Today marks the 100th anniversary of the American National Parks system so it’s appropriate ( but totally coincidental!) that today we planned to visit Carlsbad National Park. But sometimes plans go awry…
We slept in a little later than usual this morning, and didn’t leave the hotel till after 9. It was a short drive to the first stop of the day…Walmart! We needed to stock up on snacks to sustain us between our substantial breakfast and dinner, we don’t bother with lunch on our road trips.
Then it was only a fifteen minute drive north to see The remains of Fort Phantom Hill, a post on the Clear Fork of the Brazos. It was established in 1851 to divide some control of the wild characters that were streaming through Texas heading for the California Gold Rush. It remained as an outpost during the Civil War.
I’d been surprised yesterday at just how green the landscape was between Dallas and Abilene. However as we headed west today it became progressively drier and scrubbier. The land is very flat and is perfect for the huge wind farms we passed.
Eventually we crossed into New Mexico, the second state for this trip but not a new one for us. We had visited this area in 2012.
In Carlsbad our first stop was the Pecos River Flume. It’s an irrigation structure which channels the river over itself!
Originally we had planned to visit Carlsbad Caverns in the late afternoon and hike down through the natural entrance to the main cave, then we would stay on to watch the nightly bat flight when thousands of bats fly out of the cave at twilight to forage and play. However, when we checked the information about the Natural Entrance hike it’s suggested for those in “good physical condition” and unfortunately my hamstrings put me out of that category at present. The other tour, the “Big Room” is more sedate but we had already done that walk on our previous visit to Carlsbad in 2012. So we decided to just drive up to the caverns for the evening “Bat Program” after an early dinner. The program is a talk by park rangers in a rocky amphitheater built above the natural entrance followed by the bat flight itself ( apparently they are very predictable!)
The 30 minute drive is flat for most of the way but then you wind up through rocky canyons to the top of the peak where the National park Information Center sits.
We arrived in plenty of time only to learn that due to expected thunderstorms the Bat Program had been cancelled for the evening and the park was closing early. They were worried about flash floods. Such a disappointment!
However the drive wasn’t totally wasted as we had the pleasure of seeing a couple of friendly green guys at a nearby giftshop…
To add to our glitches….our newly acquired GMC Terrain ( which we swapped last night for the dodgy Jeep) has developed a bug in its “infotainment” system screen. We’re not sure but it may prevent Neil from playing his carefully selected themed music collection for the trip… ( although he says we will just have to go to Walmart and buy some small iPhone speakers, so it looks like there’s no escaping the hours…and hours… and hours of country music in his phone!)