My grandmother, mother, Jenna and I traveled there in early June in 2003. This page has pictures of the entire trip
there, as well as some from Carlsbad Caverns.
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| It was raining in Texas, but we stopped to get a picture of Jenna beating me up in front of the
Guadalupe Mountains in Texas. |
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Just a picture of a nice reststop in New Mexico. |
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I drove there with my mom, grandma, and
kid sister. I wasn't expecting much, but I was definitely impressed with the outcome. We went to Carlsbad caverns in Southwest New Mexico.
New Mexico is just about the boring-est place ever, but it has some of the most beautiful scenery in some places. It's such a unique state,
and this was my second trip through. The first was when I drove with my mom down here, and this is the second.
It all started calm enough. I took a nap at 6pm the night before we left. I woke up around 10, and stayed awake all night until we left at 6am to pick up my grandmother. I stayed awake until a little before El Paso, then I fell asleep for two hours, waking up after we had just left Texas and got into New Mexico. Our route was to go from Tucson, then into part of Southwestern New Mexico, south to El Paso, and through
Texas a bit, then coming back up north into "white's city", which is the tiniest town (if it's even that). Talk about boring nothing land
around those parts. Flat, desert, nothingness. You'd have to see it to believe it. White's City is a town that has a huge hotel, that is just shit (it's where we stayed), it has a few gift shops, a grocery store (that has almost nothing) and a gas station. Maybe 5 homes total,
yeah, there is nothing there. On the way there we stopped to get a picture of Jenna and myself with the Guadeloupe Mts in the background. My
mom turned on the hazards, then we couldn't get them off until we got to White's city. I didn't make any attempts, because of how my mom
get's in those circumstances. We went to the gas station because my mom though borrowing a screwdriver to take out a screw would fix it,
which it didn't. The attendant there finally did a little trick and turned it off. My suggestion was to just take out the fuse, we wouldn't have blinkers, but at least we would have those annoying lights off. But that was fixed. We got our room, which wasn't all that great. The
hotel was supposedly cool. It had a water park that had two water slides and some other stuff for kids. A relatively nice pool, and a hot tub that I don't think was cleaned for the last 15 years. It was nasty. That night we had our first experience with Carlsbad Caverns. A background...
This is basically stuff I learned on the trip. Anyhow, Carlsbad Caverns
were once an ocean thing. Covered in water. There is oil and natural gas fields all over the place, and this created sulfuric acid, which combined with oxygen and water, carved massive holes into the earth. The water left, and left this big hole deep in the ground. Then water
started dripping and made all sorts of Stalactites, Stalagmites, Draperies, Popcorn, and all sorts of other cave type things. This all took
many many years. This cave system was first discovered by Native Americans, who never ventured into the caves because of ultimate fear. The
"natural entrance" is about the most intimidating thing ever. Now it has a paved path, but years ago you would have needed a rope to get down
there. The "white man" who discovered it was named Jim White. He was doing basic cowboy work when he saw what looked like a big smoke
coming from the ground. He went to look, and saw that it was about 3 million bats coming out of this whole.
This was the first thing my family and I visited. Wednesday night we went at Dusk, and saw a short presentation. Followed by about 300,000 bats flying out of this whole in the ground. It was way cool. I didn't take a picture because it wouldn't have appeared right, but I got a
postcard that will show it well. I've never seen so many bats in one place. It was seriously the strangest thing ever.
Jim White saw these bats over a hundred years ago, and decided to go into the cave. Making him the first person to go in. He had a small makeshift lantern out of kerosene and a piece of rope to go in. Where he exactly went the first time is unsure, but he probably went into
the "bat cave" (as we call it today). He was walking on rock mostly, when all of sudden, he was walking on bat guano (bat shit). This
was later mined out, and sent to California as fertilizer. A lot of money was made on this. The pictures of how much they mined out is
amazing too. Like 8 feet down. It must have just reeked. This part of the cave is not part of the tour, but in the cave you can
see where it is.
The cave is now completely lighted, with like 3000 lights, and a paved trail. Thursday we took a self guided tour down into the cave for the
first time. We had a tape recorder that played a voice that told us more about the cave as we walked. I have a lot of pictures of this, and
I'll show them later. We walked 1 mile down into the cavern, which put us 750 underground in a cave. Pretty strange to be
750 feet underground, let me tell you. It was absolutely huge too. Just this massive, massive cave. At that point, it was
hard to imagine it without lights. Everything was set up by a theater lights guy, so it was real dramatic. there was huge rocks, and the
coolest geological formations you'd ever see. Man, it was weird to be that far underground.
