Road Trip Phase 2: Deserts, Caves, More Deserts, and More Caves
The next part of our road trip took us across what I can confidently called some of the ugliest parts of the US: South-Eastern California, Southern Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas. Out of all of them, West Texas was the worst. Everything there--the landscape, the buildings, the sky--was the same dusty brown color. I was not impressed. There were some pretty parts, like the saguaros and the botanical gardens in Tucson.
We also visited several caverns, which were all gorgeous. Karchner Caverns was just outside of Tucson, and was really neat since it was discovered relatively recently so it has been preserved and is still living. They had a whole series of hatches and lights on timers to make sure to preserve everything and keep the cave from drying out or growing mold. The other cave we went to was Carlsbad Caverns, which was simply huge! It had a great natural entrance, just the type of thing you'd imagine in an Indiana Jones movie, and came with a 'bottomless' pit.
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| Dave and I at the natural entrance--during the ranger show they made us participate in an educational choose-your-own-adventure about bats. My bat died right off the bat because it was too lazy to practice flying and fell to the earth and died when it finally tried. |
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| My Dad in front of the natural entrance |
Later on in the trip we went to Blanchard Caverns in Arkansas, but I'll just throw in a couple of pictures from there too so you can get your fill of pretty holes in the ground.
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| Out of all of the caves we went to, this was the one where I had to try the hardest to resist the urge to touch the formations. |
