November 17 and we are leaving Santa Rosa Lake State Park, heading south to Brantley Lake State Park (still in New Mexico).
A reasonable drive today (about 3 1/2 hours). We make it through Roswell (more on that later) without being abducted or probed!
Lots of oil industry activity, and what looks like a refinery in the town of Artesia. When the wind blows in a certain direction there is a definite chemical/petroleum odour in the air. At night you can see flames from oil rigs in the distance.
Brantley Lake is yet another reservoir created by the US Army Corps of Engineers. There is a long man-made dam that can be seen from the campground.
The landscape is made up of mostly low scrubby bushes and a rocky soil. Very flat to the horizon.
No real hiking here, just one trail that goes from the campground to the visitors center.
Nice campground, sites spaced apart. Weird showers, single button which had to be pushed several times to get hot water and then no cold water! One of us enjoyed it, the other felt like a new empathy for lobsters in pots.
Heard coyotes in the distance on a couple of evenings.
Flat horizons and dust from the desert make for amazing red-orange sunsets (photo does not do it justice).
Amazing stars at night due to very little light pollution.
Found a doggy daycare, so that we could spend a day checking out the aliens…
In the town of Roswell, New Mexico, there is a Museum and Research Center dedicated to the 1947 UFO crash. Great museum with lots of details regarding the alleged crash and subsequent government cover-up.
The research center has tons of books (fiction and non) and reports from around the world relating to UFO sightings, encounters, abductions, and yes, alien probing!
The city definitely gets into the whole alien thing, with welcome signs…
… street lights, and stores selling everything alien (although most items for sale seem to be only made as far away as China).
The alien faces painted on the street lights were done by local artists, without official approval.
I noticed that one of Rosita’s tires was really worn on one edge, and worn unevenly (not a good sign).
When I was replacing the worn tire with the spare, I noticed that the whole wheel was wobbling on the axle (an even worse sign).
After watching a couple of You Tube videos, it became apparent that the issue was loose or worn wheel bearings. Using info from the videos, and the few tools I had on hand, I was able to tighten up the wheel bearing, so that it no longer wobbled.
This was only a short term fix as I was not sure if there was any permanent damage to the wheel bearings or axle. A quick google search found “Shalom Trailers” in Carlsbad, on the way to our next side trip, so bonus! As it was Sunday, we couldn’t call and book an appointment for the next day, so we left a message on their Facebook site… and got a response within a couple of hours, “bring it in tomorrow morning and we will look at it”.
So, Monday morning we pack up Rosita and bring her to Shalom Trailers, where much to our surprise we find it is run by a family from Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. We left Rosita in their care and headed off to Carlsbad Caverns.
No need to find daycare for the dogs, as there is a kennel on site. We called to check availability and were told “no problem, we are not busy at all”.
We get to the Carlsbad Caverns visitor center… and it is packed! We get the last two large dog crates (phew) and head inside to get our tickets. The line-up is huge! We have reservations, but still have to line up to get our tickets. About 30-40 minutes later, tickets in hand we head to the cave entrance. You can take an elevator to the main cave, but we are feeling energetic and decide to descend the 750′ drop to the main cave floor on foot.
We are doing the self-guided tour as the ranger-led tours are all booked up. The estimated time for the entrance descent and main cave walk-about is 2.5 hours. The initial descent is described as “strenuous”, but as you can see from the photo, the path is paved, so no death defying boulder leaping is required.
The descent and main cavern are incredible! My camera (Canon PowerShot G30), which takes great outdoor photos, is not great at low light pictures, so these photos do not do the caverns justice at all. B’s cellphone (Motorola Moto G Power) took much better photos in the caves!
Carlsbad Caverns also wins the award for best bathroom entrance, ever.
Not only are there bathroom facilities 75 stories (750′) below the surface, but the entrance is embedded in the cave walls! How cool is that!?
After finishing the cave tour we take the elevator back up, and it is amazingly fast: about 25′ per second! The interior screen in the elevator doesn’t display the usual floor numbers, but instead shows the feet-below-surface, and the numbers decrease rapidly!
After clearing our popped ears, we head over to the kennels to retrieve the dogs. Standing outside we can hear, guess what? Yep, SweetPea’s barking can be heard outside the building. The kennel attendant said that she opened SweetPea’s crate and gave her hugs, which stopped the barking, but as soon as she left…
We pack up the dogs and head back to Carlsbad to pick up Rosita (earlier we got a text message saying she was all fixed up). Back at Shalom Trailers and Rosita has a new tire, repacked wheel bearings, and Shalom noticed that the emergency brake switch wasn’t working, so they installed a new one. Amazing service, fast and reasonably priced! If you are in Carlsbad and need trailer work we heartily recommend Shalom Trailers.
We stayed at Brantley Lake State Park from November 17-21.
Again, we took the route indicated in blue (not the grey alternate routes).
Trip Summary:
Depart from: Santa Rosa Lake State Park, OK
Depart time: 9:30 am
Odometer: 127787 miles
Arrive time: 3:30 pm (Brantley Lake State Park, NM
Odometer: 128003 miles
Gas Summary (fill-ups):
Odometer: 127927 miles, 28.4g @ US$3.30/g (US$67.18)
Trip to Carlsbad Caverns:
Odometer: 128251 miles, 10.5g @ US$3.36/g (US$35.18)
Fortunate you caught that wheel problem but then again you are a smart guy! Hope betsy bears up under all that mileage.