Day 2 – 3 The Carlsbad Caverns Experience

Jan/Feb 2022 RV Road Trip! Destination Key West Florida

We’ve been on a quest to visit all of the National Parks at some point. We’re so cool, we even have a National Parks “Passport” book. It’s a bit hokey, but it gives us great satisfaction to get that stamp. It proves to no one but us that we’ve been there, done that!

Our passport book that actually survived a bear attack in 2020. True story.

Big Bend National Park in Texas is our next major destination, but there are two National Parks calling out to us along the way, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and Carlsbad Caverns. Whoopie!! Let’s go get those stamps!

We didn’t stop to see this….. supposedly the worlds largest pistachio. Maybe next time.

El Paso Traffic is no fun any time of day so we took the northern business loop and wound up on a beautiful new section of the 62 that climbed up and over the mountains on the way to Guadalupe Mountain NP. The park is beautiful, but the wind was blowing about 100 mph and the hiking trails were really steep and long. 😬 (we just got the stamp)

There’s a camp ground on top of that butte! Up at 8300 feet. For hearty backpackers only.

Backstory…. When I was 11 years old, I went to Carlsbad Caverns with the Girl Scouts in a short bus, which broke down at the Caverns. So we spent a few extra days camping in tents in hot weather waiting for parts. We only actually went on the cave tour once which was great, but the REAL fun was waiting every night for the millions of bats to come out of the cave. OMG! It was magical!

So here we are, the caves are ok, but where are the bats??? Turns out they already went south for the winter. No bats. Oh well, we got the stamp, and souvenir bats.

It’s a beautiful 7 mile drive back off the highway to get to the caverns.

Confession: We didn’t take the cave tour this time. We’ve been spoiled by Karchner Caverns in Arizona. And we were really bummed about the bats.

Who knew that southern New Mexico had such a bustling oil industry? As RV’rs, we’re fascinated by the oil worker “man camps”. These are some of the nicest RV accommodations you’ll find.