We left Roswell about 10, 61 degrees lovely day. We had a short drive down to Carlsbad, just 81 miles. Our luck of just missing things has continued from last spring. The caverns were closed due to the government shut down. Everyone says they are amazing, we'll have to wait until next time.
Carlsbad has a lovely Riverwalk on the Pecos river in the downtown core. We rode our bikes up one side, crossing the street, since there wasn't a path under the bridge on our side. We were geo cacheing of course, found one that had "caution" small rattlesnake seen in the area. I let Gary find that one. Went under bridge on other side to find several more. For some reason I fell down three times, sure causes nasty bruises. The recent flooding had caused them to move the walkway to one side to keep it from going over the little dam. You could see signs of high water clear up over the walkways. We picked up our 1500th cache.
Monday, Oct. 7th,
In the morning we did some housekeeping before heading off to the visitor center. There is a state park 12 miles north of town on a lake (reservoir on the Pecos). The park was lovely, each site had a canopy over the picnic table with views of the lake. Of course we found a geocache. We have been looking (since Borrego Springs last Feb) for a metal cactus to put out front of the coach while parked. We kept saying they were to expensive, well we finally found one. Still more than we wanted to pay but we gave up the search.
Tuesday, Oct.8th,
Thank goodness the state parks weren't closed. We went out to the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park. This park allows visitors to learn about the plants and animals that live in the Chihuahuan Desert, which runs down into Mexico. Our favorite plants, the Ocotillo and prickly pear cactus were in abundance. they had pronghorn sheep, elk, wolves, javelinas (part of the hippopotamous specie) even though they look like ugly pigs, a mountain lion that was raised in a private home so she came up to the fence and purred, Maggie the black bear that paints with her paws, they sell the pictures in the visitor center. All the plants and animals are native to the Chihuahuan desert. Near the state park we found a road that had 5 geocaches in a row. They have to be a tenth of a mile apart by rule. The road was gated so off we went on foot at midday. The road was a gentle decline, after a half mile and 5 gc's we turned around to walk back, all of it uphill of course. The slope was so gentle it was an easy walk. After we had a nice lunch at the Yellow Brix a historic building that started out as a private residence. We kept seeing trucks hauling huge white tanks, we were baffled as to what they were. They haul nonpotable water to the oil wells. That was all we learned, we don't know what they use the water on.
Wed. Oct, 9th,
Off today to go to brother John's house in Buffalo Gap, Tx, we haven't seen John and Jackie for 14 years, it is amazing how time flies. We left the RV park around 9:00 to get the chip in the windshield repaired. It has to be replaced, the chip was too big. We'll wait until we get to San Antonio for repairs since it takes 4 days to order the glass. We had a long drive ahead of us, over 300 miles. The wind wasn't too bad, a crosswind until we reached Abilene a short 10 miles or so from Buffalo Gap, a quaint small town. The road thru New Mexico was boring, low sage brush on flat land. When we entered Texas we started seeing some agriculture, cotton plants and some crop that looked like scrawny short corn. There weren't many rest areas along the state highway we were on, finally happened upon a "picnic area" alongside the road. It should have been called a city dump instead, trash everywhere. Texans don't take pride in their highways like Oregonians. As we pulled into Buffalo Gap we spotted a gas station selling gas for $2.99 J & J have three little dogs that were a bit overwhelmed by Luci's exuberance. Top: Gary decided against this hat in the gift shop of the Living Zoo, second: a turtle in the zoo, third: City Hall in Buffalo Gap and bottom our new cactus.
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