This morning started out very early, at the first sight of sun. We left Big Bend National Park and headed towards the Guadalupe National Park. This is very close in proximity to Carlsbad Caverns. The Guadalupe Mountains are located in West Texas where the border of New Mexico crosses the east/west line. One park is located in Texas (Guadalupe) and the other, New Mexico (Carlsbad).
Our drive started at 7am after packing up our tent and supplies, which we learned would take about 30 minutes every morning. It took about two hours to get there so we slowly headed north through Texas and some very barren landscape. We passed through Van Horn, Texas to grab gas and continue to the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. There was a road leaving Van Horn that continues for 70 miles without any services and it has a funny product display of a Gucci store front. This was meant as a humorous novelty in the middle of the desert, as we couldn’t have been anywhere within 50 miles of another human. I believe it’s quite famous, but did not realize it was there until I saw it on the side of the road. We drove by it not knowing, thus we didn’t stop.
We ended up arriving to the Guadalupe Mountains around 11am. Fortunately since the park is not extremely popular, we were able to get a great campsite for very cheap ,on a first come first serve basis ($8). We visited the ranger station and bought a booklet that the NPS sells. This lets get stamps during our road trip, so we could cross of all the parks we had been to, and have something to look back on. Once we paid our fee and set up camp, we headed north east to Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
This park was amazing and when you think ‘Park’ it really is not the typical landscape one would envision. As you can imagine, it is a cave but is it also a spectacular series of caverns. The walkway heading to the bottom leads almost 2 miles under the ground, and the formations you see going in are absolutely mind blowing.
First off, the entrance into the cave looks like a cathedral. There are stalactites from the roof and stalagmites from the ground. There are many displays along the walkway. One includes the ‘Whale rock’ and the other includes a cavernous hole that is called the ‘Pit to hell’. It literally is a hole to the abyss, which drops more than 300 feet. The sheer size of this cavern is beyond comparison to anything we witnessed in this trip as well as anything up to this point in our lives! I highly recommend spending half a day here, and exploring this park.
Once at the bottom of the trail, you can eat at a restaurant, buy merchandise and explore the over 1.5 miles of trails through the bottom of the cavern. When you had your fill of the cave you can take the elevator back to ground level. The surrounding landscape at the cavern visitor center is very flat and barren, but driving to the cavern you must climb over 400 feet of elevation to reach the visitor center, which gave us an opportunity to see for miles over the desert. Check out some of these amazing pictures of the cave!
This truly was a sight to behold but when we arrived back to the ground level we took a short nap in the car. The reason we did that, instead of heading back to camp, was to see the bats that evening. Every night, within a 20 minute interval, Carlsbad Caverns has millions of bats that fly out of the cave at dusk in order to feed. There is a man-made amphitheater created so you can sit and witnesses this amazing sight. Unfortunately, we were unable to witness this as we were driven away due to lightning and being exposed outdoors. Nonetheless we could only envision how majestic this would’ve been!
We headed back to the Guadalupe Mountains and did not spend any time hiking (unfortunately) but we were able to get a great view of the whole park as it contains the tallest mountain in Texas! Evidently there are great trails that lead to the top but we did not have the time due to our schedule as we were trying to get to Phoenix to pick friends up from the airport 12 days later, with an enormous amount of things to see along the way!.
The campsite we stayed in was perfect, as there are very few lights, so the night sky shines like diamonds on a black canvas. We left the roof off our tent, so we could look into the night sky and enjoy the pristine untouched beauty of the heavens. Due to it getting dark right when we returned, we decided to open a can of soup and heat it up for dinner, as opposed to us having a large cooked meal with allot of cleanup. This cut back on food cost, and created less mess to clean. It was time for bed, and to get ready for a large day tomorrow….naturally. Overall, this was a successful day!
June 3 Expenses
7.50 coffee and pastries
17.24 gas
4 snack
8 tent fee
10 passport booklet for National parks
11.07 lunch in caverns
7.15 snack in caverns
16.89 gas after caverns
Total – 81.85
Big Bend to Carlsbad Caverns – MILES DRIVEN – 334