Roswell and Carlsbad Caverns

where we didn’t see any aliens but went 1000ft below ground and saw a different world of another kind

Driving south from Santa Fe, it took us about three hours to get to Roswell, New Mexico.

Roswell is somewhat well known for UFO sightings but we can’t claim that’s what brought us there. We looked at the map of New Mexico, saw where we wanted to go (Carlsbad), saw where we were (Santa Fe), saw how far it was from one place to the other (New Mexico is a big ‘ole state) and then picked somewhere semi-familiar in between to hold up for a night. Though we had no major expectations (a quick read up on the place told us that Roswell is only the fifth largest city in New Mexico), Santa Fe had been such a good and unexpected find that we were hopefully that we’d stumble upon something good in Roswell too.

The drive to Roswell was uneventful and the scenery along the highway was mostly unremarkable, more of that familiar desert scenery we’d seen so much of late. This sounds harsh on New Mexico but it was probably our fault for not exploring away from the highway, an unfortunate necessity when we planned to cover so much distance. We had to be economical about the sights we took in. The car was still doing great and holding up well in the high heat of the southwestern American summer.

As soon as we drove into the Roswell city limits we started seeing statues, signs and references everywhere to those familiar little green men. The main selling point of the town wasn’t too hard to guess. The town itself is mostly built up around highway 285 and it was here that we found our aptly named Budget motel…….(prepare for some negativity here, we promise it won’t last for long!).

This motel has to rank as one of the crumbiest we’d visited along the way so far. just off the highway and laid out in a few unimaginative rows like military barracks, the earth was scorched all around outside of it (ok, ok, we can’t blame the Budget motel chain for the desert climate). There was woefully dated furniture inside (can blame Budget motels for this, but ok, the clue is in the name…so we’ll give them a pass on that) and best of all, the room came with a large contingent of complimentary flies and other critters (come on guys, really?! We saw less wildlife camping in the national parks).

We got a chuckle when we realised where we’d parked the car had once been an outdoor swimming pool, long since filled in with concrete with only a brick outline remaining to show where it had once been. Judging by the rest of the facilities though, we’d probably have given the pool a miss anyway. Moaning aside, we accept that you get what you pay for and, aside from the flies, the room was mostly clean and one night isn’t such a long time. While we were exploring the quirks of the motel, other guests pulled up and the swimming pool/car park was soon filling up with cars, with the guests made up of friendly crews of Mexican painters (judging by their trucks filled with paint cans and ladders) and road trippers like us but of varying ages.

We did a quick search online for food places and were a tad disappointed with what we got back… (we’re almost done with the negativity, stick with us). We ended up begrudgingly going to a Pizza Hut down the road, the result of a tight budget, convenience and it being the best of a very bad lot. We looked up some of the attractions to go visit in the afternoon and the local UFO museum came out top of the list. It seemed like a good novel thing to do but….. we’d arrived too late in the day to visit (this was down to poor planning on our behalf but checking it out the next morning, it looked even crappier than the online reviews had hinted so we decided to give it a miss anyway).

Back at our wonderful motel that evening, we evacuated as many flies as we could and got an early night. We were in Roswell till the next day but our thoughts had already moved onto the next stop and we were looking forward to being on the road nice and early. Suffice to say, it was not the highlight of our trip but keep reading, the post gets more upbeat from here.

Though our next stop after Roswell was going to be yet another pitstop between highlights, we were first going to visit one of New Mexico’s premier tourist attractions, the Carlsbad Caverns, just a mere two and a half hour drive south which, given our driving of late, didn’t seem like all that far of a jaunt.

We won’t hold out for any suspense here, the Caverns were awesome and definitely worth visiting…. Situated in the Chihuahuan Desert, just north of the border with Mexico with a small slice of Texas in between, it has it’s own National Park status and is a World Heritage site too. The Caverns stretch to over 1000ft below ground in places and have over 30 miles of mapped passages. First explored in modern times in 1898 by a local guy called Jim White, it was decades later before others started to take notice and even longer before it was designated a national park (1930). Made up of limestone caves carved out by sulfuric acid, they’re an extremely impressive sight to say the least.

