53 Carlsbad

 February 18  Carlsbad Caverns  There were two ways into the Caverns.  Our plan was to walk through the natural entrance while we were fresh and then use the elevator to come back to the surface.   Jim White was 16 in 1898 when he entered the cave for first time he had seen a huge cloud of bats coming out of the ground.  The hole which we walked down over 750 feet on an inclined path, he went down on homemade wire ladders.  He later explored and led others into the cave naming many of the rooms.  Mining of bat manure was one of Jim's ventures.  Exploring the cave in earlier days was a daring adventure.  The big room is 4000 feet long and over 250 feet high.   It is hard to imagine that the surface above us was once the coast line of an inland sea.  As you go down it seems like it will never end.  One explorer used a rope tied to a helium balloon to tie it to a Stalactite ( that’s right because it sticks tight to the ceiling )  then pulled him self up to the top to explore other paths.  Lots of trust there. 
  We spent several hours following the paths and exploring the various rooms.  We had rented a handheld audio guide that explained it very well.  We didn't see our new friends from Alaska.  We had been told that once we had seen Carlsbad, we had seen them all.  We were thoroughly impressed. We had seen enough and were ready to move on.  Taking the elevator to the surface we dressed for the ride.We were headed for Deming New Mexico, no particular reason, a campground there had been suggested to us and we figured it was still far enough South to be comfortable.  We headed North thru Carlsbad until we hit Artesia, now turning right we headed stright West. We wanted to get far enough away from the oil fields and the transient over population caused by the oil boom so lodging would be reasonable. 

  We seen several warnings of the upcoming elevation increases and knew that the temperature would decrease with elevation increases.  I think that is called inverse proportional.  Any way Ruthie’s description is a little different.  She hates cold weather.  The temperature started dropping from our comfortable 68 degrees pretty quickly.   We were seeing more areas suitable for grazing larger herds of livestock.   They seemed to be doing some escalating work to perhaps retain some of the rain when it fell.  A deer ran across the road in front of us, either due to a malfunctioning internal GPS ( recalculate, u-turn) or a death wish, it spun around and headed back across the highway in front of us.  Fortunately we had slowed enough to be able to admire it as it exited the right side of the road. 
     When it dropped to the fifty's I detected a different attitude in my co-rider.  I started to seek shelter

 knowing that if we waited to leave at mid day we would have some comfortable riding weather.   The ditches were filled with mule deer.   They seemed well behaved and intent on grazing.  Good for us.  We hit Mayhill a quaint little village part way up the mountain, no luck.   They sent us to a cabin not far up the road.  Not acceptable.   The owner heard air escaping, we had punctured a trailer tire.  (remember Eldon's warning at Stillwell's) We traveled on with a slow leak.    We seen a couple of motels however my co-rider was now determined to get off this mountain and on to a city.
   The temperatures were now in the 40’s.  My co-rider was in no mood to look at a motel all she wanted to do was get off this mountain.  We entered the ski area and the hills were covered with snow.  We hit the peak and the Gold Wing was telling us it was thirty degrees, we had plugged in our heated jackets long ago and Ruthie had her rain parka on to keep the wind out and heat in.  It was getting darker, we reached the ski villiage of Cloudcroft. and headed down the other side, 17 miles steep winding turns with truck turn outs for run away semi’s, reassuring?  It meant they would be coming behind us.  We found lodging in Alamogordo,  shared a meal  at Applebee’s . Now all that was important was to warm up and start again tomorrow.   It's all good.