Carlsbad Caverns!

The last post we told you about leaving the Texan desert and entering New Mexico.  The scenery changed dramatically once we crossed the border.  New Mexico has an abundance of hills, flora that wasn’t present in the Texan desert, and fauna such as roadrunners skittering across the empty terrain.  There was still a large amount of cacti, and we saw a lot of cattle.  The strange part for us, being from the eastern seaboard, was the cattle were all free range or what they call “open range.”  The cattle roam without boundaries in the west.  No fences keep these beasts contained.  The human population doesn’t mingle with the bovine kind.  There were also many crops being grown in the area.


We arrived at the campground, got a good dinner in our bellies, went to bed early to arise to the adventures of Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  Carlsbad Caverns is one of the most famous caves in the Americas, and is known throughout the world for its glorious underground sights.




Image via Wikipedia




















In the late 1800’s Carlsbad Caverns had become a National Monument.  But by 1930 it was honored with the status of National Park. The park encompasses more than the cave system that winds beneath the surface.  When one enters the park at the White Sands entrance, the drive takes you approximately 7 miles before reaching the entrance of the cave.  The drive has pull outs that one can park at, in order to take advantage of the many hiking trails along the way.

The hiking trails led us into some of the finer above-ground areas of the park to enjoy the beautiful plant life which grows in the Chihuahuan Desert.  Carlsbad lies not only within the boundaries of the Chihuahuan Desert, but it also lies on the edge of the Guadalupe Mountain Range.

We woke up early on July 13, 1985, ate a hearty breakfast, and then hopped on the motorcycle for our ride into the park.  We stopped along the way to enjoy the hiking trails.

Flora Outside Carlsbad Caverns

After the invigorating hike, we hopped on the motorcycle once again to gain entrance to the cave.  The cave entrance doesn’t look like much for being one of the most famous cave systems in the world, but if you happen to look up onto the roof of the cave upon entering, you may be fortunate enough to spy a few sleeping bats.  The bats sleep during the day within the cave, and a few of them perch on the roof near the entrance.

Entrance to Carlsbad Caverns

The cave is open to the public down to the 800 foot level.  We were very surprised to find a small restaurant and bathroom accommodations at the 750 foot mark.  Yes, toilets are provided way down there in the deep, dark earth.  These bathrooms actually push the waste up to the surface to be handled at the top, and disposed of into the parks sewage system.  Of course, we had to use the bathrooms, and we had to flush!  It had a hollow, echoing reverberation when you flushed upward!

There is an elevator at the 750 foot level to utilize in your return to the top at the cave entrance.  When we visited the park back in 1985 one had the choice of either taking the elevator back up to the top or walking back up out of the cave.  Today, the only option for one visiting the cave is to take the elevator back up to the top.

Upon entering the cave we were in awe of the many formation types, and the beautiful sights beneath the surface that this beautiful park has to offer, such as these oddly shaped “Cave Coral.”

Cave Coral

“Draperies” are a calcite-rich formation that is formed from the leakage of water from the roof of the cave that drips and forms these beautiful curtains within the cave.

"Drapery" Hanging from the Cave Ceiling

Yes, there’s a ladder in the back of the above picture.  They were placed throughout the cave in different locations to enable the rangers to repair lighting.  Bill had wanted to climb that ladder to explore a little more of the cave than the attendants would have allowed, but Laurie *did* convince him that it would probably end their tour immediately!

Strolling along at a leisurely pace, we came across another smaller drapery deeper within the cave.

Small "Drapery" Hanging

Flowstone formations are seen throughout the cave, and some of these peculiar formations can become rather large.

Flowstone Formations

“Soda Straw” formations are hollow, thin formations that look just like their name, and yes, they are hollow.  They are the beginning stages of what are called stalactites.  Caves are known to have stalactites, which hang tight to the ceiling of the cave.  Get it?  StalacTITES hang TIGHT to the ceiling; whereas stalagMITES MIGHT reach the ceiling. Those are two important terms that one should always remember while visiting a cave.  The cave verbiage we learned from all our spelunking,  can become a language all of its own!

"Soda Straws" Hanging from the Cave Ceiling

Within the Green Lake Room of the cave there lies a little green malachite-colored pool in the corner of the room.  In the 1940’s the military tested the feasibility of Carlsbad Caverns as a nuclear fallout shelter by watching the little green pool within the Green Lake Room during a nuclear bomb test.  Scientist watched for ripples to appear in the pond when the bomb test took place.  Interestingly, none appeared!

