Our first stop on the trip was Carlsbad Caverns National Park. This is a park that has been on my list of places that I've wanted to see for several years. I'm kind of a sucker for a good cave tour and I heard that this one was supposed to be one of the best. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. I think that it's fair to say that this was the coolest (neatest) cave that I've ever been in.
I've never been able to get very good pictures in a cave and this trip seemed worst than most. All I managed to get was some shots of complete darkness. So, our only recorded memories from this park will be of the entrance to the caves :)
The cave was just massive and it was decorated with some pretty unbelievable cave formations. There were all of the normal formations that you might expect like flowstone, drapery, popcorn, stalactites, stalagmites and columns but there were also a handful of unique formations. The most interesting one, I thought was called the lion's tail. It was a stalactite that had grown a ball of cave popcorn on it's tail. It was pretty neat. I was also impressed by the fairyland. It reminded me a little of Goblin Valley only with the hoodoos being made of cave formations instead of redrock.
Our second stop was in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. To be honest, this wasn't a park that had really been on my list of places to see, but it was so close to Carlsbad that I figured it warranted a visit if for no other reason than to expand my collection of National Parks Maps :) I think that Rosey and I were both glad that we stopped. We both appreciated the desert landscape and the beautiful and unique mountains and I think that Rosey was particularly thrilled to learn about the geological history of the park (which I'll let her explain in her own post).
We took the better part of the 3rd day of our trip and did a 14 mile hike through the Guadalupe Mountains. The scenery was spectacular and it felt unbelievably good to get out and do some real hiking after spending the 2 days on the road.
On Day 4 we started our trek back home. Instead of going back the way we came we took a slight detour through central New Mexico and stopped by White Sands National Monument. I was impressed to discover that it is the largest gypsum sand dunes in the world.
I also thought it was really neat to learn how the dunes were formed. Apparently water running off the nearby mountains carries alot of dissolved minerals with it. The water settles into lakes in the valley which because of the heat dry up over the summer. As the mineral rich water dries it leaves massive gypsum crystals in the lake bed. Over time the crystals are broken down by the wind and blown into the nearby dunes. It would have been neat to go and see the crystals in the lake bed but unfortunately that part of the park is only accessible via ranger led hikes in the fall.
We didn't stay that long in White Sands and we really didn't do that much hiking. But we did stop to play in the sand. I had a lot of fun walking barefoot through the sand dunes. I was worried it would be too hot to go barefoot, but the sand was actually pretty cool and there seemed to be a surprising amount of moisture just beneath the surface.
Day 5 found us in a small town in Arizona where we had bedded for the night. We still had about 8 hours of driving ahead of us straight up highway 191. I had chose this route hoping that we would get to drive through Monument Valley. As it turned out we didn't get to see Monument Valley but we did get to stop at an unexpected fourth National Park (actually Monument).
As we were driving up 191 we stopped at Canyon De Chelly National Monument in Chinle, Arizona. The park was unique in that it appeared to still be occupied by Navajo residents. In fact there was only one trail in the entire park that you were allowed to hike without a special permit or Navajo guide. It was really quite interesting to see actual residences inside of a national monument.
The canyon was amazing. Rosey pointed out that it looked like a smaller version of Zion Canyon. At first I didn't agree but I started to see the similarity. We didn't have a ton of time so we toured the park by car stopping off at some of the viewpoints along the way. The most impressive viewpoint was of Spider Rock.
I'd love to come back sometime and backpack and/or mountain bike through the park. We just need to figure out how to get a Navajo guide that could keep up with us :)
1 comment:
That last picture is really cool. What an adventure.
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