Carlsbad Caverns National Park

On the way back to Arizona, I stopped at the Carlsbad Caverns. OMG! They are so big! The caves are as big as a high school gym or an indoor baseball stadium. The holes in the floors are bottomless. Lovely cement walkways and railings which is good because it's dark in there, and often wet or slippery! We were told not to speak loudly so everyone was quiet walking silently down, down, down equivalent to 75 stories! The descent is a flat cement trail with handrails, steep until you get to the bottom, then mostly level with only one steep incline and one set of stone stairs totalling fifteen. The volunteer tells everyone if you have foot, ankle, knee problems or other health issues, don't do it. By the time I got to the bottom, my knees ached and shook with exhaustion, but I was fine. The temperature is an even 57 degrees so they suggest bringing a coat, but I didn't need one. Even though there were a lot of people, most of the time I was alone encountering only two groups: one school group and one organized tour. They were not quiet,! LOL! They stunk of shampoo, laundry detergent and fragrances of all kinds. I hussled passed when I could.

Entrance

What they don't warn you about is the smell! It smelled like dead things or moldy bat shit. My lungs felt a bit irritated, but I had no lasting effects. I can't imagine working or volunteering there for long periods of time. It's got to be toxic.

We were instructed not to take flash photos or point the flash down, but my camera doesn't really do that. Most people were videoing with their cameras which didn't produce a strong light. I did some videos, but they are too large to download.

Courtesy of the Carlsbad Canyon National Park Website

It's open between 9am and 5pm. Entrance fee is $15 unless you have a national park pass then it's free. You need to reserve in advance or get there when it opens to reserve a spot. They stop selling tickets or giving reservations around 2pm or whenever tickets are sold out. Special tours when available cost extra and require reservations.

New Mexico Detour

As soon as I crossed the New Mexico border, the roads improved from potholes and cracks to smooth as silk. Justifying my detour, I kept thinking, It's too soon for Arizona. Why not see more of New Mexico? It was high on my list of homesteading options.

 

"...Gallup, New Mexico..." Everytime I say that I start singing the song "Route 66". The city limits is spread out like a overgrown strip mall and very low income, but the downtown with part of the original Route 66 is very cool populated with vintage-looking tourist shops. I'm disappointed Route 66 has been cut up into sections due to the added Interstate 40. I hate Interstate 40. The scenery is horrible, the semi-trucks clogging the lanes are awful, and I'd rather be on a country highway without people forcing me to speed to save my life.

What brought me downtown was La Monzanita Co-op which is a health food store chain in New Mexico with stores in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. I'd been to the one in Albuquerque so I had high hopes for this one. This store is tiny, but packed to the roof with more than you could imagine. Still, it was lacking in a lot specifically fresh produce. Then I went to Hobby Lobby to buy a sketch pad and some cheap paint brushes. We'll see if I can creatively motivate myself.

I drove to the Three Mesa Trailhead parking area off Interstate 40 and Mentmore Road for the night. It's sunny, low 70s, and windy. Lots of hikers in the afternoon in and out, but as soon as the sun set, it was a quiet and peaceful night. (The write-up on iOverlander said it was prone to rowdy locals and noisy trucks going in and out the mine located on the same road...I experienced none of this.)

The next morning I headed east on Interstate 40 driving behind a semi-truck that was swerving all over the road! I then exited south on Highway 117 through the El Malpais National Monument which was spectacular featuring sandstone cliffs, arches and caves on one side of the highway:

And a bunch of black on the other side of the highway. What is that? At first I thought it was fire damage, but then I realized that is the Zumi-Bandera Volcanic Field (or the Grants Lava Flow):

There were lots of hiking trails I would have liked to explore. The highway was quiet and peaceful, but half way down the landscape turned a bit barren and ugly. I've often said New Mexico is the ugliest of all the states and provinces I've seen. Granted, every state has bits of beauty and bits of ugly, but I think New Mexico has more than its share of ugly.

