Great Western Inn Carlsbad

... Carlsbad Carverns. <br><br>It&#8217;s with a bit of trepidation that we approach the carverns &#8211; this is MB&#8217;s first national park, and one of many on our trip. So if she&#8217;s not happy here, we may have made a big mistake. However, the Caves don&#8217;t disappoint. We spent nearly half a day 800 feet below the ground exploring just a fraction of the 180 miles underground. The Forest Service has lit the ...

... the woods, doves in the trees calling, and everyone's friendly dogs off leash. <br>- Explored the Whole Foods flagship store! All 80,000 square feet of it! It was intense. It all started with a four-story parking garage - just for it. We went on to be amazed by the facts that they had a vegan/raw foodbar and deli, a sushi bar, a candy bar, a nut bar, a wine bar, a walk-in beer cooler, a gelato bar (we had panna cotta and mocha ...

... narrow passage. The inner cave was fabulous, as was the history and geology lesson. The gal rangers that lead us were incredible. I would return and do it again in a heartbeat. Makes Disneyland seem like, well, Disneyland. This was the real thing. Each tour that is guided by rangers includes a few minutes of black out. Everyone turns their lights out and experiences true darkness. There is no light that far down ...

After getting out of the horrible state of Texas we found ourselves navigating on a very straight road that seemed to lead nowhere but in fact lead to Carlsbad. Carlsbad the desert, same thing. We got to our camping site which was quite cheap, $18.95 and found ourselves struggling to find a tent site with an electrical unit stationed at it. The nice young red neck boy with frosted tips at the counter informed us he would give us an RV site with a hookup no extra charge ...

... even more spectacular than we had expected them to be. <br><br>We were underground for around two hours and really noticed the change in temperature when we emerged again. On our way back to the camp site we stopped off at Sonic in Carlsbad for an ice cream only to be told that they had sold out! Nightmare! Luckily McDonalds was next door so we had to resort to McFlurrys instead. Feeling slightly cooler, we ...

... into the Big Room, which together take about 3-4 hours. If you are feeling adventurous, you can tour other caves with a guide in limited groups and get a taste for spelunking. Wild caving also is available for those who want to spend 4 hours underground climbing and crawling around in muck and squeezing through tight tunnels. While we are adventurous by nature, I am partial to open spaces, so we did the Natural Entrance and Big Room tours. We took ...

... the Caverns. It is definitely a natural wonder of the world. Do not rush through but take the time to really see them. Another early morning tomorrow. Drive and tour day. To Roswell to visit the UFO Museum and then up, and up, and almost over the continental divide. Yesterday, at the McDonald Observatory my sign post indicated that I should make a stop and see the Very Large Array Radio Telescope (VLA) on the Plains of San Agustin. More on the VLA tomorrow.

Today Kristen and I traveled 30 minutes to the entrance of Carlsbad Caverns. Neither of us had been to this amazing cave system and I was looking forward to it as one of the main highlights of the trip. We took the one hour self-guided tour of the natural entrance and then we walked through only half of the Big Room which is also self-guided. We saw incredible stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, flow stones, draperies ...

We finally started our RV Odyssey on a cold rainy Tuesday, with a plan to follow Interstate Hwy 10 most all the way across the southern States of America. From Oxnard we crossed Southern California, thru the Palm Springs area, with all the windmills as far as you can see. We spent the first night in Blythe, CA. There is nothing interesting about Blythe, it was just on the way. In fact, when I was escorting tours, many moons ago, if we stopped there, in the summer heat, we ...