Carlsbad Caverns National Park

I awoke the next morning feeling like I'd crashed a motorcycle ten times the day before . . . because I had.  Mostly it was muscle soreness, but I did have a nice bruise on my leg from where I'd smacked it on something.



The weather was crisp and clear, warm sun but cool air.  Perfect for riding.



I packed up, and as I was heading north from the park, what happens?



Yes, again.  It was one of those pointless areas where the speed limit drops from 75 to 55 for the space of about a mile and exists for no other reason than to hand out expensive ($340!!!!) speeding tickets.  You want to know how big the "town" is that gave the justification to bring the speed limit down?  Look at the photo above.  That is the entire town.  All of it.  Two buildings, one of which is abandonded, and a warehouse to the left out of frame.  Just enough for them to justify getting a glorified mall cop and giving him a radar gun. 

Who the hell even decides to become a cop in a place like that?  Really, does someone wake up one day and say "Instead of going out and helping people and trying to do some good in the world, I think I'll live in bumblefuck nowhere and be a leech on society."  I've met a good number of small-town police (and non-police, to be fair) who are like this, and it's always been very evident to me why they become cops;  because they're not people who could ever get respect any other way.  They have nothing else going for them, no innate ability to do anything constructive with themselves that would allow people to look up to them.  So they take a job where they can swagger and feel important, and people HAVE to respect them or else.  It's just the personality type that these useless small towns seem to attract for law enforcement officials.  
 *gets off soap box*

As if to illustrate just how little else this guy had to do, before I could even finish putting my bike back together:



I rode north for a couple hours, still on the eastern side of the Guadalupe Mountain range, until I came to yet another nature nerd location; Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  The entrance to the caverns is up on top of the mountain range, so you get there via a pretty fun and twisty road.




Gotta love a place that accommodates bikers! 

Unlike the park to the south, there's not much of this place to see above ground; you have to go deep to see the neat stuff.  An elevator takes you down to the main room, which has walkways and handrails built through it so anyone and their grandmother can enjoy the place; there's even a snack bar and some kitchy souviner stands down there, 750 something feet underground.  It's kind of surreal, actually.

 

I didn't think I'd be content walking around on the paved paths; that sounded boring and not at all properly cavelike.  So I paid my $20 and opted for one of the off-train tours, which take you deep into other parts of the cave, guided by two rangers.  My tour didn't start for another hour or so, so I went back up to the surface to make use of the cafeteria and wander around the gift shop.


A friend once asked me "Why do motorcyclists always take pictures of their food when they're on road trips?"  And the answer is "I don't know!  But we do!  :D"

 I amused myself for a while in the gift shop; I always LOVED these little science toys when I was a kid, and it turns out that I haven't changed much.  I still think they're awesome.



The pirate army was out in force as well.  At one point I went out back out to my bike to get my riding suit, and found that they had all parked as far away from my filthy, dented, mangled bike as they could.  It make me chuckle.  :)



After feeling smugly superior to another group of bikers for no reason at all (besides the fact that I'm kind of a dick), I went back down into the caves and went through the quick safety talk by one of the rangers (who was actually really cute).  Mostly the talk consisted of "Don't touch anything, and watch where you step".  Then they gave us our sweet mining hats :D



(Yes, the quality of these pictures stink, no flash with a point-and-shoot camera.  I really should have brought my SLR)

To go off-trail, we first walked a bit through the main room, untill we arrived at a sneaky little un-marked spot.  We waiting until most of the other crowds were away (the guides don't want to make the souper-seekrit entrances to the off-trail places that well known), attached a rope to a hand-hold and slowly lowered ourselves down a steep and slippery slope.



From there, we decended another ~30 feet down some stainless steel ladders, into almost pitch blackness.



Once more people came down, there was enough ambiant light that with a 3-second exposure, I could at least capture most of the details of the place.



In years past they would let people walk through willy-nilly, but in the last few decades the Park Services has focused more strongly on conservation and preservation.  Now, you're only allowed to walk on a path that's been marked out with orange tape, about two feet wide, to prevent any more damage to the surrounding area.



We headed deeper into the caves for about an hour, every so often stopping as a group so the rangers could explain some of the cave's history, or the science behind them.  I was at the front of the group, so when the rangers weren't giving talks, I ended up spending a lot of time chatting with Cute Ranger Girl. 



Some of the areas we passed through were actually visible from the main room ~60 feet above us, and to accentuate the depths are lit with artificial lights.  It looked really cool and gave a great feeling for how bit the place is, but it also drove the photographer in me crazy; the lights were all different temperatures. The human eye doesn't really pick up on the color differences between different types of lights, our brains automatically color-correct for it, but cameras sure notice.


(This is not edited, or re-touched, or enhanced in any way)

Deep in the caves, the guides pointed out where some of the very first tours had come through, back when things like writing your name on stuff was considered acceptable.  Check out the date on that signature;June 14th, 1925.



It's very clear why they strictly limit the number of people allowed off-trail; so many of these formations are staggeringly delicate.



Most of the tour was done walking upright, but there were a number of places that were a tight squeeze.  It was chilly, as well.  The place is 56 degrees, year-round.



