SouthWestSlide: _{Spring 2004}

Phase Four_(b)
In SouthEastern New Mexico

Carlsbad Caverns can be a life-altering experience even if you don't fall into a pool of bat guano. Experience the depth. Fall into a cave-trance. Don't worry about the bats.

And don't worry about the UFOs, Roswell is just another city with a gimmick. Unless you want to believe the testimony of those who say they were there. Flying saucers? WHAT flying saucers?

Day 47: Carlsbad & Caverns again
(Saturday 15 May 2004)

MORNING: Just south of Carlsbad New Mexico. We took it easy this morning, rolled out a little bit after noon, heading down to Carlsbad Caverns again for our afternoon and evening program - going to the Kings Palace tour and then watching the bats emerge. On our way thru town we passed a restaurant with the sign, SOMETIMES YOU TAME THE TIGER AND SOMETIMES HE HAS YOU FOR LUNCH. I wonder if that applies particularly to Carlsbad.

Last night at the feast we sat at the long feasting table. Next to us were a couple couples who were from San Jose California either past or present, and we talked a bit with a couple who had moved here from Michigan. We talked about this'n'that, and how it's a small town (with all that implies). I asked, "What brought you here?" And in answer we got a tale of misery. Which leads me to conclude that, if you meet someone who has come to some place as inauspicious as Carlsbad from out of state, DON'T ASK THEM WHY THEY'RE THERE! You'll be sorry. Ask them how they LIKE it, nothing more.

Between dance programs we took a break in the Visitors Center at Living Desert. As we were heading back out to the ceremonial ground an old fella collared us at the door, said, "You ain't from around here, are ya?" and then told us about how much he liked the area, how much he liked the Guadelupe Mountains, "Ya can find ancient Indian artifacts up in the mountains and ya should go see Sitting Bull Falls." Rolling now, we just passed one of the turnoffs to it, 36 miles away - don't really have time right now. The books say it's a 180-foot falls. This fella says, "Yeah there's still some water in it." I guess that's one of those things we'll save for the next time we come thru.

CARLSBAD: Let's see, there's a business in Carlsbad that specializes in fixing dents and hail damage - PAINTLESS HAIL/DENT REPAIR. A neomodern concrete window-tinting shop with a large PRAY-4-U banner on it. And then there was the aqueduct. Yesterday after doing the laundry and before heading out to Living Desert we needed a place to cool off and have lunch. The only shade we found was under a 100-plus-year-old aqueduct, which is a historic structure - at the time it was the largest concrete structure in the world. And it drips. So we sat there in the shade with water pitter-pattering down upon us. Very cool, out in the middle of the desert. Oh yeah, signs refer to it as THE FLUME.

So what are the attractions in Carlsbad? Uh there's the big hole in the ground, some miles to the south. There's the old concrete aqueduct. There's the Mescalero dances once a year. There's a long growing season and low prices. Oh yeah there's the waterfall 50 miles away. And there's the Pecos River that you can jump into when there are outflows from the dams upstream. Other than that it's not exactly what I'd call an attractive place. Oh, why not damn it with faint praise? OK, it's not as bad as we expected! But I do want to come back - in the monsoon season, that waterfall should be good. And I'd like to get into Carlsbad Caverns after my camera is fixed, get in there with a good tripod with control over tilts and turns, and take a number of panoramic underground shots.

Alas! We get to the Caverns and find that the tour we wanted takes reservations, it's all booked up or today. So we got tickets for the early tour tomorrow. We'll see the bats this everning. In between we'll wander around shops down at the highway junction. Take it easy, avoid the crowds, yes this IS Saturday, it IS crowded.

MID-AFTERNOON: We perused the gift offerings at the shops at Apache Canyon Trading Post and Whites City. PATHETIC PATHETIC tourist crap, stuff of quality too low to make it into the gift shop in the National Park. We're now ascending the grade back to the Caverns entrance, and it is raining. We were hearing thunder, there are dark clouds swirling overhead. We will get to smell the Chihuahuan Desert when we get out. Ah! We can run inside the building and go up to the Observaton Deck! And observe! We hear that this storm dumped snow in Colorado, now it's shedding a few drops of rain here.

Walnut Canyon, the entranceway to the Caverns, is quite beautiful in the rain, the colors are richer, more saturated - birds flying, some big raptors right at the top of the butte there. The Chihuahuan Desert is the largest and wettest of the North American deserts, doesn't get a LOT of rain, what it does get is mostly in the summer. So I don't think this is monsoon season yet and if the weather came down from Colorado then no, not monsoons, just another anomoly. Blame it on Global Warming. Blame it on Bush and his friends. Blame it on ET UFOs. Blame it on the Bossa Nova. Remember, every time it rains, the angels are pissing all over you.

