White Sands & Carlsbad

After spending the night in Las Cruces, we traveled east, through the White Sands Missile Range, past, but not stopping at the Trinity Site, then on to the White Sands National Monument.  The sand here is truly white!  And powdery, on your shoes, on the carpet, on the tile, everywhere.  Heaven help us if the wind was blowing!

Interesting, look over Cathy’s shoulder.  Yes, that is a snow-capped peak in the Rockies behind her!

The sand, composed of gypsum, goes on for miles.  There are backpacking trails here, but this is not my desire to backpack and overnight in this powder.  We took several trails into the dunes.  The Visitor Center has sleds for sale and evidently, in the summer, it is very popular to sled down the dunes here.  The parking lots are immense but we were here basically by ourselves this time of year.

After leaving White Sands, we turned eastward towards Ruidoso Downs, dropping down through Roswell then turning south to Carlsbad. Our motor home alerted us to a low fuel situation before Roswell but we could not find fuel easily there and continued on to Carlsbad.  We arrived on fumes but were able to fill our tank. We overnighted in Carlsbad then made the run to the caverns, about 20 miles down the road and up to the top of the ridge in the morning.  It was an unusually sunny day, at least for us on this trip.

We opted for the walk down to the cavern (most take the elevator) and about a mile after entering  this steep walkway down, down, down, we made it to the main part of the caverns, 750 feet below the surface.

I will not even attempt to give the names of these features, as many are unnamed.  It was far too dark to write anything down and sometimes even difficult to see the pathway.

This wire ladder was built by Jim White, a cave guide for the National Geographic Society in 1924, to explore the Lower Cave.  The caves became a National Monument in 1923 and a National Park in 1930.  The climbers felt uneasy, to say the least on this makeshift apparatus, dangling 90 feet above the unlit floor.

Some unnamed patterns in the rock on an ancient pond bed.

An underground pond.  No fishing here!

We came across these volunteers dusting for lint on the rocks near the pathway.  They were meticulous, with their headlamps, collection bags and myriad of brushes.  We decided to ride UP the elevator on the way out, accompanied by several of these linters.  Luckily, I was wearing microfiber!