The whole tour took maybe 3-4 hours; most of that was spend waiting for the less agile people to catch up, which I mostly passed by chatting with Cute Ranger Girl (Who was . . . flirting with me?  Maybe?  I don't know, I'm miserable at judging these things.  But she was telling me lots of stories about skinny-dipping deep in the lakes much farther down the caverns, way deeper than any official tours go)

Once we returned from the tour, it was late and the park was near closing; the shadows were getting long and there weren't any campsites in the park. 



Having noted on a map earlier that almost all of this was BLM land, I basically just took a dirt track off into the grasslands to find somewhere to camp.


BULL-SHIT!  I'll be the judge of what is a road, TYVM!  :)

Off this little gravel track I did find a clearing big enough to pitch my tent, just as the sun vanished over the mountains to the west.

Guadalupe Mountains National Park

After spending the last few days rolling through West Texas, home of absolutly nothing interesting of note at all, I finally came back to where I belong; in the mountains, in the National Parks.



I stopped into the visitor center to get an idea of what the park offered, and to see about camping.  I was used to parks like Glacier, where you sometimes need to reserve campsites weeks in advance, but not so here.  It turns out that Guadalupe is one of the least visited continental US parks, it's constantly rated by backpacker magazines as the best place to go if you want solitude.

It was cheap, too; even the developed campsite was only $8/night, and had access to showers.  But it was still early in the day, so I decided to do some exploring!

When in the visitor center, I was looking at the topographical map and noticed a road going deep into what looked like a deserted area of the park, marked with a big "HIGH CLEARANCE 4x4 VEHICLES ONLY". That sounded like an adventure!  :D

(BTW, if it wasn't already abundantly clear, I might be an idiot sometimes)

I checked out the key to the gate from the clerk at the desk, and armed with a pamphlet and an undeserved sense of my own prowess at motorcycle riding, off I went down the highway to find the turn off.



Immediately off the highway is a the first gate you have to go through; the road first crosses about a mile of privatly owned land before it gets back onto National Park territory.  I soon came to that second gate, and after closing it again behind me, I was on my way.



The road is 7.3 miles each way, and ended at the historic Williams Ranch house, one of the first homesteds ever build in the region.  It changed hands a few times since it was built in the early 1900s and was aquired by the NPS in 1966, mostly because the land was no longer very suitable for farming or grazing.  More info:  http://www.nps.gov/gumo/historyculture/wranch.htm

The road started out okay, although it was a bit rough and going was very slow.



It did feel super-desolate; even though I was maybe 5 miles from the highway, it felt much farther.  The view was amazing.


(That's a composite of I think 25 photos, and even at this size it's shrunk WAY down to fit it through the internet)



It quickly got much rougher though, but the roughness wasn't nearly as bad as the sizeable rocks. Those softball sized rocks, when combined with my smooth street tires and complete lack of off-road skill, served to . . . well, make me do this.



And then do it again . . .



and AGAIN . . .



AND AGAIN GODDAMIT STOP FALLING OVER.



I dropped the bike at least 7 times in just that 7 miles to the ranch house, but after the first few I was so tired of picking the thing back up that I didn't have the patience to take pictures.  Now I realized that I really shouldn't have been on this road on this bike; maybe with knobbies it would have been okay, or maybe if I didn't suck at motorcycles.

By the time I actually go to the ranch house, the saddle bag supports were almost completely cracked in half, the bags themselves were punctured, the front turn signals were destroyed, the oil filter and exhaust pipe were dented and many little plastic bits were broken or scratched.  But I did make it!



I was exhausted and overheated from riding out here and having to pick up the bike so many times, so I took off all the gear and wandered around a bit.  Eventually I sat for a while on the porch on the west side of the house, and enjoyed the view.



Peaking in the windows, it looks like someone occasionally still uses the places.  Probably the park rangers, I would guess.  Maybe they let backpackers in there?



I really wasn't looking forward to the ride back; the bike was very worse for wear just having come out here, and now I had to do it over again.  I got on my way and continued dropping the bike every so often, but every time it was getting harder and harder to pick up.  Until finally, I dropped it here, and . . . and I couldn't pick it back up again.



It was partly my exhaustion, but it was also the way the bike was laying; you can see how the rear wheel is actually way higher than the saddlebag because the bike fell over into a ditch.  I just didn't have the leverage to get a 450lb+ motorcycle back upright; my legs were already shot from picking this thing up ten times in the last couple hours already, but even then the ground was so crumbly that I couldn't get grip.  I was stuck.

This was really bad.  I could have camped the night here, but I was really low on water and there was no place around to get more.  The rangers had said that especially at this time of year hardly any goes on the road; I was the only one who'd requested a key to it so far this WEEK.  I was in the middle of the desert on a godforsaken road that no one ever goes on, on a motorcycle totally wrong for where it was and no idea what do to next.

So as I'm sitting on the other side of the road, stareing forlornly at my bike and wondering how the hell I'm going to get myself out of this situation . . . this guy shows up.



Quite literally the ONLY OTHER PERSON ON THAT ROAD THIS WHOLE WEEK, and he stumbles upon me within 15 minutes of when I direly needed him the most.  With his help the bike was easily righted, he gave me some water and I was on my way.

I made it back to the highway with only a couple more drops, smooth tarmac had never before felt so good.  it was dusk by the time I got back to the visitor's center/campground, and after setting up camp I parked my butt outside the visitor's center for a few hours, to make use of the free wi-fi  :)