Wham, Bam, thank you NM.

Up until this trip I only had one memory of New Mexico… waking up to see the sun rise over the desert. My friend Stephanie from college was driving, and we were on our way to see her parents in Texas. This time we spent a bit longer in the State, and were able to see the national parks and other sites that they have to offer.

The first night that we spent in New Mexico was in the city of Santa Fe. Mike is totally obsessed with green-chili burgers so we went to have one. The restaurant that gets some of the best reviews for green-chili burgers is Santa Fe Bite. We sat outside and really enjoyed the character of this southwestern town. Santa Fe is a lot smaller than I expected it to be, but then it was also a lot more upscale than I expected it to be. There were art galleries and boutiques everywhere! They actually have entire shops dedicated to gigantic bronze statues that someone can afford to buy, but there are a whole lot of other hidden gems as well. After dinner we just walked around to see the town and then I went back in the morning to take some photographs in the light.

When we were walking we heard church bells chiming the hour. Of course I had to know what sort of a building had such beautiful chimes and we found the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi. It is a beautiful cathedral, built in the latter part of the 1800's. It has some very interesting history pictured in the statuary out front.

St. Kateri Tekakwitha, informally known as Lily of the Mohawks, was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on Oct. 21, 2012. She is the first native person to be canonized and was renamed Kateri, baptized in honor of Saint Catherine of Siena. She is the patroness of ecology and the environment, people in exile and Native Americans. Her statue stands just to the left of the main doors and is beautiful. It's things like this that I love running into because where else would I learn about this little known Saint.

Right next to the cathedral was a beautiful public park. Amazingly they had an exhibit that showed work from the Prado museum in Spain. This was a museum that I was ecstatic to go to. It has Goya, El Greco, Caravaggio, and so many others. As we walked down the two rows of reproduced paintings, I could still remember when I saw them in person for the first time. I have to say people from Santa Fe really know how to go out and enjoy their outdoor spaces.

I swear when we came to Santa Fe we had no idea that there would be anything to do in churches at all! But right around the corner from the cathedral I spotted a small sign talking about a magic staircase. I turned to Mike and said, "No way, it can't be here!" But it was.

The legend of the staircase goes something like this…

In 1872 the Bishop of the area comissioned the building of our Lady of Light Chapel, which would be in the care of the Sisters of Loretto. The sisters commissioned the building but unfortunately it was realized too late that there was no staircase to the choir loft. The Sisters of Loretto wear a very long habit, and did not feel safe climbing up and down a ladder to the choir loft, which was the only proposed solution. Because of the narrowness of the chapel and the height of the choir loft, architects at the time had no other solution. Undeterred, the sisters entered into a novena prayer. At the end of the 9th day a stranger came and said that if he was allowed to work completely uninterrupted and alone he would fix the problem for them. Supposedly he used only a few tools, including a square, a saw and warm water. At the end of three months he had constructed a spiral staircase entirely of non-native wood with no nails, no central post and no connection to the walls. The staircase makes two complete revolutions and is a marvel to see. The Sisters never knew the identity of the carpenter but legend says that it was Saint Joseph.

The church has since been sold and is now a private business venture but the $3 entrance fee makes it well worth the trip. The people who now own the chapel have worked hard to keep it feeling as it would have in the late 1800's.

After leaving Santa Fe we headed towards Albuquerque. It was supposed to be a delightful day of shopping as I was ecstatic to be in a town big enough to have an Asian market. Unfortunately that's not entirely how the day went. Let's just say we spent the next two days at this Ramada Inn because Mike was not feeling quite tiptop. The upside was he did get to see Penn State beat Iowa.

Glad to say goodbye to the Ramada, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Google had routed us through Roswell! I had always wanted to visit and I'm not sure why I never thought to put it on our destination map. It was barely a side trip at all as we are heading to Carlsbad Caverns.

The town actually had some delightful surprises. It has a free zoo in one of the local parks. We got to see a Honey Badger and some storks as well as a lot of local wildlife such as Buffalo, foxes and snakes.

Of course there's also lots of alien-themed stuff too. We just missed the UFO research museum. It actually gets excellent reviews on Google so I'm sorry we didn't get to walk through. Luckily there was just enough time for a picture out front.

