Carlsbad, NM

This past week has been pretty uneventful. It's been a bit chilly and we've hung around the RV park doing chores and packing up for our trip over to the Carlsbad Caverns, which we made yesterday. It was 187 mile trip and we decided to stop at an RV park directly across from the Caverns entrance. The park is called the Whites' City RV park and it got lousy reviews on the website that I check for all the parks that we go to. The bathrooms are terrible, the landscaping is awful, etc, etc. However, there were a couple of recent reviews that were decent. These reviewers felt, like us, that if we're in a motor home, we don't need the bathrooms and the landscaping. All we need is 50 amps (preferably), sewer, and water...and this park had it all! No, the landscaping isn't great but we're here to see the Caverns, not to enjoy the park landscape.

We got here about 1:00...perfect timing...enough time to set up and relax for a little while before we drove 20 miles up to Carlsbad to have dinner and take a boatride up the Pecos River to see all of the Christmas lights. Apparently, it's been an 18 year tradition, where all of the houses along the river decorate to the hilt and there are boat rides to see the decorations. Here's a website that might be interesting to you: http://www.christmasonthepecos.com/about.html

Click on the photo gallery to see all of the lights that we saw last night! It was really beautiful and the people were very friendly! Oh yeah, before the boat ride we split a cheeseburger and a frito pie at the hamburger stand where we took the boatride. A frito pie is a layer of fritos topped with green chile and cheese....it was delicious! The waitress couldn't believe we'd never heard of it!

Today we're heading over to the Carlsbad Caverns. We're going to take the Natural Entrance self tour (about 1 1/4 miles and an hour tour) and then hopefully take the King's Palace guided tour (about 1 3/4 miles and 1 1/2 hours). Here's the link to the Carlsbad Caverns Natural Entrance tour: http://www.nps.gov/cave/planyourvisit/naturalentrance_selfguided_tour.htm, and the King's Palace guided tour: http://www.nps.gov/cave/planyourvisit/kings_palace.htm. It should be a lot of fun!

More after the Carlsbad Caverns!

Have a safe trip Jan, Bob, AJ, and KB!