Once we got down to the bottom, we went into what is called the "big room". It's the biggest volume of space underground that has been
discovered anywhere. This was another mile long self guided tour Jenna, my mom and me took. It was quite strenuous, and my grandma joined us later. Here you basically walk around the cavern, seeing how Jim White discovered things, how other stuff was discovered. There was this part that was 250 feet high. At the top of the "ceiling", was another cave. Obviously, we couldn't get up there, however, there was a rope. I learned through my recorder that some guys lifted a rope, with a lasso tied to it, with helium balloons. After a year of trying, they finally
snagged something at the top suitable to support them, and "one very nervous explored" climbed the entire distance (250 feet) into the cave above. You wouldn't believe it even if you saw it. 250 feet on a regular rope. Straight up in a cave 750 feet underground. I will never know
anyone with the balls to do that. It would make even the most crazy person shudder to see it. In the big room there was huge stalagmites, and
all that other jazz. Really sweet as "drip pools", and a bottomless pit. It's all so well lit now, it really made me wonder what it would be like super dark. We spent a lot of time walking around down there, and there is way way to many unforgivable sites and experiences that I
couldn't even begin to describe well enough. Seriously, you have to go there.
We got done with that, and met my grandma in the underground lunchroom. There is a restaurant 750 feet down. Bathrooms, a gift shop. What they did was blast down so they could build an elevator from the surface, right to the bottom there. That's how my grandma got down. (she went there with my mom in 1976). We ate down there, then took the elevator back to the top. The elevator absolutely sucked for me. First off, I hate elevators. I goddamned hate them. I would have rather walked all the way back up then take that damned elevator. I tolerated it
initially, because I thought it was a regular elevator, which it was at first glance. However, there is windows in it. So when you are going
up (or down) you see the rock wall outside of the elevator. I almost got sick right away. I hate goddamned elevators. I couldn't watch. So
I kept my face down with my hands over my face, trying not to see the rock on the outside of the elevator. Jenna quickly noticed my doing this, and thought it would be funny to make fun of me the whole time. Every time we went up or down, she made sure everyone else in the
elevator knew about my fears. This one lady, "daddy doesn't like elevators, does he?", I'm like, "no, brother doesn't like elevators". Jeez
folks. If one more person confuses me for her father....
We got back at the top, and I figured it appropriate to "adopt a bat". Jenna thought this was the coolest thing ever. So I have a photo of my
bat, a certificate of ownership, a bumper sticker, and some other cool stuff. I named it "Count Dougula", Obviously, a great name. Jenna
just had a ball with this. I'll post that to a page in a few days too, so you can enjoy my bat.
Carlsbad Caverns has other tours as well, Ranger guided stuff. We signed up for one the next morning (Friday) and left for the day. Some of them you get to do actual spelunking. Wearing lighted helmets and stuff. That's what I wanted to do. Complete with all sorts of climbing
and the like, but Jenna was too young for all of that. So we took a tour that would take us through a different part of the cave. I'll
go back again, with someone more willing to do more physical stuff. Maybe some Army buds or a good friend, anyone willing to do it with me,
they'd love it.
That night we drove about 30 minutes north to the city of Carlsbad. We saw some of the sites there, and it was a pretty cool town of 25,000. Then the rains came. New Mexico is in monsoon season, so the rains were heavy. We picked out this terrific BBQ place right before the rains came. Really unique food at this place, it was terrific. On the drive back to White's City, we could see the lightning miles in the
distance, because the terrain is so flat. It was way cool.
So Friday morning, we got up and went to another part of the cave. Down the goddamned elevators again. This other part was absolutely
incredibly. It was four rooms, and each room made you feel like you were on another planet. It was seriously hard to think you were on the
earth. I told my mom I felt like I was on the moon. Man, it was awesome. They showed us places where early explored put marks on the
wall with their lanterns to mark their way, so they knew how to get back. That was weird, looking at these markings that were so old, from
people long dead who were some of the bravest people alive. Then they shut the lights off on us. I've been in some dark places before, but this was the first time I've ever experienced true absolute darkness. 800 feet underground now, and it's completely dark. Then the ranger light a candle to get an idea what it was like for the explorers. I couldn't image have came that far underground, with a lantern only. So dark, everything is so ominous too. Because you cant see anything very clearly. You'd have to experience that, I couldn't do it justice, but
that was it for the caves for us.
