It was a short drive across the border from Guadalupe Mountains NP to our next stop, Carlsbad Caverns. Gareth has always been fascinated by caves and caverns so this had been on his list for a long time. It did not disappoint and was very impressive. The only downside was the number of visitors being on a Saturday of the Easter Weekend and also the first day of “National Park Week” so there was no charge for admission for all National Parks in the entire country that date.
After a couple stops in the town of Carlsbad to get groceries, do laundry, and stock up on pet food we ended up at Brantley Lake State Park about 10 miles north of town. We enjoyed walking down to the lake and watching the sunset.
We talked to some people in the park who suggested we take a different route to our next stop that would take us through Roswell, which sounded interesting to us given the tale of aliens landing here. Sure enough the town had lots of “aliens” in different forms – statues, murals etc. We stopped for an hour to visit the “UFO Museum” where they had all sorts of “evidence” related to the infamous 1947 landing just North of town.
From there we headed West across some beautiful terrain and into the mountains, stopping next in a small ski village called Ruidoso. There were lots of touristic shops to look around, but we mainly window shopped other than to stop in at a beer garden for some refreshment before heading on. We descended a couple thousand feet to the valley floor and drove a short distance to the town of Almagordo.
We had initially planned to visit the White Sands National Park the next morning but opted to postpone a day to give us time to get some other stuff done. Instead we took the motorcycle out around lunch time up another mountain road to the town of Cloudcroft, and from there down to the National Solar Observatory. It was a nice twisty mountain road, but the temperature was quite cool, in the low teens. As we descended we saw lightning to the West and some dark clouds rolling in. Minutes after we got back to the RV the rain started to pour down, so it would seem our timing was good.
The next morning we packed up and headed to White Sands. We had read online that it was a good place to take dogs as they enjoyed the gypsum sands. Sure enough Misty had a good time frollicking in the dunes and joining us for a bicycle ride. We stayed until just after lunch before moving on, stopping in Las Cruces NM for Misty to get her coat trimmed. Our stop for the night was just outside the mountain town of Silver City NM.
Our reason for visiting Silver City was its proximity to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. We left around noon on the motorcycle and headed off on the twisty mountain road to the monument. It was quite a slow ride and took us about an hour and a half to get there, and we had not a lot of time to spare to hike up to the dwellings. The ride back was just as scenic through some beutiful forests.
The next morning we packed up and continued West across the border into Arizona, with Chiricahua National Monument as our goal. We arrived in the early afternoon and set up camp. The next morning we took the “hiker shuttle” to the top of the park road and began our descent. It took us about 5 and a half hours but we saw lots of fantastic rock formations, sometimes called hoodoos. The heat and sun were intense so we were extremely tired when we got back to camp.