Small Pool of Water

Columns appear when stalactites merge with stalagmites.  You might want to remember the terminology as we might have a pop quiz at the end of this post! Of course, we’re just kidding!

"Roman Columns" Formation

The Big Room or The Hall of the Giants is the largest chamber (covers over 8 acres) in Carlsbad Caverns.  This room is the 3^rd largest cave chamber in the Americas and the 7^th largest room in the world.  Some very interesting formations lie within The Big Room.

More Formations

And more formations within the cave.

And More Formations

Here’s another view of some of the formations that lie within The Big Room.

Beautiful Formation!

Here’s another interesting formation that was coming up from the floor of the cave.

Formation Coming Up from the Cave Floor

Upon exiting the cave, we took a picture of the surrounding area from the parking lot!  It was definitely a good feeling to leave the bowels of the earth and to be back up on the surface!

View from Parking Lot of Carlsbad Caverns

We hope you enjoyed the tour of Carlsbad Caverns.  It is one of the most interesting caves that we visited throughout our travels.

Join us next time as we tell you about the grand happening at the cave entrance every evening at dusk, and our visit to the Living Desert State Park.

The Big State of Texas, Caving, and the Desert!

We arrived at our sister-in-law’s house on a hot, humid day.  How did we remember that it was hot and humid?  Every day in Texas is hot and humid when you get into the month of July!  When you just stand in the heat of Texas, you can feel the drops of humidity fall off your fingertips onto your shoes!  It’s like hitting a brick wall when you leave any location with air conditioning.

Our sister-in-law was in the process of building a beautiful, grand home near the Galveston Bay!  It was almost finished, but not quite!  The inside was livable, but it was still a work in progress.

Judy's Home in Texas

We parked our little 19 1/2 foot home right next to her big, grand home!

Our Little Home Parked Next to the Grand Home

We visited with Judy for a few days, but before we left we just had to swim in Galveston Bay!  We just had to!  Judy warned us that there had been a major oil spill in the area about a year before on July 30, 1984 which spilled 65, 500 gallons of crude into the bay near Louisiana.  The oil traveled smack dab into the very beach we wanted to go to which was on Galveston Island.

Upon arriving at the beach, we noticed a few articles of debris that had spotty, black, oily splotches, but it didn’t concern us.  It was the only time during our trip that we were going to be in the Galveston Bay.  We decided to chance it!  Hey, there were other swimmers enjoying the water, so we figured it couldn’t be too bad!

Bill waded out into the water…

Bill in the Oily Water at Galveston Island

He wore flip flops as Judy had also warned us that this particular area of Galveston Bay was covered with rocks and sharp stones.  While in the water, Bill didn’t see any oil, he didn’t feel any oil, heck, there’s no oil in this bay.

Then he promptly walked out of the water, and gasp!  His flip flops were covered in oil!  They were black as coal, and he ended up throwing them into the garbage can right there on the beach!

Laurie, being the more hesitant  and cautious of the two, decided to stay real close to shore.  She didn’t venture out into the oil field!

Cautious Laurie at Galveston Bay

The remainder of the day, we soaked up some rays and started on our tans.  Being from New York, we had no tan, and we really wanted to take advantage of the beautiful day!

We stayed in Bacliff, Texas for a few more days, then we set out on July 11, 1985 to travel across the big, wide-open state of Texas.  Upon leaving the Houston area, we were caught in a torrential downpour (once again).  We really started getting paranoid about taking this storm with us all the way to California.

When we arrived in New Braunfels, Texas around noon time we stopped to visit the Natural Bridge Caverns.  Natural Bridge Caverns was discovered in 1960 by a small group of college students from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio.  The cave is celebrating it’s 50th year since it’s discovery this year in 2010.  How amazing when you think we visited it 25 years ago, only half the time since it’s discovery!

Natural Bridge Caverns is a living cavern.  A living cavern is one where there is a constant drip of water which sustains the many formations within the cave.  The constant water supply also means that the formations are ever changing.  Natural Bridge Caverns has a guided tour that offers a dazzling sight of lustrous colors and formations throughout.

The cave was named in honor of the majestic (we do seem to like that word, don’t we) natural limestone bridge that spans the entrance of the cave.

Natural Limestone Bridge

Inside the cave, the lighting wasn’t always the best; and you have to remember this was 1985 so we really were limited with our little 35 mm Pentax camera.

The different areas of the cave have some very appropriate names.  This particular picture shows the area dubbed, “The Castle of The White Giants.”

Bill Among the Giants

The Castle of the White Giants

The area of the cave named “The Broom Closet” had a lot of very interesting formations, including many of these strips that look like bacon.  In fact, they call them “Bacon Strips.”

