New Mexico

6/14/26 - It took us ~4 hours to finish moving items into the RV and closing up the house. We had a 5 hour drive to the halfway point (Deming, NM) on our way to the Carlsbad Caverns National Park area (Carlsbad, NM). On the way, we saw strange rock formations, huge pecan tree orchards, and long/double-decker trains. Deming was nothing to write more about!!

6/15/26 - On the way to a brief stop at White Sands National Park, we passed by White Sands Missile Range, where the world's first atomic bomb was tested in 1945.

White Sands N.P. (on the left in this picture) is a huge beach (with no water!) in the middle of scrub-land!

Gypsum leaves the mountains (on the left) as sand and the wind creates and moves sand dunes

We went on a 1-mile walk through the dunes and learned about the creatures that call this place home. You had to walk from sign to sign or you'd get lost.

We had seen signs for a pistachio farm in the next town so we decided to stop.

On our tour, we learned all about pistachio trees and how the nuts are harvested

That evening, after seeing the beautiful thunderclouds in the distance, I got my wish of experiencing a thunderstorm again. It passed right over our RV park and was rocking and rolling our RV! Luckily, no damage in the morning.

6/16/26 - After a run (in >90F heat!) we cooled off and then drove ~30 minutes into Carlsbad. Pat got a windshield chip (from the day before) repaired and I did some grocery shopping.

After dinner we drove back south to Carlsbad Caverns National Park for the evening bat flight program. At 7:30pm, while cave swallows were zipping in/out of the cave entrance, a ranger told us about the ~500,000 Brazilian free-tailed bats that migrate here each spring/summer to have their pups. After the sun set, the birds stopped flying and then the bats started to leave.

This is not my picture (cameras were not allowed) but this is basically what we saw after the bats created a "bat-nado" to leave the cave. AMAZING!!!

They were still leaving 30 minutes later but it was so dark we couldn't see them anymore.

6/17/26 - We returned to the N.P. for our morning tour (led by two park rangers).

We were 2 of 11 people on this "adventure" tour. Here, Pat is using the rope to move down a slick, 15' section. We also had to navigate ladders and a few tight openings.

We spent about 2.5 hours exploring the Lower Cave

Lower Cave is just a portion of the 30 miles of cave system currently explored

We really enjoyed the tour, especially the 56F temperature since it was 108F on top!

We spent the rest of the day relaxing in our RV. Our A/C did a good job of keeping up!! Pat chatted briefly with the Germans next to us. We had noticed their EU license plate and them, sitting outside in their bathing suits. They had shipped their small RV (which didn't have A/C) to Canada and were spending months exploring North America.