Prowl'n America: June 2016

5/11

We left Whites City and Carlsbad Caverns NP. Heading west toward Deming, NM. The road skirted the Guadalupe mountains and dipped briefly back into Texas. At the western edge of the Guadalupe’s stands Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at 8,749 ft.

The road then descends back into desert until reaching El Paso.

As usual the drive through any urban area with our rig was… well… exciting.

Back on I-10, we headed north, crossing the New Mexico state line again, to Las Cruces then west toward Deming, NM. Our destination was El Rancho Lobo RV Park about 7 miles east of Deming. Looking at it on google earth it looked like a green patch on a tapestry of desert sand and scrub.

As it turned out, it was a square ring of trees with RV sites surrounding the central building housing the facilities (rec. room, laundry, bathroom etc) along with the park owners residence.

The owners were out of town so the camp host helped us pick out a site and get setup. Our site had a row of trees to shield us form the afternoon sun with a little nature path among the trees.

On the eastern side of the compound was a garden area with many flowering plants and small trees.

And then there’s the birds, hundreds of birds. Their calls and chirps were everywhere. This truly was an oasis in the desert. The interstate was not far away, but all we heard were the birds.

? any one know ?

Scaled Quail

House Finch (Male) and Barn Swallow

White-Crowned sparrow

Swainson's Hawk

Barn Swallow

Eurasian Collared Dove

Bunny rabbits were everywhere too.

After setting up, we sat in the afternoon shade, enjoyed the cooling temperatures and the symphony of bird songs. Right away we decided this was a good place to spend a few days and unwind.

We found this campground through Passport America so the price was very good, $11 a night. The only difference was there’s a meter on the power post and you have to pay for the electricity used. This is common for monthly or seasonal rentals but it’s the first time we’ve encountered it on a daily rental. We arrived around 4:00 in the afternoon when it had started cooling down for the evening. We noticed the campers around us had their windows open so we decided to try leaving the A/C off and see how the “dry” heat felt.

The first few days weren’t too bad. There was a gentle breeze and as long as we were in the shade it was fine The roof vent fans kept the air moving in the camper. By the last day, even the locals had their A/C on. We succeeded in keeping the A/C off until we left but the dry heat of the desert was starting to wear us down. For the 3 days we used $7.62 worth of electricity.

We spent the hottest part of our last day in the city of Deming, sightseeing. Deming is a nice little desert town. The main drag had lots of RV Parks (presumably for the snow birds). We heard the city museum was very good so that's where we headed.

The museum was indeed excellent. We spent most of the day there. This link describes some of the more prominent exhibits.
The museum is housed the the old USO building. The second story has a full basketball court that served the GI's during WWII. The town had an inordinate number of locals in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation and the
Bataan death march. There's a number of exhibits and memorials dedicated to them.

Here's some pictures we took in and around the museum.

Mimbres basketry (local Native American tribe)

Notice size of baskets compared to dime in lower center.

Military room

There was a large collection of geodes

In every Garden of Eden there has to be at least one serpent. Ours had many, we’re in a desert, ha-ha. While we didn’t see any real snakes, the serpent on our garden was the dust. We were lucky we didn’t encounter any famous New Mexico sand storms but those gentle cooling breezes also generated dust. We didn't notice it at first but it got in and on everything. Having the windows open meant we had to wipe down EVERYTHING when we left. After driving the 2 ½ mile gravel road leading to the campground the truck was a mess.

With the dust being the only negative, we thoroughly enjoyed our time at El Rancho Lobo and Deming, NM. Next time we’ll have to try it in a cooler month.

Here's some more pics.

Coming next, Tuscon, NM and Saguaro NP

5/9

We left Fort Stockton after only a one night stay. The route to Carlsbad Caverns National Park was TX 285 through Pecos, TX and on to Whites City, NM. Although not an Interstate, 285 was a good road through some desolate country.

There were no rest areas and we were finding it hard to even find a wide spot in the road to pull off and have lunch. We finally spotted one in time to pull off and after sitting there a few minutes I noticed we were just shy of the New Mexico line. This view told us everything we wanted to know about the way forward.

Whites City is simply a collection of touristy businesses at the entrance to the Park. One of those businesses is a campground and an automated self serve gas station... with diesel, at a reasonable price! The next nearest campground and fuel was in the city of Carlsbad, 22 miles away.

The 7 mile drive to the visitors center is quite picturesque.

