Wind, Wind and More Wind

Will the wind ever die down? Wow - is all we can really say! Every day seems to be more windy than the day before and driving the RV is more and more challenging. (40-50 mph wind gusts are not uncommon and now we are in tumbleweed country, dodging tumbleweed in the RV is not as easy as one might think!)

Monday, April 7th we made our way to Brantley Lake State Park, NM which became our homebase while we explored the Carlsbad Caverns. (We did drive through Roswell on our way to the park only to be disappointed by the town, not what we expected from the Alien Capital of the world, not sure what we were expecting (Aliens to appear?) but whatever it was the town did not offer it and it was not worth the drive to Roswell).

Weird feeling to be at Brantley since we are used to the greenery of Michigan when camping, we were definitely in the desert. Here is a picture of a camp site at the park:

We headed to Carlsbad Caverns at dusk to see the million bats that live there every spring/summer and their nightly exit from the Caverns. We sat with impatiencance (Bats are not Lisa's favorite) for the mass exit but it never came, guess it was a bit early in the session for the nightly ritual however we were greeted by a skunk, lucky for us he didn't care for our company and wondered back into the forest almost as quickly as he had appeared! The bats normally emerge from this large cave below where we sat for about an 1 and 1/2 waiting for them:
On Tuesday we returned to the Caverns to explore the Caves, wow! The Natural Entrance is a 1 mile trail that takes about 1 hour to walk to get you to the "The Big Room" which is over 8 Acres. We took a ton of pictures of the amazing formations within the cave but most of them didn't turn out but here are a few:

Temple of the Sun

Whales Mouth

On Wednesday we found ourselves in "Billy the Kid Country" and decided to take a drive through a few of his old haunts. As we were exploring Lincoln we kept referencing the movie "Young Guns" as our guide to history, funny how that happens? The town of Lincoln is stuck in time, we felt like it was 1881 and Pat Garrett had just returned from gunning down"Billy the kid".

Our drive took us through Capitan, NM which is home of Smokey Bear so we took a quick tour of the Smokey Bear Museum, who knew there was a museum in honor of Smokey? Did you know that Smokey Bear was named after he was already created and featured in ads? He adopted the name of a bear cub who was rescued from a forest fire in Capitan, NM. And of course Lisa had to get her picture with him, he is an icon after all!
We also drove through Ruidoso, NM. Such a cute town, reminded us of up north, would love to stay for a long weekend: shops, skiing, hiking, great dining - very cool place!

April 10th should have been such an easy day, we woke up early and were ready to hit the road by 7:30 am and were only going to drive a few hundred miles. We conducted our routine checks before we left the campground (there are a lot of them) and we found our brake lights were not working on the RV or the Jeep we are towing, not good! Seems we blew a fuse (might be Lisa's fault but she is not admitting anything at this time) which in turn affected the brake lights and cruise control. So we quickly changed our plans and instead of a short day of driving we dove the longest yet in the wrost winds yet, 486 Miles, to get us to Flagstaff, AZ where we were able to get into a RV Service Center the next day!

As we were driving to Flagstaff we came across the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest which we could not pass up! These pictures don't do the area justice, so amazing with all the different colors in the dirt:

Painted Desert Tepees

Petrified Wood - really feels like stone and has so many colors within it!

Route 66 went through the National Park once upon a time - now this vehicle and the faint trace of the road is all that remains. (Not sure we have mentioned it before but for some reason Lisa is infatuated with Route 66 and whenever we can we are exploring parts of it!)

We love the comments on the blog and are so grateful that you are all following our journey, we hope it makes you want to start exploring yourself!

Next Blog: Who knows :) So far we are about 50/50 for hitting the dates we have set for updates so check back when you can and follow along, we enjoy the company! (Coming Up: Grand Canyon and Sedona)