We left of with my leaving Carlsbad Caverns. Instead of retracing our steps and going south through Texas (the shorter way), we headed north
to drive all the way across New Mexico. A route that I hadn't been on before except for the last 3 hours. So north, through Carlsbad, and
then, nothingland. That's what our trip through that part of New Mexico started off as. For about 2.5 hours, there was nothing to
look at, except distance. The only joy in driving through that was seeing what flat land looked like. You could see mountains way off
in the distance, but other than that, there was only windmills to see. However, we came up on a mountain range, and that was pretty fun
to drive through. These were pretty similar to the other mountains that I drove through in New Mexico. It was strange to see such
a drastic change from desert to a national forest so quick though.
So we were constantly going up in altitude. My mom was reading, and Jenna was asleep. My grandma and I weren't talking too much, but
it was still pretty fun to see the mountains from inside of them. We finally got to the highest point in our drive. There was a
small town up there, named "cloudcroft". Pretty cool name, and appropriate now, considering it's at 9400 ft. above sea level. We
stopped at a small park, and ate some lunch. I could hardly sit still in my seat, because I could see that there was an "edge" to the
forest, and I was betting to myself the view was amazing. I wasn't wrong either. You could see way far from that point, all of
Alamagordo NM was visible, as well as the White Sands, which was about 70-80 miles away. There was a bit of history about the
train tracks that used to go down the mountain, and when we made our descent, you could see wooden bridges still standing that the trains
used to cross the valleys. I don't know if you could get me on one of those trains.
In 26 miles, we dropped down almost 5000 ft. It was a steep descent. There was some amazing massive rock formations. You could see
these layers of rocks, but they weren't level, they all seemed to be pointing up. Wait till you see my picture of that. It was
cool as hell. We got down to Alamagordo and went to the IMAX theater there. I was the only one of us that have been to an IMAX before.
My family was a little disappointed that the showing was of Lewis and Clarke, but I thought it was sort of appropriate, considering that
Jenna and I were "exploring" areas of the US we haven't been to before. So that was pretty fun. By the time we got out of Alamagordo, the
rains had started. It was disappointing, because we wanted to go to the White Sands. But we stopped anyhow.
The white sands is really just that, massive piles of white sand, as far as you can see. It's as white and white. And strange texture
too, not like beach sand. I've got a few pictures of Jenna and I running around on the huge dunes while it was raining. We left there,
and we thought that was the end of our excitement for the week. However...
We ate in Las Cruces New Mexico, and after about a half hour drive, we were back in Arizona. We still have about 2 hours left to drive. A
van passed me and was going 80-85, so I decided to keep up with it. Only half a chance that I'd be the one picked to get a ticket instead
of a full chance. I had been following them for only about 15 minutes, and there was mostly semi's on the road. It was about 10:20 on Friday
night, and I had estimated being in Tucson around 12:15. Jenna was asleep on the floor in the back seat, and my mom was almost asleep on
the seat. My grandma was getting tired, and we were listening to one of Jenna's stories on a tape. I pulled into the fast lane to
pass a semi, we some shit went down, big time.
Everything following happened so fast, it's hard to piece it back together in my mind. I heard a noise, I think I saw a few sparks, then I felt
something hit the front of the car. About a second later, I heard a very loud "POW", and I knew the tire was out, flat. As soon as that
happened, the car became extremely hard to control. Extremely. I knew it was a big hole, because there couldn't be any air left in the
tire. This was a massive blowout. I slowly hit the brakes, thinking it wouldn't be good to slam on them. I could have better control
of the car then. The back end of the car felt like it was floating, and actually driving itself. So I let it a bit. So I was trying to
slow down, slowly, control the car, and watch where other vehicles were around me, because I knew I would have to use both lanes to
get this thing over to the side. The back passenger was the one gone. First off, I floated over to the left shoulder. The tire and
I were both sort of driving the car. I didn't want to make any sharp turns, even though I knew I didn't have as much control over the
vehicle as I would have wanted. I was going to drive in the ditch before I was going to turn sharply. I remained really calm,
and positive that I would regain control. I slowly started to turn, but then, the car really pulled to the left. I pressed the
brakes a little harder, and finally, just before the edge I was able to pull over to the left hand side and safely stop.
