Addendum on the Gage Hotel

My room is cute, rustic and very Texas in its decorations. Including a skull, I think big horn sheep, hanging on the wall above my bed. Well, I've been a little feverish and having strange dreams cuz of this cold, and it just flipped me out. Didn't see how I could sleep under it last night. So I took it down and gave it a decent burial under a towel in the corner for the night. Just put it back up so the maids won't think I'm too weird.

I'm about to check out and head to big bend - the forecast for today is 85 and sunny! Yeah!!! The next week is pretty much sunny and in the 70s or 80s. I'm psyched!

Portal to Three Rivers to Bottomless Lake to Carlsbad Caverns to Guadalupe Mountains to Alpine to Austin to Marathon (Jan 26 to Feb 7)

So I finally left Arizona behind and headed into New Mexico. I stopped at their welcome center in Lordsburg and picked up a lot of info. Most of northern New Mexico is at high altitude, so snowy and cold at this time of year. Even southern New Mexico is pretty cold and windy - or maybe I just hit a baad patch of weather. I spent the night Jan 26 at City of Rocks State Park, which had really eerie standing stones (naturally occurring). It was getting dark when I got there so I meant to get pictures in the morning. Then it rained in the morning and I was so focussed on trying to get things packed up as little soaked as possible that I forgot all about pictures, so you'll have to check out their website, or just take my word for it.

I was also a little distracted because my Jeep's oil pressure gauge was going haywire on the way into the park. It would behave normally, then peg all the way off the scale to the max pressure. I guessed it might be the gauge, but decided not to take any chances. I left City of Rocks on Sunday the 27th and headed to the nearby town of Deming, where there's a Jeep dealer. I spent the night there in a La Quinta right across the street from the Jeep dealer and took my Jeep in first thing Monday morning. Turned out it was just the sensor, nothing wrong with the engine, but better safe then sorry.

After the Jeep was all fixed, I headed northeast thru Las Cruces to White Sands National Monument. What a crazy place. These bushes create their own sand islands as the dunes erode and move past them:


No, that's not snow, it's really white sand. And I realize ther's no scale, but that drift is about 20 feet high.

The wind was blowing like mad, driving the sand along, so I just did a short hike. Oh no - the wind filled in my footprints! Where's the Jeep?

Ah, not to worry, the park service has poles in the sand you can follow to find your way back:

(Just in case any of you are worriwarts - no, I didn't really think I was gonna follow my footsteps back, I always had the next post in sight)

That night I stayed at Three Rivers Campground in Lincoln National Forest. It was a beautiful site:

It was still really windy, so the campground host directed me to a site with a really sheltered tent site, kind of under a hollowed out tree canopy:

Admire that old blue tent you've been seeing in photos on and off throughout this blog - you won't be seeing it again. More on that in it's proper place.

The next day I went to the the Three Rivers Petroglyph site. There were just tons of amazing petroglyphs:

They're a different style then what I'd been seeing other places:

These ones are Mogollon, dating back to 900AD-1400AD:


Then I headed over to Bottomless Lakes State Park near Roswell to camp. A really nice place, but the lakes are only really like 90 feet deep. I guess in the desert that's still a lot of water.

I drove thru Roswell the next day. Thought maybe I'd check out some of the UFO stuff, but it all just looked kind of tacky and touristy in a bad way. Guess I just wasn't in the right mood. Anyway, I didn't get abducted or see any lights in the sky.

Then I headed down to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. You can't camp in the park, so I camped at White's City Resort right outside the park. If you're ever going to Carlsbad Caverns, all I can say is do NOT stay there. It was just about the most expensive campground I've stayed at this trip, and one of the absolute worst. The tent area was barren grass with dilapidated picnic tables, and I won't even go into the state of the restrooms. But it was convenient to the park.

The next day I walked down into the caverns. Farewell, surface world:

There were all sorts of cool rock formations:

Mainly, you'll just have to take my word for it, cuz my camera's flash isn't really bright enough to project across the distances involved.

Lots of cool rocks:

I may have to change my opinion that the National Park Service tries hard not to lose their visitors - this is a moderate hike?

Just kidding, that's a ladder into the bottomless abyss left by early explorers, you're not allowed down there these days.

