
and far between.
So as I said, we're only about three and a half miles from the main entrance to
Carlsbad Caverns National Park. We're going t head over there now and go check
it out. The story behind Carlsbad Caverns is a
fun one. Jim White was a ranch hand in 1898. He
was working to repair a fence line when he noticed what he thought was smoke
from a wildfire emanating from the ridge line. When White went to explore
further, however, he discovered that what he saw from a distance was not smoke
from a fire, but instead was a thick plume of bats exiting the mouth of
Carlsbad Caverns. Unable to convince any of his co-workers to accompany him,
White made a ladder from his fencing materials and descended into the cave
alone, carrying a homemade kerosene lantern as his only source of light. At
the time he was only 16 years old. Throughout his lifetime, White would
continue to explore the caves and proudly share his discovery with anyone
who would listen. Eventually President Calvin Coolidge
took notice, and in 1923 he established Carlsbad Cave National Monument. Nine
years later, the Park Service built a visitor center and bored two elevators
into the ground to access the caves 800 feet below, easing access to what had
become Carlsbad Caverns National Park. And who would become the Park's first
Head Ranger? Why, Jim White, of course! But you'd be doing yourself a disservice by
taking the elevators. In our opinion, the Park is only fully experienced by using
the Natural Entrance, following a narrow switchbacking pathway to descend those 800 feet. Only this
way can you truly appreciate the sheer scale and grandeur of these subterranean
caverns, where over 30 miles of chambers have already been explored.
Despite artificial light installations, once passing the entrance the cave
quickly grows very, very dark. It would be a challenge to film in these conditions
with any camera, and our lenses are truly not up to the task. It's also truly
impossible to capture the sheer scope and scale of Carlsbad Caverns on film,
but we'll give it our best effort nonetheless.
This is what Jim White named the Big Room, but the name remains an
understatement. The Big Room occupies an area the size
of six football fields, with a ceiling height of up to 255 feet. The grandeur of
this subterranean marvel is impossible to overstate. Here remains one of Jim's
ladders used in his early explorations. There's no reason to hoof it back up
that path to the Natural Entrance, for from here at the cavern's underground
rest area you may take the elevators straight up back to the Visitor Center.
Now I've got to tell you, I've been in caves before, but nothing prepared me for
that experience in Carlsbad Caverns. Unplanned, I'd actually spent over four
hours down underground, and it was well worth every second. I could have explored
more, but I did want to get down to Guadalupe Mountains. There's no way that
my camera could possibly do that place justice. Just the sheer enormity and the
beauty of those underground caverns has to be experienced firsthand to be fully
fully appreciated. If you're visiting Carlsbad Caverns and you're a National Park
fanatic, you can turn your visit into a two-fer as only 25 miles away, just
across the border in Texas, lies Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The
park encompasses Guadalupe Peak which at 8,749
feet is the highest point in Texas. The Guadalupe Peak Trail winds
through pinion pine and Douglas fir forests as it ascends over 3,000 feet
to the summit, offering expansive views of the Chihuahuan Desert.
The restored Frijole Ranch contains a small museum of local history, and is
the trailhead for Smith Spring.
Now coming up next Wednesday, we're going to go hunt for aliens in Roswell, New
Mexico, so if you're not yet a Grand Adventurer now's the time. Make sure you
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