We have had a great few days in Santa Fe. We have splurged a bit and have been staying at the El Rey Inn, which is part of why I am enjoying Santa Fe so much.
It also helps to take a few days to stay put before we haul ourselves across the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma.
Our drive up from Carlsbad Cavern was nice – I enjoyed the sagebrush/agricultural open feel of this state – until I got one of my dreaded migraines. It made the last part of the drive rough, but we got here safely and luckily the headache was gone by the morning.
When we arrived in Santa Fe we met up with an old friend of mine and my brother – Rick Phelps, and his partner, Alex. Rick has always been an amazing guy and a wonderful artist. Alex is a warm and sharp guy with a wonderful straitforwardness to him. We will spend some more time with them on the 4th of July.
Today Theo and shopped in downtown Santa Fa around the Plaza, had lunch at Pasqual’s, went swimming and had dinner at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Why, it felt like a vacation!
That is brief, but we will leave it there.
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Carlsbad Cavern is an incredible place. I have been in a number of caves in my life, but this goes so far beyond anything I have experienced in caves, that is it like comparing night and day. We took a guided tour through part of the cave and then walked around a bit on our own. In fact, we walked for more that 2 hours through the cave, and didn’t begin to see it all. I guess that is the difference between a cave and a cavern. It truly felt like an underground cathedral. Here are some pictures, which don’t begin to give it justice because you can’t easily get the scale and scope of the cavern.
I think Carlsbad Cavern is to caves what the Grand Canyon is to canyons. It is a remarkable place to visit should you ever be in the neighborhood of southern New Mexico.
Here is a picture of a marvelous cactus I have really grown to like (it is the fingery one behind the prickly pear cactus). It is called an ocotillo, and it is found in southern Arizona and New Mexico. It looks like a plant version of an underwater coral. There were quite a few of them on the land around Carlsbad.
We had also heard about the bats at the cavern, and decided to stay for the nightly show. What about the bats, you ask? Well, at dusk somewhere between 300,000 and 1,000,000 bats leave the cave in a spiraling swarm. People gather in an amphitheater at the mouth of the cave to watch this event. No cameras are allowed because the frequencies in the electronics are disorienting to the bats. So, you will just have to believe me when I say it is a beautiful and somehow delicate thing to watch them spiral themselves up and out of the cave. They streamed out in a flutter of beating wings for more than ten minutes. They looked like swarms of huge bugs as they flew off into the darkening night.
It was a peaceful end to a wonderful day – both above and below ground.
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