Day 30: Roadside to RV Park

All through the night our RV rattled whenever a truck zoomed past us as we slept on the side of the highway. In the light of day, we realized that our rest stop was also a picnic stop, but despite having 4 massive garbage bins, the area was littered with dozens of empty alcohol bottles. When the rubbish bins are right there, there really is no excuse for people to litter!

We drove to Guadalupe Mountains National Park but it seemed that Texas didn’t want us to stay. Despite getting there around 10am, there was no parking, which was completely contrary to a recent news article we’d read that Guadalupe was one of the least visited parks in the US! 

Carlsbad Caverns

So we continued on to Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico, which was also very busy, but we fortunately found a spot relatively quickly as someone was leaving in their 40+ foot motorhome. Carlsbad Caverns is home to incredible, huge and breathtaking caverns! The caverns are a network of more than 119 caves underneath the Chihuahuan Desert, filled with subterranean chambers and cave formations, with a temperature of around 13 degrees Celsius (56 degrees Fahrenheit) year-round.

Known as one of the best preserved and most accessible cave complexes in the world. It started forming about 265 million years ago in what was once a reef, and its most famous spot is The Big Room, which is about 1.2 kilometers long (about 4,000 feet long) and 190.5 meters (625 feet) wide and 77 meters (255 feet) high. It’s a 2 km (1.25 mile) easy paved walk, and to get in, you need to schedule a timed entry ticket for a ranger-led or self-guided tour. There’s an option to hike down or use the elevator that goes down 230 meters (755 feet), and if  you hike down you can also walk through the Natural Entrance Route, which is also 2 km (1.25 mile) but apparently a bit more strenuous compared to The Big Room. 

In the Big Room we saw some incredible features with names like the Bottomless Pit (which is deep, but does have a bottom!), the Giant Dome, Rock of Ages, Doll Theater, Silent Bell, and more. We saw stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, draperies, columns, popcorn features, helictites, cave pearls, and other fascinating cave features. We weren’t there in season as they were still in Mexico, but another attraction at Carlsbad Caverns is seeing the Brazilian free-tailed bats emerge from the cave at dusk from late May through October; they fly about half a mile each day to exit.

We could have stayed there for longer (or at least Lisette could have), to continue studying the cave formations. Like clouds or constellations, it was cool to look at the formations and see some look like faces, drapes, and even Buddha statues! 

Michael can get a bit claustrophobic so he’d taken some medication to help feel less anxious in the caves, but as we were driving after lunch, this, plus a lack of sleep meant that he nodded off for a second while driving, and our RV swerved out of the lane to the shoulder! Luckily he woke up as it happened, but it was scary and a clear sign that he needed to rest before we continued on.

Roswell

We did make it to the town of Roswell, famous for being a reported UFO crash site and countless conspiracy theories. We stayed at an RV park for the night at the city limits. While we love boondocking and especially being able to camp out in places with minimal light pollution to fully admire the stars and night sky, it can also be nice to stay at an RV park that’s clean, has good amenities, has quiet neighbors, and where we can do laundry and not have to worry as much about rationing water (and can dump our black and grey water tanks). Based on how we’re tracking, we’ll probably check into an RV park about once a week or so.

Route Map