Bacon Strip

 
Other really impressive formations were in ‘The Broom Closet” too!

Formation in the Broom Closet

More of the Broom Closet

And some more unique formations throughout the cave!

Unique Formation

At the time we visited Natural Bridge Caverns there was a lot of water that covered some of the walkways.  Unfortunately, due to the excess water we were unable to see the entire cave, but we did get see most of it.

Here’s an example of some of the pools of water that had developed within the cave.

Room Partially Under Water

When we finally ended our tour of Natural Bridge Cavern, we started out traveling toward New Mexico to an even bigger and better cavern!

But before we could reach the beautiful state of New Mexico, we had to drive miles and miles and more endless miles across the Texas desert!  We saw tumble weed.  We saw road runners.  We saw cactus.  We saw a lot of this:

Texas Desert

Then we drove through some more of the Texan desert, and saw some more of this:

More Desert

Finally, in the middle of the Texan Desert we stopped at a little state park named the Lady Bird Johnson State Park.  What appeared to be in the desert somehow smelled very much like a cow pasture.  In fact we believe that the Lady Bird Johnson State Park was indeed a cow pasture.  We could hear cow, we could definitely smell cow, and we were getting eaten alive by the biggest mosquitoes that we’d ever seen before!  Of course, Texans always brag they do every thing bigger and better in Texas, and we know for a fact that they grow bigger, meaner bugs in Texas (most especially at the Lady Bird Johnson State Park) than anywhere else that we visited along our travels.

We really didn’t mind the bugs, the smell, or the heat at that point as we were so tired; we just went straight to bed.

We hope you enjoyed our travels through Texas.  Come join us next time as we enter New Mexico.  No one answered our question from last time as to what famous cave lies within New Mexico – so you’ll need to stay tuned until next time to find out the answer as we travel along down the road in our home on wheels.

Leaving Florida

While visiting Florida, we spent days gathered with family, went out to eat, and swam in Laurie’s aunt and uncle’s pool. They were lazy, hazy days, but we really enjoyed them.

One particular meal that we ate out was at a place called Duff’s Smorgasbord! Laurie’s grandparent’s all time favorite place to eat out was Duff’s. They had a plethora of different dishes for everyone to pig out on!! Bill often calls it “putting the feed bag on.” Anyway, we did want to mention that although Duff’s Smorgasbord Franchise did go out of business, the wide selection of food they offered was done so at the miraculously, cheap price of $3.75 for adults back in 1985. Can we just tell you that the place was packed, the food was good, and the grandparents paid! You couldn’t ask for anything more than that!

But getting back to our travels, we left Sebring, Florida at 2:20 a.m. on Saturday, July 6, 1985 to travel to Panama City, Florida.  By driving at night we found that it eased our travel days considerably. We’d go to bed, get 3 – 5 hours of sleep (hey, remember, we were kids, and could function on that little bit of sleep), then drive throughout the night.

There were many advantages to traveling this way. First, we wouldn’t be traveling during the hottest part of the day in the middle of the deep south. Secondly, we found that not being able to drive much over 55 mph, it was easier to drive when the traffic was thin. Thirdly, we would usually arrive at our destination about mid-morning; therefore, allowing us the entire day to go sightseeing.

On our way to Panama City, we drove right through the Apalachicola National Forest. It had appeared to have recently had a bad fire in the area. We often drove through National Forests on our travels. We  routed ourselves so we could see the best scenery while traveling across the country.

This particular day we crossed into the Central Time Zone. We arrived at Panama City at approximately 10:30 a.m. We checked into the campsite, donned our bathing gear, grabbed our beach towels, and ran for the Gulf of Mexico. We had to hurry as the clouds looked mighty dark and gray. We got to swim in the Gulf for about 15 minutes, then we ran back to the campground just in time to prevent getting drenched or hit by lightening.

We started to realize in the summer Florida had daily thunder storms, and they were usually pretty strong ones. But 30 minutes later the sun came out, and it was a beautiful evening. Here’s a couple of old postcards that we kept all these years of Panama City Beach.

On July 7, 1985 we left Panama City, Florida at 3:30 a.m. to arrive in Lafayette, Louisiana after traveling 400 miles.  The old motor home seemed to be humming right along with no overheating problems, nor did the clutch give us any more scares!

We arrived in Lafayette, Louisiana to be faced with yet another storm.  Bill made the statement, “We’ll probably take this storm all the way to California with us.”  On our way to Louisiana we crossed the Mississippi River.