I arrived in Pie Town, a miniscule town with a trailer for a post office that has a history of pie making and selling. I stopped at the little cafe that advertised PIES in big, bold, colorful letters and hobbled to the front. I noticed big signs stating "GET YOUR PIE HERE" with an arrow located at the far end of the building so I hobbled further only to find the door locked. On the way back a waitress passed me, "We are out of pie." PIE TOWN IS OUT OF PIE!?? Now, I had hoped they might have gluten-free pie although I was realistically doubtful, but NO pie at all to gaze upon! I was aghast! I stomped with my walker back to the van. Stomping with a walker or four extra aluminum feet is very satisfying and therapeutic. I can make a lot of noise when pie-less.

Population: 192...LOL!

I found the BLM land just behind the tiny town. Many of the dirt roads were pitted with water damage and large deep ruts. I avoided those, but I found a place and parked for the night among the juniper trees and ants...fucking ants.

I recently discovered a van-living danger! Someone asked on one of the FB groups about invection cooktops. Since I have one I gave my opinion. I like mine. Another woman said, "It's a fire hazard. Be very careful. I learned the hard way." WHAT? I asked her for details. It seems invection cooktops heat up and if you place it on a metal table as most people do, it will heat the metal and anything flammable touching the metal will ignite!!! OMG! She set everything on fire and nearly burnt the county down! For a long time I was cooking on top my metal table outside my van...sometimes there is dried grass or leaves on the ground. If I cook in my van, the table is on the rugs. I've been doing this for nine months without an issue. Why not? Why have I not burnt down my van? Then I remembered I've been using my glass plates underneath the cooktop to protect the table and the rugs!!! Glass is not heat conducive! Wow! The things I don't know....I'm a walking danger zone!

Zero sleep last night. My sinuses are still killing me and I'm taking way too much Afrin which can cause "rebound congestion" so I woke with a sore throat and lung congestion. If I don't take it every night, I can't breathe! I wish I knew why my sinuses hate the southern states. AND, I confess. I started buying Olipop Root Beer. On a hot day it just tastes good, but like any soft drink, healthy or not, it has sugar. Why do I torture myself? I know better and I buy and eat/drink junk anyway. Awake most of the night, I ruminated about the ants on the ground, too, worried they would get in my van. Ants all over everywhere!

Got up early and left (the ants) driving north toward Colorado. Every route I had planned toward Arizona is heating up to the high 70s and low 80s. Nope. Let's go back to the coolness of Colorado! I took a new route through New Mexico and it was only a four hour drive. The drive was boring. Again, New Mexico is still the ugliest state I've seen so far. Not much there to write home about (if I had a home).

BUT! I saw a herd of what I thought were antelope! Are there antelope in New Mexico? I have no idea, but they weren't deer. I got online and they were PRONGHORN!! That was cool.

As I approached the north, I started seeing the rock "cathedrals" floating in the desert. I kept asking, Is that Shiprock? It doesn't look like a ship. Is THAT Shiprock? Nope, that doesn't look like a ship either. There were about six of them. None of them really looked like a ship, but I took a photo of the one closest to the town Shiprock. According to the map, this should be Shiprock:

Doesn't look like a ship...

Worse, the poverty is astounding in New Mexico! Lot of manufactured homes and trailers as residences scattered all over the desert. Too many junky vehicles and garbage surrounding the homes. I'm guessing the only upper class areas are probably in Taos or Santa Fe? I've heard they are out of my budget.

Shiprock was shocking. Approaching from the south one is faced with a neighborhood of dirty, white, little, square rectangle buildings with a door and a window on each side, two dwellings per rectangle, flat roofs. They almost look like shipping containers only smaller and cheaply built. Clothes hanging outside, junk and garbage all over. These "homes" go as far as the eye can see, scattered in no discerning order, left where they were delivered, kaddywompasly situated. The stores and other businesses are run-down or closed-down. People milling all over the place, some offering to wash your windows for money when you get gas. One scruffy guy approached my parked van and asked for money. Lots of vendors selling out of their vehicles on the highway. During all my adventure, I've never seen any area this bad. It was pretty shocking. I kept praying, Please don't let my van breakdown here!" Crossing the Colorado border was like night and day...scenery became beautiful and the houses large, beautiful, and well-maintained.