This formation is called the Chinese theater:

I really enjoyed my hike thru the caves. I'm not really a cave person, but Carlsbad is well worth seeing. I spent another disgusting night at White's City, then in the morning headed off to Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

On the way I stopped at Sitting Bull Falls:

Yes, those are icicles hanging straight down, the liquid water is being blown out into the mist - it was still really crazily windy.

Then I got to Dog Canyon Campground in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, which actually took me a few miles out of New Mexico and into Texas. It's a small campground, maybe 10 sites, and I had it all to myself all three nights I was there. There's a ranger who lives just down the street and a few day hikers came in, but pretty much I had my own private national park.

On Feb 2, I hiked up a ridge:

to an amazing overlook into West Dog Canyon:

There were some cool cacti - I'm not sure what type of cholla this is:

On Feb 3 I hiked into Dog Canyon along the Tejas Trail:

I really enjoyed Guadalupe - just a beautiful place. I'd love to go back in the fall when the foliage is supposedly gorgeous.

I was intending to head to Big Bend after Guadalupe, so I talked to the ranger about the best route to take (he'd told me he used to be a ranger at Big Bend). I planned on heading southeast, staying at a historic hotel, the Holland, in Alpine for a night, then continuing on to Big Bend. I had no cell service and the Holland doesn't have a toll free number, so I couldn't make a reservation. The ranger assured me tho that there were several chain hotels in Alpine too, so I'd be sure to get a room there even if the Holland were full.

So I went to bed, woke up in the middle of the night and had to go to the bathroom. It was really windy and as I had my tent door half-unzipped, a really strong gust of wind blew thru and pulled the zipper off its tracks. I fussed with it, but no luck, I couldn't get it fixed. Nothing for it but a new tent. That one was like 12 years old, in need of a good clean, and not as waterproof as it could have been, so not a real drag. But where to get a tent? I thought of detouring up to Albuquerque to REI there, but then I'd be liable to get into snow in the mountains and it's really out of my way. Well, I'm car-camping I thought, I don't need a fancy back-packing tent, I could just get a cheapie Coleman tent at a Target. The ranger wasn't in his station to check with the next morning, but from what he said about there being several chain hotels in Alpine, along with a small university, I decided it must be a big enough town to have a Target, or some type of sporting goods store. So I stuck by my original plan and headed to Alpine. Well, I got a room at the Holland, which is a cool old hotel. And there are several chain hotels, and a small university. But it's a pretty small town - nothing like a Target, and surprisingly, being only a couple hours from Big Bend, no sporting goods or outdoors store. Pooey! What to do now for a tent? Luckily the Holland has wifi, so I surfed looking for options. In west Texas your options are limited. I could have driven 3 hours or so to Odessa to the nearest Target. I've been to Odessa and I can't say it's on my list of places I'm dying to return to. Or I could drive 6 hours or so to Austin, where there's an REI. And I always liked Austin. So that's what I did. Tuesday I drove to Austin and stayed at the Woodburn B&B, which was really nice. Wednesday I went to REI and got a nice new tent - you'll get a picture after I use it in Big Bend this week. Unfortunately the Woodburn was booked full Wednesday night, so I stayed at a different B&B, the Adams House, which was also very nice, tho not quite as nice as the Woodburn. I was hoping while in Austin to go out, have a nice dinner or two, but the last few days I've been fighting a nasty cold - fever, stuffed nose, and one horrendous cough. So I just took it easy - it was good to be inside, away from the cold. And the Woodburn even had laundry facilities, so I didn't have to track down a laundromat.

Today I started driving west again, heading back towards Big Bend. Driving west of Austin on 290 thru the hill country in gorgeous sunshine, I considered looking for some of the state parks around there and spending some time in the hill country. But I've spent time there back when I lived in Tx, and I've been planning on Big Bend. So I kept driving west. I thought I might make it there today, but it would have been after dark when I got there. Did I really want to set up my new tent for the first time in the dark? Plus my cold is on the mend, but still with me, so I figured another night inside would be good for me. So I stopped in the town of Marathon, maybe 80 miles or so from the park. I'm staying at another cool historic hotel, the Gage. Tomorrow I'll head into the park - I expect I'll spend a week or so in Big Bend, then I'm not sure where I'll head.