We approached Carlsbad Caverns National Park with both eager anticipation and, for some of us, a bit of nervous hesitation.
Kevin has a pretty fierce fear of small enclosed spaces so voyaging into the caverns was a major undertaking for him. It turns out Emmylou shares a similar fear. I'm so proud of both of them for facing their fears like bosses at this National Park in New Mexico.
The visitor center here is crazy big.
There is a huge gift shop and a restaurant in addition to the typical bookstore and #educational displays that you find in most National Parks. We spent a good amount of time in the visitor center and then, eventually when Kevin had procrastinated quite enough, we spoke with a volunteer to make decisions on how we wanted to spend our day at the caverns. We decided on the Big Room Cavern since it doesn't require entering into any tight or small spaces. In fact, it's so big that walking around the entire room takes a good hour and a half to cover the full 1.25 mile path.
To enter and exit the big room you have two options.
You can either take an elevator down into the cavern or you can take what's called the Natural Entrance Route, which is a steep 1.25 mile path that takes about an hour to hike. You get the same options for your exit.
We opted to take the Natural Entrance Route in and the elevator out.
The Natural Entrance Route is a steep and winding trail down into the cavern, but it was completely worth the sore shins we had the next day. With every turn there was a new sight to gasp in at in awe.
Of course, once we finally made it to the entrance of the Big Room the girls were starving.
Since no food is allowed inside the cavern, we took the elevator 75 stories back up to the visitor center and headed out to the car for a quick lunch break. Oliver wasn't feeling very well this day so he and Kevin hung back at the car and took a nap while the girls and I went back inside to further explore.
Back down the 754 foot trip in the elevator we went, to the entrance of the Big Room.
I could have spent hours down there, marveling at Mother Nature’s showroom, but the girls have a shorter attention span than I do so ultimately we ended up taking the shortcut option for the Big Room trail. It still took us about 45 minutes to complete our #amazing venture.
One last elevator trip up brought us back to the boys.
In the parking lot we found the Oscar Meyer Weiner Mobile and a small line of people waiting to take their pictures with it. That thing always puts a smile on your face.
Still in a hurry to avoid the winter storm that was in the forecast for the next day, we hit the road towards our next destination, Mesa Verde.
Since it would be a nine or ten hour drive we decided to split the drive. Our route took us right through the world famous city of Roswell.
We enjoyed the amazing 72 degree weather in Roswell as we slowly drove through with our windows open. This is the warmest it’s been on our trip so far and we soaked up every second of the warmth with a slow roll through the town.
That night we settled at the Coronado Campground in the town of Bernalillo, New Mexico.
It’s a cute little urban campground located on a bluff above the Rio Grande. The $25 per night rate was more than we were hoping for with our tight budget, but it was nice to have electric hook-ups, water and access to hot showers for a night.
We chose this site because it was supposed to be out of the snow belt. It mostly was, but we did wake up to a dusting of snow in the morning. Worst part? The falling snow made our Mountain View invisible.
Hearty as they are, the kids had fun on the little playground while we made a nice hot breakfast of coffee, hot chocolate, eggs and toast. We all enjoyed a nice hot shower and then it was off to campground number two.
Three hours later we arrived to Navajo Lake State Park in New Mexico where we hunkered down for a mere $14. Now THAT is the cheap camping we were looking for!
This beautiful campground overlooks the lake which was formed by the Navajo Dam across the San Juan River. It’s where we spent our final day of waiting out the snowstorm that was hitting much of the Southwest, including a major dumping at Mesa Verde our next destination. Although we were able to avoid driving in the storm, there was no escaping the cold front that came along with it.
After flying the drone a bit, doing some exploring, taking some pictures, and ultimately throwing in the towel on trying to wash dishes once our dishwater froze, we retreated to the warmth of our trailer to hide from the single digit temps that fell that night.
We were thankful to have both electric hook-ups for our trailer heater and our propane operated heater that night. The combination of the two helped us to stay toasty warm despite the extreme cold.
By morning the storm had finally passed through Mesa Verde. Only two and a half hours to go until we would be there. Whew! Mesa Verde, here we come!
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