We drove up towards the National Park through a tan colored rocky canyon up to the visitor's center and the entrance to the caverns. Along the way these mountain goats crossed the road right in front of us.
Wednesday Feb 28th. Our most vivid memory of Davis State Park will be the gale force winds that blew everything but the trailer away! It is very dry in Texas and Davis Mountain had dry brush and more straggly trees than we've seen in a long time. It is famous for its 'dark night' skies but it was cloudy with a near full moon shining through the clouds so we did not have that experience. The drive from Davis Mountain State Park was very scenic as we drove through a canyon with chocolate brown pillared stones jutting up from the ground into the sky. As we came out of the canyon there were soft rolling hills and then Flat, flat, flat nothing. The rest of the drive up to Carlsbad canyon was probably the worst scenic drive so far! Miles and miles of plastic bags and blown tire rubber littering the low, thorny brush on a flat brown landscape. Every half mile was another oil rig with a smoke stack with a burning flame shooting up into the dense smoke filled sky. There is a huge fire in the Texas panhandle and the smoke has drifted far south. Nothing! Then some long low row houses/rooms probably for the oil field workers. Rows and rows of them... and more of them about every 10 miles. No towns, no grocery stores, no parks...finally only one gas station and then on and on and on! What a horrible life in a horrible atmosphere. This went on for over 100 miles. Finally we entered New Mexico and there was a bit more variation in the landscape and it was definitely a bit cleaner. We drove up towards the National Park through a tan colored rocky canyon up to the visitor's center and the entrance to the caverns. Along the way these mountain goats crossed the road right in front of us. The uninspired, boring and very ugly drive though northern Texas oil fields was well worth the prize of Carlsbad Caverns at the end. These are AMAZING!!!! And the caves are seriously, humongously, HUGE! Joanne went in first while I stayed with Maddie and then I had my turn. I walked down, down, down into the abyss though the twilight zone to the fully dark zone. There are over 300 caves and goes down the height of the Empire State building. I put on 9,000 steps and over 2.4 miles. It was already over 90 minutes so I did not walk back up but instead elected to take the elevator back up to the top. Maddie was happy to see me and we drove to our KOA campsite 45 miles north of the caverns. Prepared to see many, many pictures....it's okay if you decide to edit and power through them quickly! No offense! :-) And these are not even half of the ones that I took!! I dissed the KOA when Joanne made the reservations but it is very nice if you don't mind rows and rows of RVs on gravel pads 10 feet from your neighbors. But the facilities are clean and roomy. It is very cold and we are using the electric heater watching Hocus Pocus II on the I-Pad.
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