Beauty morning here in Van Horn. Woke up around 7am and we dragged the kids to the shower block for showers - pretty decent little facilities! 8.5/10 from Amelia. With clean bodies, and some clean laundry from last night, we were ready for the day!
Jonathan made pancakes and we were off and running by 9:30am. First stop was the NAPA to try and recycle the oil he changed. No luck here so we'll have to try in El Paso. Got diesel in Van Horn and then hit Hwy 54 North.
On this highway headed north we passed Jeff Besos's Blue Origin "space tourism" location. Jonathan pulled up to the security gate surrounded by chainlink fencing. The sweet girl at the security post advised us that there was no public access to the site (which you could see a long way off in the distance down the road into the area). We were curious to have a look, but I guess we'd have to come back when we have several hundred thousands of dollars laying around. Haha.
Drove along beside the Guadaloupe Mountains National Park. High winds on this highway! Around 10:45am we took a right onto Hwy 62 towards Whites City, New Mexico. Super stunning view of El Capitan. At 11:20 (we changed time zones and it bumped us to "10:20am" NM time) we passed the Welcome to New Mexico sign! (it came and went too quickly for me to snap a pic). Google also informs us of the state line crossing with her friendly little "Welcome to New Mexico" message.
Took the NM Hwy 7 west in through Whites City and arrived at 10:45 (new time) to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. It had advised online to book ahead, but didn't accept online same-day bookings. Lucky for us it wasn't busy (at all!) today so we booked for the 11:30am entrance time slot and hustled back to the RV to have some food and get proper footwear on for walking down into the caves. We ended up spending over 5 hours at the Carlsbad Caverns!
The nature trail from the visitor centre over to the Natural Entrance was beautiful in itself. It led us over to a small crossing where we were briefed by the Ranger on the rules and safety features of the caves. After this we proceeded down the paths that lead through the large stone amphitheatre that has the mouth of the cave at the focal point. This is where you can come in the early morning and evenings to see the bats fly in and out of the cave! The brazilian free-tail bats migrate here and have been leaving for their southern home for the winter over the past few days. Apparently in the summer, 400,000 bats fly in and out nightly!! that must be quite the spectacle!!
We made our way down the paths that switchbacked into the mouth of the cave. It's huge!!! Taking some time for our eyes to adjust to the darkness, we walked slowly into the caves themselves and were immediately rewarded with stunning cave formations inside. We felt very fortunate to not be here during a peak season where I imagined the place to be very crowded and busy. We only had a handful of other people in the areas that we were. Plenty of space to walk and admire... at times not seeing anyone else in the cave spaces were in.
Here's where I am just posting waaaay to many pictures of the cave formations. It was two hours of walking paths winding down deeper and deeper (750ft below the earth's surface). Absolutely stunning. Whether you are into stalagtites and stalagmites or not, I highly recommend visiting this incredible place.
After following the whole route and walking the 1mile (?) walk around the Big Room, we caught the elevator back up to the visitor centre and the kiddos got right to work on their Junior Ranger books. They worked inside (we ordered a pricey little pizza at the cafe) and then we took a walk along the Nature path to explore the plants and learn about them from the little placards placed along the route. This filled in lots of information in the books they were working on.
We were told that if there were any bats left still to migrate, that they would be emerging from the cave around 4:30pm. We walked over to the amphitheatre and took a seat, watching the entrance to the cave in anticipation. There were strict signs and instruction from the ranger about turning off any electronic devices - phones, cameras, pagers, anything like that - to ensure nothing interferes with the bats coming out of the cave. At 4:30pm, right on cue, the swallows were circling around high above the entrance apparently waiting to get inside. Then in a magical plume, 1000's of bats emerged from the mouth of the cave spiraling their way out into the sky. It was amazing. (obviously I couln't/didn't get any video or photos of this amazingness, but I did manage a photo from the parking lot about an hour later when we were at the rig and saw another "Swarm" emerge from the distance --- you can just barely make out the thing black specks in the sky if you zoom in!)
The bats flapped and smacked into each other as they flew out over our heads. It was the coolest thing! Little furry bodies with flappy wings... 1000's of them! Total chaos! you could hear them slap against one another as they crowded to get out into the evening sky. Amazing. One of our favourite experiences.
After watching the bats fly out, the swallows that were swirling and circling above all suddenly dived bombed back into the cave. This was just as impressive as all the bats emerging! They were going mock speed back into the entrance of the cave. Looked dangerous!!! Apparently the birds all basically get out of the way of the bats (who are deeper in the cave) and then return in for the night to their roosts after the bat chaos has finished.
We were so happy that we got to see it all, as the weather was changing and the rangers said that the bats seem to know when they have to leave for the south and you never really know when the last bat flight out will occur in the fall. We were lucky to have seen them.
It was almost 5pm and we were hustling up to the Visitor Centre to get the kids' Junior Ranger books handed in before they closed. Ollie and Amelia were excited and ran ahead of us up the path. I had just said, "be careful! it's not worth running and slipping! you have a few minutes!!" when I looked up to see Oliver holding his wrist and hobbling back down the path, clearly in pain. I ran up the path to meet him and shouted if he was okay, to which he replied "No!! I hurt myself"... :( We were worried he may have broken his wrist the way he was holding his arm. Gah!!
He had fallen while running full force. The path was like a cheese grater... super rough exposed aggregate. He had wiped out so fast he hardly had time to put his hands out. After examining his wrist and mobility, we were relieved it wasn't broken. But his pinky and ring finger were badly scraped up from the path, along with his hip and elbow. He managed to get back up to the Visitor Centre and stoicly submitted his Ranger booklet for inspection to the very lovely Ranger Devon - a cool and enthusiastic ranger with a big hipster beard.
By 5:15pm we were back at the rig doctoring up Oliver's injured hand, and then it was off to Whites City, NM to an RV park in town. $25 dollars for "dry camping" in basically a parking lot.
The Whites City RV Park was kinda fun though... they had a neat storefront and lots of strange taxidermied animals, a giant bear you could post with, even a Zoltar (having just watched BIG on this trip, it was fun to see Zoltar... Ollie wanted to unplug it and see if it would grant him a wish). The area had an alien theme to it, being close to Roswell where allegedly a space craft crashed in 1947. We explored the store, chatted with the super nice young RV park owner/manager, and then found our parking space in the gravel lot and tucked in for the night.
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