6 May


We headed to Carlsbad Caverns. This is a National Park with a huge visitors centre.

After getting our boots cleaned (we had been in a cave in Europe) we chose the natural entrance. This was a 1 mile walk down a zig zag pathway into the cavern 750ft below the surface. At that level we had reached the “Big Room” which covers 9 acres. The walk around the is cave is about 1.5 miles. Unlike the many other caves we have seen this one is entirely self guided. You can wander around as you wish. To say the “Big Room” is huge and spectacular would be an understatement. We spent about 2 hours exploring the cavern. The surprise at the end is that there is a lift which takes you back the 800ft to the surface. The other surprise was that it was all free. We continued on to the city of Carlsbad where we had a big shop. Our camp was Brantley Lake State Park. New Mexico is in a 3 year drought so the lake was almost dry.

7 May

We had a long drive thru monotonous country with boring straights. The only excitements were two towns. Artesia – This was a small town set up to service the oil industry. There were many small oil rigs either side of the town with an oil refinery dominating it. The other town/city (50,000) was Roswell. This is famous as the site of the cover-up of a UFO landing in July 1947. We went to the museum and research centre. Hard to say if it is real and a government cover up, or just a weather balloon and over imagination. The case for a cover up was pretty convincing at the museum however. All very interesting.

We left Roswell and drove a long rough sealed road to our camp which is at Lake Sumner State Park. This is a nice lake with some water in it!

8 May

We had a lazy morning. There are only 3 other couples camping here. Just before lunch a couple of old sisters came over to say they had just killed a large rattle snake very near their camp. The rangers arrived and we all stood around looking at the snake which was a racoon rattler. It was about 4’ long and they had whacked the head off with a spade. It is illegal to kill snakes in the state park but the rangers did not seem to mind. They told us tales of snake

bites which did not give us much confidence. The ranger gave us the rattle. It is about 3” long and very dry and it rattles. It might be a problem going thru customs in NZ! After lunch we hopped on the bikes and rode over the dam and around to the other side of the lake. It is very low. The men at our camp go out fishing in boats. They catch Bass and Wahl eye. I have not seen these fish as they release them. This has been a nice friendly stop.

9 May

The state parks are great places to stay. For $14 US you get, water, power, a fireplace and a shelter. Each camp site is well away from the next. We drove a variety of roads towards the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. We stopped at Las Vegas. Not the famous one!! Not a Casino in site. The visitor centre was very helpful and the town was very pretty. Once again we are in a state park with a dry lake. We are at 6470ft and it is quite cold and cloudy. A big disappointment was that we were planning take a scenic steam train trip in a couple of days however the brochure says that the train does not start to run until 25 May. There are plenty of good things to see in this area however.
As I write this we have just had some large spots of rain. This will be the first rain we have had since we arrived in the US.

10 May

As we had to put the gas heater on this morning we decided to head back to Las Vegas Wal-Mart for an electric fan heater. We drove increasingly narrow roads into the mountains thru beautiful forests to our State Park Camp at Coyote Creek Canyon.

We are right in the mountains at 7700ft. There was a really heavy hail shower as we had lunch which cleared quickly. We set off for a great walk on the hills over the creek from the camp returning passed several intriguing beaver dams. We had come from keeping an eye out for snakes and mountain lions a couple of days ago in the desert, to watching out for bears! It was very cold in the night and we were really glad of our new heater.

11 May

On up the narrow mountain roads to a pass at 8500ft and down into the ski resorts of Angel Fire and Eagle’s Nest. This is the third Eagle’s Nest we have been to if you count Hitler’s holiday home in Germany and Andrew’s place in Prebbleton. We drove on to Taos over another pass at 9100ft (3/4 the way up Mt Cook!) Taos is much lower and is the posh ski resort for this area. There was a great deal of traffic around as it is the weekend and Mother’s Day tomorrow. We walked around the town (a bit like Queenstown and then headed off to

Taos Pueblo, which is an Indian adobe village which has been settled for 1000 years. We paid our entry fee and took a guided tour thru the village. Some of the homes are 5 stories high made of only mud bricks. The original entries were via the roof as a defensive system. There was no cheap camping in Taos so we bit the bullet and paid $40US for a camp. This may be the norm when we get to the school holidays in a couple of weeks time. We did have internet so were able to Skype the kids.

12 May

We followed some lovely smooth picturesque roads along the foothills to our camp at Bandelier National Monument. This is an area of some cliff dwellings which we will explore tomorrow. Just out of Taos we crossed the Rio Grande. The bridge (the 2nd highest suspension bridge in the US) crosses a huge gorge 650ft below. Well worth a stop. We are also very close to Los Alamos still a “closed” area where the original nuclear bomb was designed. We have now been where the bomb was detonated and where it was designed. That may explain the pale green glow in “Ernie” at night!

13 May

The camp is up on a plateau (mesa) and the visitors centre and the cliff dwellings are in the canyon below. We drove the 2 miles into the canyon and after the usual audio visual explanation of the park we headed up the trail to the cliff dwellings. These were holes in the cliffs which the Indians haddeveloped into houses around 600 years ago. We climb up ladders to explore them. At the end of the canyon was the ceremonial cave which we climbed 140ft up 4 ladders to see. An amazing place. After lunch at “Ernie” we headed down the canyon towards the Rio Grande to see two water falls. Unfortunately the track to the 2nd fall was closed but the 1st waterfall was great and the walk was enjoyable thru different forests.

14 May

We meet a family from NZ today. They were from Masterton and had spent 3 NZ winters in the US. After dodging another snake on the road out of the camp (dodged a huge one yesterday) we drove 24 miles over another pass at over 9000ft to Jemez Falls National Forest where we are camped in beautiful Ponderosa Pines at 7900ft. After lunch we cycled down to start of the track to the falls. It was only a short walk to them and we realized that there was also a trail to McAuley hot springs. I rode back to “Ernie” to pick up togs etc and we headed off for a 2 mile down hill walk thru spectacular scenery to the spring. It was a stream which had been dammed to form two nice pools. There was no one around so we changed and climbed in.

They were about 35C and very pleasant. On our way back we meet a couple who were going the other way. The guy had a dip but the girl had seen 2 snakes and some huge spiders in the water. We were glad we meet them after our swim!

15 May

We drove down a road following the canyon with ponderosa pines and red cliffs. The canyon broadened out into the plains around Albuquerque where we are at an RV park. This was on the original Route 66 and is an old adobe road house. There is 1950’s memorabilia everywhere including a 1946 TV and a Wurlitzer organ. There are also

4 circa 1950’s caravans which you can hire. We are here because we used this address to get our number plate (tag) from Florida (1 only for the back). We still have a minor registration problem as we need to renew it in June. The 5th wheelers and RVs here are huge!!

16 May

The guy in the camp told us where was easy RV parking near the old town of Albuquerque. We did not find it but parked in a street nearby and spent a couple of hours walking around the original centre. The old plazas, houses, and patios have been converted into shops selling tourist stuff, Indian jewllery and art. We bought a route 66 number plate for the front of “Ernie”. There were flute bands playing and the whole area had a peaceful atmosphere. Before returning to our camp we shopped. The price for groceries here is fairly cheap. We think about less than 2/3 of NZ