May 30-31st

Monday 30^th

We left around 9:00 and found a place to dump the sewage and headed out to Carlsbad . We stopped at the Smokey B ear monument but didn’t’ go in. Apparently smokey the bear was a real baby bear that was rescued from a burning tree in the Lincoln Nation Forrest. We also saw jail where Billy the Kid was . We stopped for lunch at a little roadside picnic area. We didn’t see anyone else around except ‘Bert” a bue heeler who begged for food off our table. He stole a couple sandwiches but wouldn’t actually eat anything. When he managed to steal something he’d take a couple bites and spit it out. Between the dog and the wind it was a lunch we were happy to be done with. We rolled into Roswell around 4:00 and had just enough time to hit the Alien museum. I guess the VLA must have called them in because there were aliens everywhere. It was fun to see the whole alien theme across Rosewell. Even the McDonalds was “out of this world”.

We got to the Carlsbad Koa in just enough time to have dinner and take a quick swim. Tue Koa was really nice and we slept great. The next morning I got up and went for a quick run then Mark and I headed off to check out the Lake. Brantley lake was only about 1 mile away. We found a little spot and went back for everyone else. We loaded up in the back of Mark’s truck and went swimming for the morning. The lake was a bit cold and really muddy but after being in for a few minutes you warmed right up and it didn’t’ take much to swim past all the mud and grass. It was really nice. We went back to the Koa, got cleaned up and headed to Carlsbad.

The Caverns were amazing. I didn’t expect anything so huge. I love it. We all walked down the natural path and saw the Big room. It was filled with stalagmites, stalagmites and popcorn. In fact it looked a lot like goblin valley with popcorn all over the “goblins’. We saw the bottomless pit but much to Dallin’s dismay we missed the Mystery sound. The cave was awesome, in a way it was a lot like snorkeling. There was whole other world right there under you. It was pretty awesome to see what is lying under the surface of the earth. After the caverns we watched a movie on caves and then went to a ranger presentation on bats. We went back to our RV and had some dinner. The wind was really bad so we all had to c ram in the RV and try to eat. It was pretty tight. We then headed back down to the caves to watch the bats fly out. We were a bit late and on the way down we passed some guys who said the bats had already flown. They said there was only about 20 bats and that was all there would probably be. We were kind of bummed but decided to go ahead and go down and check it out. The Ranger was still doing her little spill when we got down to the cave opening where there are benches set up so you can sit and watch the bats. They said they didn’t think anymore would come out but you never know. They have microphones down in the caves so we could hear what’s happening. We started hearing some chirping and then hundreds of bats started coming out. It really impressive. Apparently there are tens of thousands of bats later in the year but at that time they still weren’t back from their Mexican migration. It was definitely an amazing sight – I am glad we stayed to see it. We went back to the Koa and watched Rv. We got to bed around midnight and once again we slept great.