Photo from Freefoto.com

Photo from Freefoto.com

The next day we traveled from Lafayette, Louisiana to Beaumont, Texas in order to stay a few days with our dear sister-in-law.  Beaumont is a suburb of Houston, but it’s on the Galveston Bay!

Join us next time as we tell you about our brief visit in Beaumont (and the nasties we experienced swimming in Galveston Bay), then traveling on across the BIG state of Texas!  Yes, we drove across the entire state of Texas, but it wasn’t boring!  We visited a beautiful cavern, which we’ll document next time followed by arriving in New Mexico!

Do you all know what famous cave is in New Mexico?  Go ahead, guess!  We bet someone knows!

When we arrived in New Mexico the following conversation took place:

“Bill,It finally feels like we’re really starting our trip!”

“Yes, my dear Laurie, it does!”

Until next time!

The Wonderful World of Disney – Or Not!

If you read our last post, you’ll know that this particular post is mostly about our visit to Disney!

But first, we thought it would be good to let you know about the condition of the RV. Laurie’s aunt and uncle lived very close to her grandparents (same town), and they told us of their mechanic. Laurie’s uncle said he was very good, and he was! He fixed the clutch. He also told us that he didn’t think we were having any overheating problems, but that the dummy light was defective or overly sensitive. He installed a new gadget (that’s what Laurie called it) to the dashboard that gave a read out of the exact temperature that the engine was running at. With the new “gadget” we could tell if the engine was overheating or not. What a relief!

On July 2, 1985, we planned to visit Disney.  We got up early.  We left at 7:45 a.m. on the motorcycle and traveled  over 70 miles up the highway.  The day was hot, hot, hot AND humid. The ride up to Disney wasn’t too bad. One has a tendency to generate their own wind chill factor while riding a motorcycle, don’t you know!  We hadn’t started to feel the heat yet!

Upon entering the park, we were a bit overwhelmed by all that there was to do.  What to do first?  What to do next?  What would we enjoy the most?  All the typical questions that a first timer has while visiting Disney.

First, we went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.  This was before the days of Jack Sparrow, but that was the name of the ride!  In fact, we found this ride to be a very good run, and we only waited 45 minutes to get on!

This was before Disney had implemented RideMax or FASTPASS.  Basically, RideMax and FASTPASS estimate how long your wait for a particular ride will be through a computerized system.  Instead of wasting time in line, the system enables you to go enjoy different areas of the park while you’re “waiting.”  In 1985 the World of the Magic Kingdom hadn’t dreamt up this wonderful feature, so you had to do it the old-fashioned way – wait in line!  Wait, then wait some more, then fall asleep on your feet in the heat, then wake up to wait more before you could actually go through the magical turnstile to the ride.

But we felt the 45 minute wait was well worth it for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.  Unfortunately, we were so excited to actually be experiencing a ride, that we really forgot about taking out the camera and getting pictures.  In fact, we only got this one of the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Next on the agenda was to head over to the African Safari exhibit ride.  Do they even have these rides anymore at Disney World?  We don’t know, we only made one visit to the Magical Kingdom ever!  And we don’t believe we’ll ever go back again!

The African Safari exhibit was quite interesting as we got to ride in a rather sturdy float boat through the entire exhibit.  It was all water generated, and we really didn’t mind being on the water as it was already starting to get unbearably hot!  Bill remembered to pull out the camera and he snapped lots of pictures!

Then suddenly the reedy branches parted and out popped this creature with a mighty trumpeting roar!

Near the end of our boat ride we got to see this mighty beast yawning his large jaw open and shut.

After the African Safari ride, we ventured over to a sight seeing area of Disney World.  There was a rather large grotto-type formation that you could walk by, get your picture taken near, or ride a riverboat past.

We quickly thought what a wonderful place to rest out of the hot sun and scorching heat.  We practically ran to the nearest cave opening, burst in through the cave entryway to be suddenly confronted with the most horrible stench of human urine that anyone could imagine.  Apparently there weren’t many public bathrooms in that area of the park, because many had decided to use the cool, dark enclosure of the cave as a bathroom.

But Bill urged Laurie to stand in the entryway without plugging her nose, and snapped a picture.

To this day Laurie insists that whenever she  looks at this particular photo, she’s sure she’s smelling a dirty, sweaty toilet!

Next we had lunch.  It was very expensive.  We ended up paying over $20 for a scanty meal.  You have to remember $20 would most likely feed us both for a whole week back in 1985.  We each had a burger only, then we bought a drink from a different stand, because the stand where we bought burgers didn’t sell drinks.  The drink stand offered chintzy ice-type drinks with blueberry, strawberry, or grape flavorings, but they did put a little toothpick umbrella thingy in the cup.  Perhaps that’s why they cost $5 each!

