Carlsbad Caverns NP & Guadalupe Mountains NP

Our next planned stop for the first week of April was going to be boondocking in southeast New Mexico, right between Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks. But, a couple of days beforehand we saw that temperatures were going to be ~10 degrees higher than we expected. Being in the desert in the high 80s didn’t sound fun so we scrambled to find an alternative spot. We ended up at Brantley Lake State Park. I hope we aren’t getting weak at boondocking.

Brantley Lake was our first New Mexico State Park and we loved it. We had water and electric hookups for $14/day and the desert was blooming.

It did mean that we had a further commute, so we were only able to go to each park once on days off work.

Both National Parks, located 45 min apart, exist to preserve the world’s best example of a Permian-age fossil reef that formed when this area was covered by a sea. The sea has been replaced with the Chihuahuan Desert and the reef turned into limestone and was uplifted in a mountain-building event that created the Guadalupe Mountains. Going inside Carlsbad Caverns is like going inside a part of the reef that has been dissolved over the years with slightly acidic dripping water.

We had tickets for a ranger-led “King’s Palace” tour at Carlsbad Caverns, which entailed getting to spend 90 minutes in otherwise closed chambers. You have to get these tickets the moment they become available and it’s worth planning ahead. The tour didn’t have any unique features that weren’t also present in the self-guided section, but it was very enjoyable to experience the rooms without the usual national park crowds.

After an above-ground lunch, we headed back into the cavern via the natural entrance to explore the “Big Room”.

From the end of April-October, you can watch the night flight of the bats that call Carlsbad Caverns their summer home. They come and go through this natural entrance. Humans also have the option of an elevator, which we took for our morning tour. It’s a 750ft descent into the cavern.

The next day we back went back to Texas to visit Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We decided to do a short hike to Devil’s Hall. This hike had some fun rock scrambling to a small canyon. We sort of regretted not pushing ourselves to hike to Guadalupe Peak, the highest elevation in Texas at 8751ft. We have definitely spent too much time this winter sitting on the beach!

Next, we spend a month at an Albuquerque RV Park so that I could make a visit home to North Carolina. And now we are getting ready to take a trip that involves an airplane AND a campervan!