Just a couple more photos from around town and of course my arts and craft tin foil hats for GS and Castor.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park is a National Park that I was unfamiliar with, in the Guadalupe Mountains of southeastern New Mexico. I guess I just haven't been to very many cave parks in my life, because clearly this is the second most famous one in America, after Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.

As we were driving in, an enormous blinky sign informed us that the elevator was broken. I rolled my eyes at Mike thinking who cares if the elevator's broken. Unfortunately this elevator is kind of a necessity if you're not in extremely good shape. Mike just butted into my blogging to inform me that "Round is a shape." Just not the kind of shape that you need to be in to get into, or better yet out of, this cave. The stairs that you can see in this picture extend for about 2 miles at a 15 to 20% grade.

Here is Mike standing on the ramp. I love this photograph because it gives you an idea what a cave would look like if it were routinely exposed to white light. Look at all of the algae that's growing on the rock walls; it gets into the cave on visitors' clothing. The cavern staff work really hard to keep this algae at bay. They clean rock structures to remove it and have upgraded the lighting to LED's to inhibit growth as well.

Mike will tell you that I am particularly lucky. Obviously we didn't plan ahead when coming to this cavern, but we were still able to get tours on both of the ranger-led walks that were available. Later when I looked it up the web page told you to plan at least 6 weeks in advance to get these tickets. I'm terribly grateful that we did get to see these areas of the cave that you can't on your own. The first tour that we went on was called the King's Palace tour. The picture above shows the KIng's Palace Room, and it really is spectacular. I didn't use any flash in my photography so that you'd be able to see the rooms as close to what we saw as possible. The lighting done by the National Park Service really does a wonderful job accenting, without overwhelming, the cave's natural topography.

This was the second room on a tour known as the Queen's chamber.

One of the great things about this particular ranger-led tour was that our tour guide was incredibly informative and the other tour participants asked great questions. I really learned a ton during this 1.5 hour walk. Here is another stunning feature that this cave has to show off. In the Queen's chamber as well as other rooms, an enormous amount of rock drapery has adorned the walls.

After we got back from the tour we thought that we had just over an hour and a half before our next tour, so we took ourselves on the self-guided portion of the cave. This room is known as the Big Room. It is aptly named because it is the largest single cave chamber in North America. It is filled with stalactites, stalagmites, columns, as well as Helicites. Helicites are cave formations that appear to grow without regard to gravity. Really they are just one more example of capillary action in nature.

On one of the sides of the Big Room we came across this rock structure. It is a stalactite with popcorn at the end. Immediately upon seeing it I exclaimed that it looked like mistletoe. Mike took a second look informing me that he thought it looked like an Orc club. We were both wrong as the sign informed us that the structure is called Lion's tail.

One of the interesting features about this cave is how it was formed. Most caves are formed by groundwater seeping down and carving out the interior. Carlsbad Cavern on the other hand was formed by Sulfuric Acid. The cave is sitting on oil and natural gas deposits. One of the impurities in oil and natural gas is sulfur, and when this mixes with water it produces a dilution of H2SO4 that is strong enough to dissolve rock. All of the water that you see in Carlsbad Cavern is there because of infiltration. If a drop of rain hits the surface, it takes between two months and 30 years to find its way into one of these pools.

Here is one of the other pools that is found in the cavern. The colouration is natural and not done by lighting.

When we went to show up for our second tour, it became abundantly apparent that we missed it! We double- and triple-checked the tickets and were totally confused. When we got back to the surface we were informed that the tour had been moved up an hour and that the person who sold us the ticket should have told us. Again my luck kicked in because there were two spots open on the tour for tomorrow. This change of times left us the rest of the day to explore the surface of Carlsbad National Park.

The Rangers told us that the trails were not very well maintained and since there had been so much rain they wouldn't suggest them. Luckily there were lots of bugs to be photographed so we spent the day doing that.