BAT FLIGHT?

SATURDAY EVENING at the mouth of the Caverns. We are awaiting the Bat Flight. It has been storming, the lightning has moved away. We were given a wonderful entertaining informative talk by a ranger who turned a schoolgirl into a bat for educational purposes. A few miles to the north the Apaches are starting dancing again. O the feasting tonight was outside, heh heh heh. Are the rain gods propitiated?

Except for the smell of the crowd, I mean the roar, it's a quiet evening. The swallows stopped swooping around. We are told that the mouth of the cave is a bad place to be in a lightning storm, that more lightning strikes here than usual, perhaps because of the mineralization of the rocks.

The ranger says, "If you see me running, I hope you're not too far behind.

We were told to speak quietly, but a couple hundred people speaking quietly adds up. More and more are coming into this little stone ampitheatre set at the mouth of the cave. (sounds - speaking, murmuring)

After a bit, someone thinks they see something come out of the cave. People start going SHHHH! The crowd dynamics change, everyone gets quiet. Except me. People sit down, kids aren't running around now. It's quiet waiting - not silent, but quiet. I hope to use the word 'swirling' when the bats emerge. We more easily hear the thunder in the distance.

FIRST BAT: And the first bat just fluttered overhead. Only one, no swarm yet. These are Mexican freetail bats, they weight about half an ounce with a wingspan of what, ten inches? One more bat or another, fluttering down not up. Another is coming up. And another and another. A few more. And now the swarm starts coming out like dust against the clouds, or is that just my bad vision in the weak light?

Flash photography is banned here, the recharging of the flashes hurts the bats. But I see the glow of many camcorder LCD screens. Flashes of lightning over the hills in the distance are of a different order.

The bat flight still seems very intermittant, only a dozen or so bats flickering by at any one time. Some quitters are marching out but there are still a couple hundred people here, waiting waiting waiting.

The entrance to the cavern is thick horizontal layers of limestone, the ampitheatre in front of it is like an ancient temple with a public space in front. The crowd is waiting for a manifestation, natural or divine, it doesn't matter. And this manifestation is very dribbling.

More and more people are climbing the stairs to exit, fewer and fewer bats are emerging. The colony size is supposed to be 150,000 or maybe many more, and everybody MUST come out at night to feed. Are they kept in by the weather? Will they order a take-out pizza? Fortunately we have no urgent appointments so we can wait.

Now there are more bats coming out but not a thick cloud. They come out in puffs, they're hard to see against the dark clouds. Every now'n'then a stroke of lightning will illunimate them. More and more of the audience are giving up.

SURRENDER: Ah, finally we give up. But we'll come back again, the same bat-time, the same bat-station. So we regretfully exit and roll back down Walnut Canyon and get to the highway - where there are highway lights. And highway lights attract insects. And insects attract bats. So we see our batflight under the streetlights in the tourist trap of Whites City. At last.

Day 48: Caverns and Roswell
(Sunday 16 May 2004)

SUNDAY MORNING. Last night, looking off the plateau where the visitors center is, and this morning (mumble) up here, we look out across miles'n'miles of New Mexico and Texas, and with clouds it could almost be an ocean. Few clouds today, I think we're swinging back to clearer normaler weather. This morning we stopped for breakfast at the place whose name we shall not mention except that it starts with 'D' - well, the best ya can expect on a Sunday morning in Carlsbad New Mexico.

Now we're all het-up for the Kings Palace tour and who knows how much of a cave trance we can stand after that? Who knows, might even come back tonight and hope the bats are flying. ¿Quien sabe?

MIDDAY SUNDAY, rolling out of Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Well the King's Palace tour was rather disappointing. Went thru some nice areas but 'way too much time was occupied sitting around listening to the volunteer interpreter give his informative spiel, an introduction for people who know nothing about anything and haven't taken any of the other tours and haven't listened to the audio-tour stick and haven't read anything and didn't pay attention in school. And I realized that I could never be a volunteer interpreter because it involves standing around too much, talking. The talking I can do, the standing around would hurt.

So there was 'way too much of that and not nearly enough time to take pictures of all the wonderful stuff. The tour group was larger than we expected and there was a great deal of wait and/or hurry, with a ranger trailing along to make sure we didn't hang around anyplace too long, he was turning out the lights after we left.

So it'll be good to get back with the good camera, quality tripod, a flash, and enough time to actually shoot stuff.

