Fort Stockton

The hotel we stayed in at Fort Stockton was pretty trashy and the people didn't seem too friendly. There were people standing outside of a few of the rooms who watched us and talked about us as we unloaded the car. Liz and I locked ourselves in our room and checked on the car every 15 minutes. Lucky, we didn't have any incidents, but we were glad to check out of the hotel in the morning.

On the way out of town we stopped at the post office to get stamps. The postman informed me that Fort Stockton contained 3 penitentiaries, 2 federal and one local. Of course we were thrilled that we stayed in the cheapest motel in a prison town.

This is a picture of downtown Fort Stockton. Not much to see here.

This is another stone block building in Fort Stockton.

New Mexico

Finally... we are out of Texas!

Carlsbad Caverns

The Carlsbad Caverns look to be one of the most interesting stops on our trip. There is no comparison between Carlsbad and the Caverns of Sonora we did yesterday. The scale of the Carlsbad Caverns is absolutely enormous. There are portions of the cave where the ceiling of the cave is over a hundred feet above the floor. The formations in this cave were equally massive. In addition to the more impressive cave formations and size, Carlsbad was very dimly lit. This gave a more adventurous feel to the exploration of the cave. It was truly a fascinating experience. Unfortunately, because the cave was so dark, very few of mine or Liz's photos came out. I've posted most of the ones that did.

Here, we are approaching the Carlsbad Caverns. The road to the caverns winds throughout the mountains and is very scenic.

The entrance to the caverns is on top of the mountain. Here we are looking over the side of a cliff on the mountain. The flat ground below is thousands of feet below.

When touring the caverns, there are a few different ways to go. You can either take an elevator down to the heart of the caverns or walk through the natural entrance to the cave and take the nearly 2 mile trek down 750 feet to the cave bottom. We're taking the long way down.

This is a picture of Liz and I in front of the cave entrance. We figured we need to show us in some of the pictures so you don't think we just downloaded them from the internet.

This is the walkway leading downward. All the walkways spiral downward like this.

This is the other side of the natural entrance from deep inside the cave.

Near the entrance, we came across this subterranean lake.

This part of the cave was a reddish color.

This formation is called the Whale's Mouth. It looks pretty wicked.

Some random stalactites...

This is a full restaurant, gift shop, and snack bar... 750 feet underground.

These stalagmites are around 3 stories tall.

What's Liz doing in there?

Roswell, NM

After leaving Carlsbad Caverns, we headed north. A few hours later we were at the birthplace of the whole UFO phenomenon, Roswell, New Mexico. Practically every restaurant, store, bank, etc. had something alien on or around them. The residents must hate UFOs.

These are some of the store fronts in Roswell.

We came across a UFO museum in the middle of town. It was a little cheezy, but still fun.

They even have alien Coke machines in Roswell.

The key exhibit in the Roswell UFO Museum is a recreation of the alleged alien autopsy.