One of the most incredible things to do at Carlsbad after hours is to see the bats fly. There are 3 species of bat that live in different portions of the cave. The greatest number of bats, numbering over 500,000, are the Brazilian free-tailed bats. The other 2 species are myotis and fringed myotis bats. When you go to the bat program you're not allowed to take any photographs because the flash, and potentially the noise of the cameras, bother the bats. I added this photograph from the National Park Service to give you an idea what it was like for us. One thing that the picture can't describe is the smell and sound of that many bats flying. I would strongly encourage you to find a place to see these guys exit for the night.

As you can see in the photo above, our tour the next day was by lantern light. This is the reason that we were both so disappointed to have missed it the previous day. I've always wanted to be able to go on a tour that shows you what the cave would have been like if you had been one of the original visitors before light was added.

The talk on this tour was also very different. It focused on the history surrounding the formation of this National Park as well as how we fit in to cave preservation. The tour guide was a history major and did a very nice job.

Just one more shot of the tour group passing a large pool of water. Mike and I were also excited because we spotted a cave cricket on the tour. Since this cave doesn't have any running water in it, there are no blind fish or other large animals. Just the cave cricket and parasitic worms... oh, and a ton of unique bacterium.

As you can see, the cave is quite cool. We both wore long sleeves and long pants for two days in a row.

On the way out of the park Mike brought the Beaver Lodge to a screaming halt in the middle of the road. He put it in reverse and practically pushed me out of the car. To my amazement and surprise there was a Tarantula walking down the side of the road. If you'd like to see a video of this beautiful desert tarantula (Aphonopelma chalcodes) you can head on over to Instagram. It really is amazing to see him walk across the grass. Normally they're not out so much during the day but this is their mating season so he was out looking for Miss Right.

Not very far down the road on the New Mexico/Texas border is Guadalupe Mountain National Park. The Guadalupe Mountains are very old and all part of the same rock formation that formed Carlsbad Caverns. Actually it was the uplift of these mountains that cracked the cave rock, gave the sulphur in the oil and gas a place to escape and form sulphuric acid. So really without these mountains the caverns wouldn't exist either. Seeing these two national parks back-to-back really gives you a picture of the geologic history of the area.

We got to the National Park fairly late because our lantern tour was from 12 to 2. Luckily they give backcountry permits until 4:30 so we were able to get them. I say luckily, but after we tell you about our hike you might think it was better if we'd missed out. When we were reading the brochure about the National Park we found that Guadalupe mountain is the highest point in Texas. Mike has decided that he wants to climb the highest point in all 50 States, so I figured while we're here we might as well do it.

We packed up quickly and got on the trail in time to see this very pretty view looking out over the flat portions of Texas and New Mexico.

Only when you look the other way does it become apparent that the weather was not as idealic as the other picture presents.

By the time we were most of the way to the campsite area, the fog had begun to roll in. But undeterred we set up camp and decided to put on headlamps and summit the mountain. It was supposed to rain all the next morning so we thought let's do it now.

This is the monument from the top of Guadalupe Mountain so at least you'll know that we made it. We even signed the log book to prove it! The hike was completely insane. It started raining shortly after we left camp and just got worse all the way up and all the way back down. There were high winds and Mike had managed to leave his rain jacket in the tent. We talked several times about turning back but we could see the top of the mountain and refused to give in.

The monument that you can see is dedicated to American airline pilots who helped to link the two coasts of America. Odd memorial, but as you can see the weather is not ideal. I just pointed my headlamp at the monument, took a photograph so that we could turn around and head back down to our tents. What I unfortunately don't have a picture of is the fact that within the next 2 minutes Mike saw a kangaroo rat. He had been wanting to see one, so it was quite exciting.

Here is the aftermath of the rain. It didn't let up all night, and the wind was quite high even at this lower elevation. We had been smart enough to pack two tents so that our gear could live inside and be "dry". Good thing that we did because both of our tents were mini dirt-covered lakes in the morning.

On the way down though we were rewarded by seeing this Earthstar fungus. In their early stages they resemble a puffball mushroom. But once the spores are mature they explode outwards into an 8-pointed star. This one is less than half way there.

So Texas was supposed to be our next stop… and so it was for a few days of torrential downpouring rain where we hung out in Walmart and replaced my cell phone. Will come back to Texas later, both in reality and via the blog. Everything's bigger in Texas, even the rain storms.