Into New Mexico

We made it to Ft. Stockton yesterday - 296 miles.  I think that will be about the longest mileage we will attempt.  We get stir crazy being in the RV too much longer than that - even with a stop.  But maybe it's the drive through west Texas - ugh!  Now I see why our Alaska friends couldn't believe we moved to Texas.  I think many people probably picture all of Texas as endless miles of flat scrub and cedar.  Thank goodness it's not like that around San Antonio.  But west Texas is a different story.  We got settled around 4 and headed to the pool since it was about 96 degrees.  The pool was FREEZING!  And then Jeff discovered we couldn't get the ABC channel the Spurs were on - disaster!!!  He finally managed to get a radio station on his phone so we listened to the game.  Pretty neat way to follow the game - radio announcers have a unique talent for describing the action.  But in the end it didn't matter- Spurs lost miserably.  Jeff IS going to make sure that where we're going tomorrow night gets the correct channel!

Today we celebrated Jeff's 62nd birthday.  We crossed into New Mexico about 10:15 a.m. and immediately got 1 hour younger crossing into mountain time:-)  What better way to spend a birthday than by exploring the Carlsbad Caverns. What an amazing experience.  We descended on foot 750 feet into the caverns past the bats.  The smell was indescribable!  Amazing to think that people built all those switchbacks and walkways so we could experience the caverns.  I had delusions of walking back out but I think it would have killed us!!  Thank goodness they have an elevator.  It takes only 60 seconds to climb the 750 feet back to the surface and the elevator uses the original elevator shaft.  Even more amazing is realizing the caverns were explored for the first time in the early 1920s.  We are always amazed at the hardiness of those early explorers.  The caverns are a constant cool 56 degrees.  When we came back out we were greeted by a blazing 100 degrees.  Made us want to go back into the caves and stay there.

We are staying the night in a 2-
star RV park here in Carlsbad but it has a pool so we are okay with that.  At least the wifi works which is more than we had last night. I didn't realize that there are only about 2 million people in all of New Mexico.  We have over 1.7 million just in San Antonio. No wonder it seems so uncrowded here.  Tomorrow we will head toward Albuquerque.  We want to go to "4 Corners" so we can say we've been to Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, AND Utah. Sweet dreams y'all.