Back to Colorado...

Down the Back Stretch! Arizona!

The colors of northwest Arizona are spectacular. Look at those clouds!
It's like a painting....

I feel torn about Arizona. On one hand, with all the stress and trauma, I feel relieved this adventure is over and I'm my way "home" or to where I started because I'm not sure if Arizona can be considered "home". On the other hand I feel dread. Tucson creeps me out. Tucson is the land of psychopaths and very bad experiences that slosh around in my brain too often usually in the middle of the night or when I'm driving. Driving affords one a lot of thinking time. Outside Tucson, Arizona is dry, dusty, and still too hot. I'm STILL just not sure that's where I want to land.

I headed west on Highway 160 and planned to go south to Shiprock. The horizon was black with rain clouds, but the view west was bright blue skies and fluffy white clouds! ? Make a choice! GO TOWARD THE LIGHT...then south on Highway 191. 

I read some posts on the lack of free camping in the Navajo Nation Indian Reservation, but found perhaps the only one that wasn't a gas station: Wheatfields Lake on the border of Arizona and New Mexico. The warning was if it rains, it's deep in mud. Well, it's been raining here and the huge arroyo ditches and water-filled potholes made me hesitate. Big Blue trudged through the muck and we found a semi-dry spot. Hopefully it'll stay dry all night. The weather forecast for the next few days is sunny 66/68/69/70 high and 48/47/50/53 low, but it's raining right now. We'll see! I'm the only one here. It's nice with picnic tables, garbage receptables, and a bathroom...blocked by huge puddles of brown water. It's very quiet. Thunder and lightning all night with showers now and then. Then I woke up to a view of the lake and this:

COW CAMPING!

At first I thought there was only one until I threw some water out my side door and there is a small herd surrounding my van giving me the stare down.

On the Navajo reservation there are warning signs all over about cows and horses running free. I saw a few horse herds on the way. One beautiful colt that was white with black ears, mane, tail and feet. Gorgeous. Just wandering on the side of the highway. There was no place to pull over or I would have taken a photo of him.

The sun appeared and I drove to New Mexico via Highway 12 in hopes of finding sunshine and some food. The Navajo reservation does not have a lot of options. Beautiful drive with lots of mesas, rock formations, rock needles and rock walls. Towns are built around them.

Around the corner from this rock knob, I encountered a pothole as wide as the road and filled with brown water. Do I drive over? In Arizona we are taught DO NOT drive over an unknown depth especially if the ditches and arroyos are raging with water and they were. You might get stuck, or worse, you might float away or drown. Did I listen? No. The highway was about 50 feet on the other side! It was risk it or turn around and suffer the bad road coming in. It was damn deep, but I made it. 

Even though my ability to walk has been compromised, I'm still on an adventure. New Mexico is off the beat and path, providing a detour, but I have two weeks until my doctor's appointment. Why not?

New Mexico Part II

Smooth with no potholes as far as the eye can see!

I stopped into the first Starbucks I've seen since first crossing the Arizona-New Mexico border. There are very few here! I asked the cashier and she said it's because the population is so low. They might be found in Albuquerque, but not in outlying areas. 

I'm finding this to be true. It's amazing how much bare land there is here. I tend to be attracted to the smaller highways due to less traffic, less semis, and thinking there might be interesting landscape to see. Not really. Miles and miles of flat semi-desert land sometimes with mountains in the distance. Once up in the hills which are considered mountains here, one finds more shrubs and then taller trees and it becomes scenic and beautiful. At least all the roads, highways, and freeways are drivably maintained. 