After checking in and setting up the camper, we headed to the national park visitors center to sign up for a ranger guided tour the next day and scout out the place.

The elevators are down so we'd have to hike into what they call the "Natural Entrance", a drop of 755 feet in 1 mile (equivalent to an 80 story building). We got our tickets and scouted the entrance for the big day tomorrow. We also learned about the Bat viewing and ranger talk starting a little before dusk. Our scouting mission accomplished, we headed back to the camper for a little rest and some dinner.

Here's some pictures from around the cave entrance ...

This campground has an interesting arrangement. Every two sites share a permanent shelter, so you're kind of forced to make friends with your neighbor. Ours happened to be a couple and their son from... Florida, it's a small world! They arrived the day we were in the cavern so that afternoon we filled them in on the bat viewing and what we learned while down in the cavern.

The Bat viewing was interesting. We learned a little about the bats in general and the Mexican/Brazilian Free-tailed bats that inhabit the cave. Apparently there's an new malady plaguing the American bat population called White-nose syndrome. It started in the caves in New York and has been spreading through out the east. The rangers are making every effort to keep the fungus from infecting the bat population at Carlsbad. Before you go in they ask if you've visited any caves in the effected area in the last year. If so, they ask if your using any of the same gear (boots, cameras etc.). If that is also true they take about 5 minutes to disinfect your gear.

The ranger talks until the bats start coming out then we all sit quietly and watch. At first they come out in small groups, swirling around the cave entrance then fly off together. As their numbers increase there's a continuous stream coming out and flying off over the hill to the south.

By the way, the pictures to the right aren't ours, they're off the internet. No electronics (cameras, cell phones, etc.) are allowed in the viewing area during the bat flight. The signals given off by these devices interfere with the bats echo location senses. I suppose if you had an old purely manual film camera, that would be OK but I didn't have one and I didn't ask.

5/10
We were up early to get to the meeting point for the 9:00am Kings Palace Tour at the restaurant area near the bottom of the cavern. Here's some pictures we took on the way down...

We were almost late because we got lost, we read a sign wrong and took a wrong turn!

As the Ranger began her presentation, she said we'd be going down another 8 stories. Already concerned about the climb out, I thought maybe we should skip the tour because of the extra depth, but we soldiered on. The start of the tour headed back up the main trail before we started descending down again into the Kings Palace.

Here we stopped while the Ranger described the different shapes of stalactites (from the roof down) and stalagmites (from the floor up) and why they developed their distinct and varied shapes.

At one point during the tour the ranger was describing the first known explorer of the caverns, James White, and the home made tools he used. For light he used and oil lamp and for a ladder he used wooden rungs held together with bailing wire.

To dramatize the effect, she lit a single flame then turned out the lights to show how James White saw the caverns for the first time. During one of his excursions, the oil lamp ran out of oil and he was thrust into total darkness, our flame was extinguished and we were sitting in total darkness. She goes on to describe how he must have felt, thinking this could become his final resting place. Luckily, he was able to re-light his lantern and find his way out. Next time he brought extra oil!

We always try to take at least one ranger led tour.
The experience is so mush richer with the information and antidotes they share.

Here's some links to more history...

Cavern's Chronology

Cave History Update (2004)

James Larkin White - Wikipedia

Apparently the climb down was more strenuous than we thought it would be, we had striped down to the first of our three layers. By the end of the tour, we had all three layers back on and were quite cool. Some hot chocolate at lunch sure would be nice.

After the tour we decided to have an early lunch at the "Restaurant" (you're not allowed to bring food into the caverns). The "Restaurant" is a collection of ready made sandwiches and salads along with the usual collection of tee shirts and souvenirs. For ready made, the sandwiches were pretty good, and the cookies we had for desert were great...but NO HOT CHOCOLATE, no hot anything! Did we mention it's 57 degrees down there.

After lunch we headed into The Big Room, the self guided tour is an essentially a flat trail around the perimeter. The scale is hard to get you head around, or describe. Here's a quote from the web site...

At about 8.2 acres in size, roughly 6.2 football fields would fit into the Big Room! It is definitely well-named as this is the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America.

A word about lighting. The new "warmer" LED lighting system was turned on December 2015. Prior to that the lights were mostly "cool" florescent tubes. A "warm, soothing" light is shifted to the yellow or red side of the spectrum while a "cool, harsh" light tends to be more blue. See the cool florescent lighting in the Restaurant pictures above compared to the "warm" lighting in the caverns.