Day 4 Route
We left Santa Fe late and made our way south. Ashley came down with a pretty bad cold in Santa Fe that only got worse as we drove. Nothing could dampen our spirits after where we went next.
The blog is now memes
Roswell New Mexico!
We spent the better part of the afternoon putzing around Roswell! It was surprisingly different than we expected, not due to any lack of kitschy alien stuff (there was actually more of that than we anticipated). We'd been told to lower our expectations for Roswell to rock bottom. Expect an alien themed truck stop. What we found was actually a nice ish town, with lots of alien stuff. Including the official Roswell Alien Museum! Which allowed dogs inside! For free.
They had a big library with essentially one section
Scary Book
Melon ACTUALLY GROWLED at these people-sized aliens, which made me finally appreciate having a dog.
We left Roswell and hurried to our motel in Carlsbad. Sick Ashley got lots of rest. We woke up late the next day and drove down to Carlsbad Caverns.
Day 5
Carlsbad caverns was hands down the coolest place we'd ever been. You arrive and a park ranger inquires about whether you've visited Europe in the last decade. If you have and you've been to any caves, you run the risk of bringing White Nose Syndrome with you, which will kill the cave's bats. Your girlfriend then asks what white nose syndrome is, and the park ranger makes jokes about being surprised she doesn't know what white nose syndrome is, seeing as how she has New Jersey license plates. Then he quickly retracts the joke which she didn't get anyway.
There are two ways into the cave. The way we chose was the path down through the natural entrance.
The natural entrance. It's a mile winding path down to the Big Room
You can also take the elevator down 750ft, which dumps you out here.
In the restaurant
In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have taken the mile long winding path with Ashley getting sicker, especially because we completely underestimated the Big Room at the bottom of the cave. They really should call it the massive room, or the mile-long-loop-trail-deep-underground room.
The Big Room
Carlsbad Caverns!
I took lots of pictures, but unsurprisingly they all look very very bad. Here's a few of the better ones.
Column
Redwood tree sized column
This is not my picture, but you get the idea
And for those of you who brought your glasses: IN 3D!
It's possible importing the 3D to the computer killed it, so try to imagine it in 3D.
We left Carlsbad and drove the ~530 miles to Austin and got in very late to our buddy Dan's place.
Stock photo
Spent a couple days in Austin, where it rained and Ashley took the opportunity to recover. Austin is a great town, reminds us of a larger Santa Cruz. Ashley noted one improvement over the west coast town however, is that we're now far enough east to start encountering Rita's Italian Ice (which greatly aided in her recovery).
This morning the four of us (Dan is with us from here on out) made the long drive from Austin to New Orleans. What was supposed to be a seven hour drive was lengthened by three hours of traffic passing through Baton Rouge because, well we're still not clear on that, but it was awful. We still managed to spend a few minutes in the French Quarter picking up food (catfish and gumbo, oh yes), which was also the perfect amount of time for Melon to try and pick a fight with a horse (pulling a newlywed couple).
Tomorrow morning is a graveyard tour, then a leisurely and uninterruptible 6 hour drive to Atlanta. During which there will be no traffic or bad weather.
More soon,
Brendan and Ashley and Dan and Melon
No comments:
Post a Comment