4 Wheels 4 Girls

Just a couple more notes:

Along the road to Carlsbad, we stopped for lunch in a very nice little town in SE New Mexico called Artesia. It was striking because there were bronze and iron statues at almost every intersection in the center of the town; of cowboys, horses, cattle, oil workers… It is always fun to stumble upon cool towns as we travel, but Artesia came with a nice surprise: The following day, my Mom mentioned that my Grandfather, Carson, lived with his family in Artesia as a young man.

Carlsbad Caverns was fantastic, unlike any cave I have ever visited. The initial descent was incredible, falling from the natural entrance all the way down to the Big Room hundreds of feet below. The Big Room reminded me of the unending caverns in Arabian fables packed full of gold and jewels, where every turn yields a new treasure to take your breath away. Unfortunately, we missed the bats’ grand exit from the cave at dusk–too early in the Spring for them–so that will have to be our excuse to come back to visit the Caverns again some day.