There were two people in front of us in line for the food, but they appeared to be together.  It seemed like a very long wait, when suddenly the servers started putting up mountains of food onto the counter.  Out of nowhere people were coming up to the booth to collect their food.  That’s when we realized that the two people in front of us had ordered about 20 meals!  We didn’t notice how much their bill was, but we bet it was humongous!

Meanwhile there was a man who noticed the almost 20 people randomly grabbing food off the counter, and he assumed they were budging ahead in line.  He had on a cute little wide-brimmed straw hat with his rather large ears sticking out from underneath.  He had large coke-bottle type glasses (don’t laugh, Laurie’s eyeglass prescription is of the coke-bottle type too), and he was utilizing his high-pitched nasally screech to pr0claim, “Hey, Hey, Hey!”  We really wish you could hear us imitating this man.  Twenty five years later,  whenever we hear someone yell, “Hey, Hey Hey!” we smile and  think of this man!  He’s imprinted upon our minds forever!

After almost an hour of waiting for our food, then 5 minutes of actual eating, we were back in the crowds looking for a great ride to go on.

Since most rides had lines of 2 hours or more, we had decided to find Space Mountain, which was the newest and greatest attraction that year at Disney.  We would ride it, then head on back to our home on wheels.  Once we located Space Mountain, we realized the line looked to be about a 3 hours wait!  What was a person to do!  We stood in line for over 3 hours!  In great anticipation we had edged our way up to the front of the line!  There were exactly 3 people in line ahead of us!  We knew we were going to be on the very next run of the biggest and best attraction!

But unexpectedly an attendant came to the front of the line that we were standing in, and stated, “Sorry folks, the ride has broken down, and we’re shutting it down for the day.”

By this time, we were exhausted from the heat.  We were fed up with the fact that we had been at Disney for a good 10 hour day, and had accomplished a total of 3 rides, and a crappy, expensive meal!  So we looked for a cool spot to rest our weary feet.  We found a small patio with umbrellas to shield us from the hot sun.  We rested for a little bit, when we got the really bright idea to go visit the castle.  The castle has four large awnings going into it (or at least it did then).  Upon entering you found yourself in a wide open space beneath the concave roof of the castle.  Or at least that was the way it was supposed to be.

We walked swiftly over to the castle, and it seemed as if we were sucked into it like a big vacuum.  It just sucked us and about 300 other people into a space that truly looked to be about 10 feet by 20 feet.  A lady with a stroller ran over Bill’s foot about 15 times on the way into the building.  We were unable to turn around to try to exit the castle due to the crowd behind us.  Plus the lady with the stroller was one determined lady!  She was going to get into that castle with her twins (yeah, it was a double stroller) if it was the last thing she did.

Being pushed into the dark, dreary castle by the crowd was not a fun thing, because we could sense that all four entryways were experiencing the same thing.  What happened was a huge human traffic jam of great proportions!  Now you may be thinking that we’re just exaggerating this piece of history to make it more interesting, but honest injun!  It happened just this way!  We could see that all four entryways had been entered by such a large crowd at the exact same moment that everyone met in the middle!  No one could move forward due to looking someone square in the eye who had entered from one of the other entryways.  There was no going backwards as there were people pushing, pushing us all forward trying to get into the middle of the traffic jam!

Finally, a Disney employee came along with a bull horn and started directing the human traffic out.  Bill’s foot was run over another 15 times by the stroller lady as we all inched our way backwards out of the castle!


By this time, we were whupped, tired and not very impressed with Disney.  It was around 8 p.m. and we had seriously discussed heading on back to Sebring, when……suddenly, Florida did it’s favorite thing!  It poured buckets from the sky!  Thunder was roaring, and lightening was putting on a pretty good show shooting across the sky!  Buckets and buckets later, we were starting to become concerned if we would be able to leave this nightmare at all!  Remember we were riding a motorcycle.  One thing you never do (if you want to live) is ride a motorcycle in the rain!

So a few hours later, and a few very expensive , plastic, rain ponchos later, we headed on back to our RV.  We arrived back at 1:00 a.m and we happily plopped ourselves into bed!

We realize that Disney World is not the same place that we visited 25 years ago, but in explaining to our son our impression of Disney World, Bill stated, “It was….it was…Mickey Mouse!”  Yes, it was very much a Mickey Mouse kind of outfit back then.

Come visit again soon as we tell you of our adventures at Panama City (which was a much more happier time than Disney – we promise!), and beyond!