Mountains and Caverns

From Marfa we drove to Fort Davis and spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for our lunch at the General Store. However, their most excellent chocolate fudge made up for the wait. Then we headed past the McDonald observatory down the Davis mountains towards Van Horn and from there towards the Guadalupe mountains. We took a detour at the salt flats below the Guadalupe mountains. Then we pulled in to the Guadalupe mountains national park visitor center for a short stroll to the ruins of the Pinery, a stop at the Butterfield Overland stagecoach route from St. Louis to San Francisco (22 days of travel day and night, $200 per head) which was last used in 1859.

Here's Vivian doing her happy dance as she watches Evan base jump off a stone wall. Exciting stuff.

As there are no accommodations around Carlsbad Caverns, from the Guadalupe mountains we drove on to Carlsbad town. Due to the huge boom in the oil and gas business around Carlsbad we paid over $300 for a room for one night at the Fairfield Inn and tried unsuccessfully to find a table at a Chili and then IHOP, before finally giving up and driving to McDonald's where the rest of the town was already waiting in the double drive through lanes. Vivian and Evan were predictable happy to eat their Happy Meals.

The next morning we drove back to the caverns and descended 750 feet into the Big Room to view one of the world's largest underground caverns. It was about a mile and a quarter walk down and neither the kids nor Grandma complained too much. We took the elevator back up, ate lunch at the park headquarters and drove on westward to Cloudcroft, our next destination.