March 5th - March 13th:  New Mexico

Our first activity in Carlsbad, believe it or not, was not the caverns, but to drive back into Texas to hike in the Guadalupe Mountains.  Hiked in Dog Canyon, which was more remote and generally used for backcountry hiking.  Surprised to find snow on the ground!  It was beautiful with lots of conifers and canyon views.  Some of the friendliest Park Rangers here - or maybe they were just bored and lonely.

We also visited Carlsbad Caverns, of course.  The caverns are huge.  Which was part of the beauty and part of the drawback.  Formations were so far away you couldn't see detail, but the size of the caverns was awe-inspiring in itself. 

Leaving Carlsbad, we drove through a town called Cloudcroft.  As the name suggests it was a summit pass.  We could start seeing White Sands NM in the distance once we crested the summit.  At first you couldn't tell what the "white area" was - clouds? beach?  White Sands was much larger than anticipated.  We rented sledding saucers at the visitor's center and went sand-sledding.  I think it's the best way to experience White Sands.  We spent hours playing.  Crawling back up the slope of the dunes though was a killer.  Remember sledding as a kid (or even skiing)?  2 seconds down, 10 minutes to get back up.  Same thing.  At least we had one good day at White Sands, because then it rained for 2 days.  Yes, in the desert.

Deming, NM is very popular for rock-hounding.  This is a fancy term for looking at rocks.  But the geology since west Texas has been beautiful.  The color variations and formations have been fascinating.  Coming from limestone-country, I guess it doesn't take much to impress us.  But the rocks are pink, purple, red, green, beige, yellow, etc.  And all combinations thereof.  So we went hiking at Rockhound State Park and hoped to find something of interest (not too heavy or large, though!) - perhaps a fossil or a geode.  We did find lots of pretty rocks, petrified wood which you could still identify the bark and rings, wildflowers in bloom, and we saw Ibex (a large persian goat with antlers that curve over their back).  All in all, a very good day.

First stop in AZ was Benson.  Benson is off of I-10 in the southeastern corner.  Thought we'd stop there for 2 nights to see Kartchner Caverns and keep on moving.  We stayed almost a week - what a pretty area.  We visited the historic mining town of Bisbee.  Toured the Queen Mine which takes you into the old mine and shows you equipment they used and heard stories from a miner.  Did you know that the miners would like to keep the rats around (so they fed them) because the rats could warn them of a potential collapse?  If the rats ran out of the tunnels, the miners would follow them!  Drove through Tombstone (no time that day to visit).  Toured the Caverns here which were just opened in 1999 and 2003 (another section).  Went hiking in the mountains at Kartchner.  Biked the San Pedro Riparian Rec Area and visited the Fairbanks ghost town.  There were more activities we could've done in this area, but we decided it was time to move on.

Stayed in a campground in Tucson called Desert Trails RV Park.  The campground had trails on their property that connected to trails within Tucson Mountains Park, which led to Saguaro National Park.  We rode our bikes through the desert areas several times during our stay.  Visited the NP, and visited Sonora Desert Museum.  The plants and the wildlife of the desert are very unique.  Andy has begun to call me a "bird-nerd" because I've been trying to identify all the new birds I'm seeing.  I love the hummingbirds.  I also love the song of the Cactus Wren because he sounds like he is laughing, a big-belly laugh.  You just want to start laughing right along with him.

In Phoenix Andy and I spent our first day apart.  I went to visit a dear friend - Cathie Jansen, and Andy went bike riding.  Andy rode his bike to Luke Air Force base and watched the F-16's taking off, landing, practicing touch-and-go's.  Luke is the largest F-16 training facility in the country.

Immediately across the border into California is a small town called Winterhaven.  We stayed here with the hopes of some more sand-sledding in Algodones Dunes.  It would've been too dangerous though because of all the dune-buggies, atvs, dirt-bikes, etc that were racing all around.  I've never seen so many, or such a variety of off-road vehicles before.  You may have seen the dunes before in the movies - they filmed Star Wars here.  We did get to play desert golf, however, while were here.  Just imagine:  no green grass, sand for your "greens", and rocks or desert pavement everywhere else.  We thought we played poorly before, you should have seen our scores here!

We got to San Diego and the Pacific Ocean on March 28th!  Woo-hoo!