I packed up on Monday evening, so Tuesday all we really had to do was have breakfast, do the three S's and be on our way.
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| Ran and Sue's deer |
I got to feed the deer while I waited for June to finish breakfast, they are pretty cute.
We left Randy and Sue's around 08:30 and set out for Carlsbad, NM, a 500 mile day...plenty.
The forecast was for high winds, for the first 100 miles or so, it wasn't that bad....
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| West Texas |
West Texas is just open landscape of nothing and the wind can crank. We saw oil wells and about half of them were pumping.
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| Flare Stacks |
Some of the oil wells produce excess natural gas that has to be burned off for safety. These are called flare stacks, we saw a number of these, I am sure they are cool at night.
The wind picked up and we were driving pretty much into it, which seems to always be the case. Of course the Mercedes ESP bailed out repeatedly but we are used to that, I am refraining from my usual rant.
We got to experience a few real dust storms, the video doesn't do it justice. It was slow going like being in the fog, but we were grateful that there were no tornados.
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| Tunis Peak, Pecos County |
We drove by Tunas Peak in Pecos County, you can recognize it for miles and miles.
We planned to arrive at the Chosa BLM (Bureau of Land Management) Campground in Carlsbad, NM in time to drive up to Carlsbad Caverns to watch the Bat Flight. Well, that did not work out, we arrived in plenty of time and drove up and no one was around....a bit of googling told us the bats don't arrive from Mexico until mid April....Doh!
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| Chosa Campground |
We returned to the Chosa campground and retired for the night, despite the wind it was a pretty evening.
We stayed at this same BLM site in 2024. Chosa campground is basically a parking lot on a converted oil well fracking pond south of Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Good enough for us
June made Sloppy Joes for dinner...awesome.
Wednesday we plan to make our way to Roswell and then to the White Sands National Park area.
Only been to West Texas once about 10 years ago to El Paso for a couple of weeks. Landscapes were mainly brown and regret not going over to White Sands to see the museum. Certainly is different than New England in many ways. Glad things are going well. DB
ReplyDeleteIt was a white knuckle drive for most of it. We were really bummed we missed the Bat Flight again. Still, all is well that ends well.
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