Year 9 Day 4

What does one do when the temps are reaching 104 daily and there are no trees in sight? Head underground. A lovely (if you like Yucca bush) drive out of El Paso through another border checkpoint (they may be getting suspicious), took us east to Carlsbad Caverns. As you drive through the desert you see a small mountain range jutting up from the flat landscape. Atop this sits a visitor center and the entrance to some of the coolest caves I have ever seen, literally and figuratively.

Descending into the mouth of the cave takes almost an hour. Down, down, down to a total of 80 stories underground. Switchback paths take you into the hole. At the opening birds fly in and out by the hundreds. So many that the ground is covered in bird poopies and it flies through the sky. Not the coolest thing to walk through, but it was neat to see so many birds in flight. Once the sun cant reach any further the air starts to cool and your eyes start to adjust to the darkness. There you find stalagmites (from the ground up) and stalactites (from the ceiling down) formations in all shapes and sizes. Around each bend and through each portal the beauty just gets better. What a way to spend 3 hours before you even now it. If you ever get a chance, go here. Its really out of the way, but its worth every minute. Its hard to imagine how long these formations took to grow. The super speedy elevator took us from 725 feet below ground to ground level in 1 minute. Kinda spooky.

More Yucca bush later, we arrived in Roswell, NM. Aliens! I could see aliens landing here. There is corn, weird desert people and lots of open space. We caught a few pictures with some, but will keep an eye on the sky tonight to see if anything surfaces. It was July 1947 when the crash happened on a farm north of here. Who knows...it could happen.

Rest tonight and then back into Texas tomorrow.

Until then Ill be alien hunting. :-)