My mom was sort of freaking out now, so I got out quick before she had any opportunity to start yelling at me. I felt the tire, and there
was a hole that I could stick my fist into. Plus, the smell of diesel. I know that diesel is non-combustible fuel, but my mom was still
yelling to me to get back in the car. Stuff started flying all over the road. So I pulled off what I could, but two other
vehicles were already in the same situation that I was.
What I first thought had happened was a retread came off the semi, and that's what I hit, but that didn't really explain the tire blowing,
and I thought for sure that I heard metal. One of the pieces that I pulled off the road was a brace for the semi's fuel cell, so I knew
something wasn't good. I pulled off a few pieces of semi tire tread too. I checked under the car, and everything seemed to be ok. We
weren't leaking anything, so I got back in the car. My grandma and mom were both bitching because their cell phones were dead. Finally they
got ahold of AAA, and 911. My mom was not friendly whatsoever. I would have hated to be either of the people she talked to.
In front of me, I saw a huge smoke cloud. and a vehicle in the ditch. There were two cars pulled over to the side, about 3/4 of a mile
ahead, and about a mile ahead, was a semi. I wasn't sure what happened, but I knew there was a lot of diesel on the road. It was actually
splashing up. I stunk, and was getting a headache the smell was so strong. A fire dept vehicle soon came to the vehicle in the
ditch, and two ambulances came to that vehicle as well. The fire dept vehicle was joined by a few others, and went up to the semi. We
had given wrong directions to the AAA, so they got there way late, and we had to call a different place to fix the tire. When the police
finally came, my mom bitched at me not to trivialize anything. I really didn't think it was a big deal, all we had was a flat and an
inconvenience. No need to get bitchy or bitch at anyone else. Esp, considering I was the one that had to bring our car to a halt, I knew
how much worst it could have been. I talked to the cop for a while, and he was a pretty cool guy. We had to wait for some of his reports
to get back with him, so we had some good chats about accidents he's seen.
The tow truck came to change out tire to the donut. I asked him if he could patch our tire, and of course, he had a pretty good laugh,
followed by scowls from my mom. We had 150 miles to go yet, and a donut will only take 55mph. We had to get a tire. The guy told us there
was a tire place at the next exit, and the only one open 24 hours from there until Tucson. We just had to hope they had a tire the right size
to fit ours.
What I later found out about the vehicle in the ditch. It was van ahead of me. We were both doing 80mph plus, and my theory is that when the fuel
cell went, it flooded out his vehicle, and he spun around a few times until he ended up in the ditch. A kid had an asthma attack, and that's
why the ambulance was there. The highway was shut down, and the fire dept guy told me they were going to spray off the entire mile and a half of
highway with hoses, then they have to sand it down with industrial grade highway sandpaper. Something like that. I think everyone
was really pissed off, so he was glad to talk to me when I seemed to be pretty normal about everything. It could have been worse, and
it was over now, so no sense in being sour about it all.
The cause of the accident. There was some brake drums on the highway, and that's what the semi hit. When I drove past the semi, I saw the
entire passenger side was ripped apart. So the drums damaged his tractor pretty well, and ripped off his fuel cell, spilling about 60
gallons of diesel all over the highway.
We drove (slowly) into the tire place, and I asked him for a tire of our size. We looked through his inventory, and he didn't have
anything. I said a used tire is fine, so he went to a pile of tires, not organized at all, and started pulling them apart. Finally,
he found one. 20 bucks for the tire and 12 to put it on. I tried to get him to through in a balancing, but my grandma said not to worry
about it. I was going to ask him to rotate the tires, change the oil, and clean the windshields too, but it was my grandma's car, and she
didn't care for negotiation. i told her it was an "ok" deal for a 3/4 bald tire, so the guy put it on. I washed the car with a hose I
borrowed from the tire guy, and drove home.
Every time I had to pass a semi, I was watching in front of the semi. Now I'm always going to have that on the back of my mind whenever I
go to pass a semi. So that sucks. Not to mention the wobbly tire because it wasn't balanced. My grandma and I had some great conversations
all the way back, and we finally got home about 230am. What a terrific trip that was.
So that's the end of my story. Hope that it was fun for you. Everyone was complimenting my terrific driving in the situation. The cop
told me that stuff like that usually doesn't end up pretty. The fire dept guy asked me where I got my skills, and I told him "gran tourismo"
(playstation game), he laughed, then I told him I grew up on a farm, and have driven most every type of vehicle. Fun fun, I'm such a
terrific driver.
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© Doug Malcore 2002
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