So we drive off north, past the bat-feeding station, back thru Carlsbad, thru Artesia, to our next goal which is ROSWELLLLLLL... (lip-flapping sounds)

AFTERNOON, Roswell: Entering Roswell we vectored by the old Roswell Army Air Force base, later a regular Air Force base, later or now whatever a city airport a warehouse for jets, zillions and zillions of commercial jets with no commercial need at the moment. So that's where old planes go to rot - their logos painted over, their windshields and engines covered, their fuel drained. They ones they couldn't fit into Tehachapi.

Coming from Carlsbad to Roswell we have gotten out of visual contact with the mountains. This part of the state is flat as a griddle but not quite as hot. Yet. As I recall from my drive-thru seven years ago, this is the part of the state that's best traversed at night so you don't see how little there is out there.

* SCRATCH HERE???? (upon seeing a lotto billboard)

And we come into Roswell proper, a sunny day with some clouds. Come into downtown and THERE is the UFO Museum. We park and prepare to probe.

UFO MUSEUM: We get inside and it's a old movie theatre, now the museum and library, a serious-looking research library, excellent exhibits, wall-to-wall movies and videos produced by and featuring luminaries and nut-cases, explaining all the usual paranormal theories.

The receptionist is a fat blobby human female with purple deely-bobbers and a serious expression. One of the founders comes up and greets us, a courtly old gent, hands us his card. He's he mortician who was called upon to supply caskets to the Army for the alien bodies found in the famous crash - HERMETICALLY SEALED caskets!

Further into downtown there are tall buildings, this is an actual city. Then we get to our other destination, the Art and Science Museum, and surprise! Here's a re-creation of Robert Goddard's workshop. He invented the Space Age here. And surprise! The rest of the museum has EXELLENT art collections! Peter Hurd, Georgia O'Keefe, a Wyeth, prominent artists from the 30s and before and after.

We come back outside, the sky is ominous, it seems like it's about to storm. We're back downtown, turning at Alien Corner. The UFO Museum isn't the only Alien facility here, there are a number hanger-on, gift shops, crap shops, and THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY, and InterNet cafe across the road, with "rare periodicals, fine brews, and The Truth."

EVACUATION: So now we head off into the gathering storm in the mountains, looking for a place of refuge, a shelter, some place to hunker down for a night or two.

MAUREEN: Hunker, hunker, in your bunker...

So once again, Roswell is not as expected. Actually there are alien signs and artifacts on shops all over town. Yes, we'll have to come back to Roswell.

MAUREEN: Whaddya mean WE, white man?

Our next destination: Lincoln County, Ruidoso - Billy the Kid country, Smokey the Bear country, Inn of the Mountain Gods country.

Day 49: near Lincoln, New Mexico
(Monday 17 May 2004)

ON RETREAT: We're in Baca Campsite above Lincoln New Mexico. Last night we rolled uphill from Roswell under cloudy skies, a few drops of rain but no innundation. We stopped in Hondo for a stretch, on up thru Lincoln with all the Billy the Kid impedimentia scattered about - we'll go back and check that out in a day or two.

We climbed to Baca Campsite which is a lovely pine-and-juniper park, up only a few miles of dirt road, above Salazar Canyon. We'll probably stay here a day or so. WE'RE ON RETREAT! Feels like we're 'way out there but there's an active cell around here so we were able to talk to the realtor, everything's going smoothly with the house.

Day 50: around Lincoln, New Mexico
(Tuesday 18 May 2004)

MORNING, leaving Baca campsite above Lincoln NM. We're rolling down the pretty-good dirt-gravel road past cows staring at us like aliens, just waiting to be mutilated. Thru piñon-juniper country, big brown female cows with big horns with the expression on their faces of TRY ME!

'Twas good yesterday to be on retreat. Our little sojurn at Baca campsite was apparently on an old homesite - just across a drit road was an old chimney, and we parked on concrete pavement that looked to me like the underpinnings of an old dairy barn. Our most remote and unique RV pad yet...

Approaching nearby farmlands we passed an old gal striding vigorously down the road, she waved briskly at us as we passed, a big smile... at us or our cat? ¿Quien sabe?

We get to the highway and head back down towards Lincoln passing adobe farmhouses, old and new, in good or bad repair. Along the valley bottom are orchards, lots of vegetation - above, the piene and juniper scrub. And little bits of culture shock: an old adobe in bad repair with a satellite disk.

The mountains all are softly rounded and sculpted - with a bit more color you'd imagine Georgia O'Keefe out here working, painting, rendering these forms, doing'em.

At Baca Camp the guidebook said 7000 feet, our altimeter said 4300 - I'll go with the latter. Now we're strolling around Lincoln which is lower and warmer and closed this Tuesday morning. Boogers...

LINCOLN: Much of Lincoln is a museum. It's wonderful walking thru the town, seeing it preserved, old buildings well-maintained and restoration currently underway on some historic buildings. Maybe two or three times as many buildings are here now as seen by a visitor in the 1870s, who only counted 15 that had the pretention of being actual buildings.