Yesterday after leaving the Albuquerque food co-op, I headed east and then south to Fort Sumner. Tiny little town. I had hoped some remnant of the fort was there, but only the cemetery now exists. With Billy the Kid's grave! I love Wild West history and as I drive some of these tiny highways, I imagine what it was like to ride a horse and be a cowboy back in the 1800s. It might take hours to drive to Fort Sumner, but it must have taken weeks on a horse!

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There was also a Billy the Kid Museum in the middle of town capitalizing on the tourism brought to the area by the gravesite. I asked the cashier what was in it thinking maybe (probably not) there was anything historic of Billy the Kid's. She said there were all kinds of wonderful things, including cars. CARS? Billy the Kid didn't drive a car! I didn't bother to pay $8 to see a car not driven by Billy the Kid. I know from reading biographies there isn't much on Billy the Kid except one photo and legend.

Next I headed to Roswell on my tourist loop. Main Street is filled with alien stores...and lots of tourists. I stopped into one that wasn't swamped with people just too look and bought a postcard for a pen pal that said "Ask me about my butthole. Alien probed in Roswell." LOL! I couldn't help myself. Too many tourists on the sidewalks and not a whole lot of places to park a giant van so I left.

Next drove to Cloudcroft which is up in the mountains and encountered SNOW on the sides of the highway. Camped in the Lincoln National Park at the James Canyon campground right on Highway 82. Very beautiful and quiet in the mountains. And cold! Did I say cold? Only 25 degrees in the morning! I really need a little mini heater for the van!

Heading back to Arizona where it was 79 degrees during the day and 60 at night. My test-traveling adventure is over just in time for Christmas!

Where should I head next?

New Mexico!

I was eager to head OUT of Arizona after a month of stressful hell. I'd never been to New Mexico and since it's winter in most states, I knew southern New Mexico was dry and sunny. Everyone warned me regardless of the sunshine, it's much colder than Arizona. I woke up to 21 degrees this morning, but the weird thing I cannot yet grasp is there is no ice and no frost! It's dry cold!

Roads here are spectacular. They maintained them...and they voted for Harris in the last election so Democrats take care of their state. Many of the highways look like national park roads with exceptionally smooth surfaces. This is so different from Arizona with the potholes as big as cars,  patches that make the van shake so bad I wonder if it will fall apart, and the overabundance of Republicans. And in Arizona one is expected to drive 75 mph on these bad roads!

Zippy thinking she went the wrong way.

Definitely not a road Zippy likes to roll.

My first stop was Silver City. Oh, I love this town! It has a killer historic district that feels like a little hippie town with new age shops complete with a food co-op! There are bike shops and lots of bike warning signs, every kind of art, and a college that has a "Lifelong Learning" program of community classes. The surrounding mountains are filled with trees taller than five feet. There are a lot of BLM campgrounds - I stayed at the Continental Divide Trail campground off Highway 90 the first couple nights.

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I ventured north out of Silver City to the Gila Cave Dwellings. Highway 15 is scary with drop offs and no center line, but the scenery was beautiful when my heart wasn't racing and my palms sweaty!

Since I hadn't seen water for nearly two months, hiking up the mountain to the cave dwellings was a treat with the babbling creek running parallel to the path. So beautiful and peaceful. I camped at the McMillan Campground and then the Cherry Creek Campground for two nights. National forest campgrounds like BLM campgrounds are free.

My next tourist site was City of Rocks which is just south of Silver City. I love being a tourist, but I wasn't that impressed with this site. Fun to walk around although I spent too much time watching for rattlesnakes. However, the visitor's center has a SHOWER! I took my first shower in three weeks! That was worth the $5.00 day fee it costs!

Next I headed to Albuquerque. They have the La Montanita Food Co-op filled with all kinds of health and not so healthy foods. I splurged. 

One thing I loved about this co-op is the bathroom sign:

To be continued.....