Random Photos from Road Trips

[Rick Quinn]

Guadalupe Peak, the centerpiece of Guadalupe Mountains National Park, rises to a height of more than 8,700 feet, making it the highest point in the state of Texas. If you travel just 30 miles north, you cross the state line into New Mexico, where you enter Carlsbad Caverns National Park. There you'll find the Lechugilla Cave, which reaches depths of more than 1600 feet, which is the second lowest point in the entire United States! Lechugilla and Carlsbad Caverns proper are only three miles apart, but they are entirely seperate systems, and, while Carlsbad has extensive below ground infrastructure for tourists, visitors are NOT allowed in Lechugilla. Both Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks are in the same mountain range, but the experience that they offer couldn't possibly be more different.

While doing that trial run of Scenic Side Trip #1, my friends and I arrived at Carlsbad Caverns quite late in the day, so we checked into a motel in town, then went back to the park to watch the nightly exodus of hundreds of thousands of bats as they left the cave to feed. The next morning, we were first in line to catch the elevator from the Visitor's Center that drops you 750 feet to the Big Room, the signature attraction of this extraordinary cave system.

If you've never experienced that sort of thing? I can highly (or lowly?) recommend it!

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Accessible path through the "Big Room" at Carlsbad Caverns







Rick