I'm reminded that I like Lincoln just for this historical preservation, not for delving into the history of the bloody war that involved tawdry land grabs and private militias. Billy the Kid was just a cog in tde land-war machine, a militiaman without a licence.

And now we drive out of beautiful Lincoln. We were there early; most of the facilities, public or private, were closed; but we look thru the Visitors Center gift shop. I didn't see any Wild West or Billy The Kid card decks, so that idea is still possible. A Lincoln County War game based on Monopoly maybe. Collectible cards, and some of the same faces on a Tombstone deck would be appropriate here - the Indians, the Army figures and probably some of the outlaws.

We pass thru historical Ft Stanton, home of black Buffalo Soldiers, Apache fighters in the old days. Now it's still a state prison and hospital and it still looks grim. We get past St Stanton, get up on Ft Stanton Mesa and past the regional airport and all of a sudden we're in the outskirts of greater metropolitan Ruidoso. The landscape is changing - fewer junipers, a lot more pines and a lot more fancy houses and horse ranches and all the impedimentia of an expanding resort population. Fancy cabins and ski chalets tucked away in little tree-sheltered crannies. Rancho The Cat's Pyjamas. Gated communities and walled tracts in the pines.

RUIDOSO: And we get to Ruidoso itself. All the highways into town are undergoing construction. Everything's being upgraded, everything's going to be four [action-packed] lanes into town, to scoop in the tourists and gamblers more readily. That this construction is happening NOW implies that this is the off-season.

And in Ruidoso Village the trees are taller, the buildings have that Lake Tahoe look without the lake. Ruidoso is for skiing in the winter and escaping from Texas heat in the summer and gambling whenever the races are on or the tour buses hit the Apache casinos.

I mentioned Ruidoso Village - it's not a little village - it's ten miles long along the state highway. And then ya reach the US highway and ya get to Ruidoso Downs, a separate community, and that's another few miles of development. The last time I saw it was at night and I thought I was driving thru Beverly Hills business streets.

So think of North Shore Tahoe with no water. And further on it's starting to look more like the South Shore of Lake Tahoe - that is to say, tacky.

OK, I've got to revise my memory of Ruidoso Downs. During the day it does NOT look like Beverly Hills. I guess I was fooled by the lightws at night back up in part of the commercial district. No, Ruidoso Downs looks like an extended mountain suburb with a big racetrack-casino in the middle.

DiscoTaco: Ah, lunch in Ruidoso Downs at DiscoTaco! Comida Cesara, Mexican Food! Yes that's Mexican not New Mexican. Ah, Maureen says it's the best yet. Both thumbs 'way up! DiscoTaco is named after a practice in northern Mexico. They take a disc, that a tractor hauls thru a field, and they pull the disc off and weld legs to it and build a fire under it and cook meat and peppers and onions on top. And that food is called Discapos. Steak, ham, chorrizo, onions and bell peppers, that's the traditional way. Here they do it a little bit different but not much - today I just had the combo, Maureen pigged out on pig. Plato puerco! New Mexico Magazine says there are seven eateries that are MUSTS and this is one of them.

We leave Ruidoso, go uphill to the Inn of the Mountain Gods, and it's closed. But the casino's open. And it's a casino. Ho hum. Nice lake though, and supposedly a world-class golf course. Golf. Ho hum.

We just passed the most philosophical highway sign: DUSTY WINDS MAY EXIST. And good and evil may exist. And we may exist. Ponder the implications: If WE may exist, and if GUSTY WINDS may exist, what else may be possible? Might we be equivalent to gusty winds?

And on a totally different tack: back in Arizona we saw yellow highway warning signs that said SPEED HUMP. And I'm wondering y'know if this is some warning about rapid sex...

MESCALERO: Now we roll down into Mescalero village, the Apache capitol, nestled in green rolling hills at 5000 feet. Here a great Catholic mission is being restored, and a small cultureal center isn't. Then out of Mescalero we head for Cloudcroft. Back below 5000 feet, looking around, you'd think you're in farm and ranch country alomost anywhere. Ane up here at 6000 it's starting to look sub-alpine, just gorgeous mountain country. So up to higher and higher ranch country... we're in the Sacramento Mountains...

And now we're in Cloudcroft which is a little ski and summer resort town with reconstructed old buildings and simulated antiquity. Um, the elevations I gave earlier might be off by 2000 feet, the altimeter gauge say 7000 but the guides say we're at 9000 here. But I must say the air doesn't feel quite as thin as 9000 feet should be. So quien focking sabe? once again... Or maybe we're just acclimating superbly.