The drive up to the caverns takes you through a place called Miles City (with a grand total population of 7 in the last census, the term “city” should not be taken too literally here) and then you pass through along some unassuming and ever narrowing roads before the Carlsbad visitor centre comes into view.

Even at 11am in the morning, the carpark was already full of cars. Our car was getting plenty of looks and we soon realised it was from people noticing our out-of-town plates. A quick scan of the other cars showed up licence plates from all sorts of states but none seemed to be as far from home as our Beautiful British Columbia registration. We’d done almost 6000 km in the car since leaving Vancouver and we weren’t likely to see many plates like ours for a while to come.

We were overheating in the car from the morning temperature outside but having read up on the caverns we knew we’d need to change into heavier layers before going exploring (it’s normally a chillier 13 deg C down below). Having changed (for the cold where we were going into) and put up the sunshade in the front window of the car (for the heat where we were in), we set off to start our trip towards the centre of the earth (Fun fact: scenes for the 1950s film “Journey to the centre of the Earth” were shot underground in the Carslbad Caverns).

We toured all the free visitor centre exhibits in the visitor centre to get a feel for the place and then paid the very reasonable $10 (each) entry fee into the caverns. We decided to skip the 1.25 mile hike down to the caverns and instead opted for the elevator down with the less abled bodied falling back on the semi-plausible and semi-true excuse that we were in a rush due to big plans for the afternoon. If we’d had more time and weren’t planning a big drive later that day we would’ve went down by foot which apparently itself is a pretty cool trip.

Stepping off the elevator it only takes a few steps before you’re standing in one of the most impressive parts of the caverns, the Big Room. This is an absolutely massive underground chamber, one of the biggest in north America (and biggest by volume), covering around 8 acres. Unsurprisingly, this makes up the bulk of the self-guided tour around the caverns.

It’s fair to say that access around the caverns is pretty well developed, with smooth barriered paths throughout and with most of the self-guided tour routes being accessible even to wheelchair users. That gives some idea of the work that’s been done down there to make it as easy as possible for visitors. You do wonder what impact all this development has on the natural surroundings (there’s even a subterranean diner….though MacD’s haven’t found their way down there just yet!). But then, if it wasn’t for all that development the caverns wouldn’t be seen by as many appreciative people as it is so….. a tricky balance indeed.

We spent a few hours walking around down below. You’ll bump into the odd park ranger walking around who’s only too happy to delve into a detailed conversation on all things Cavern related and they’re very friendly about it all too.

You peer into the Bottomless pit (disclaimer: not actually bottomless!!), or look at the Rock of Ages which is an odd sight, mainly down to the way it’s lit up . The lighting down in the caverns is pretty good and you’re certainly not stumbling around in the dark. In fact, it’s so good that even though flash photography is allowed, it isn’t really needed.

After getting our fill of the subterranean world that is Carlsbad Caverns we surfaced (using the lift again) for some air and were soon missing the cool temperature down below. We got some food in the onsite canteen and bought some nicknacks in the visitor shop and then we were back in the car for the two and half hour drive to our next stop off. We had a motel room booked in a small roadside town called Fort Stockton and we were venturing into the grand old state of Texas.

There’s not a whole lot to say about the drive other than the roads got pretty bad for a while; cars became a rarity and were replaced instead by over-sized pickups and; we started to see oil fields all everywhere we looked, with their mechanical, nodding donkeys pumping away all day long.

After a quiet night in Fort Stockton, we were up and ready for a 5 hour drive to our next destination. Texas was showing us what it was like to drive through a genuine big state but we didn’t mind, we were off to Austin and looking forward to all that we’d see there.

our next destination: Austin ⇒