Cold, Cold January 2024 –  Carlsbad Cavern, New Orleans and Florida

As I write this I have fallen behind with my blogging and will get it published today because we did the following over a month ago!  We are headed  across the country to Florida, but first, two awesome stops are Carlsbad Caverns and NewOrleans.  It was a record cold week for the country and Vinny had his first snow experience in New Mexico during the traverse of the country. 

Carlsbad Caverns NP

Wow, this place is amazing, but make sure to get a pass to enter from recreation.gov – it is one of those reservations required for National Parks.  This time of year wasn’t busy, but the ranger lead tour of the King’s Palace did fill up, and I would highly recommend this. BTW if you get the “King’s Palace Tour” you don’t need to get an additional entry time into the self-guided “Big Room”  

The elevator at the visitors center takes you down the 79 floors to these incredible caves where you will experience the cavern phenomenon of stalagmites, stalactites, flowstone, helictites, cave bacon, draperies, columns, cave popcorn, and soda straws. 

These geologic features of a cave have formed over hundreds of thousands of years as the mineral-laden water seeps through cracks in the rock and limestone. 

The King’s Palace is a one mile loop descending an additional 80 feet during the 1 mile loop through the deepest publicly available sections.  This chamber has some beautiful intricate stalactites and stalagmites that make it so ethereal, especially with the well placed lights that allow for the awestriking amazing work of mother nature to be seen. 

When we visited the Jewel Cave National Monument in South Dakota some 25 years earlier, I don’t remember quite the experience that we had here in Carlsbad Caverns, but I don’t remember all that lightning allowing us to see all these intricate formations. Taking photos in dark places back then was much more difficult and we had to carry our own lanterns.

The King’s Palace is the first of four chambers in the scenic rooms with the castle-like formation in the center of the 100 foot tall room.  

The Queen’s Chamber is considered the most beautiful of the four scenic caves. In this cave chamber, you can see delicate onyx formations that resemble the texture of lace and filigree. The rock curtains, fit for a Queen, include a 40-foot tall drapery column called the Queen’s Drapery.

The Papoose room is a smaller version of the Kings Palace and finally the Green Room has a green pool in one corner from malachite (copper carbonate) that is present in the water.

After this Ranger led “Nobility” cavern tour, we could roam around the “Big Room”   since we were already down under. Here a 1.6 mile paved path winds through this massive room that is 78 meters high in some areas. We spent about 3 hours which included the tour wandering around and enjoying the many different art works of mother nature hidden 830 ft below the Chihuahuan Desert.  

One can skip the elevator, adventurously hiking the steep 2-kilometer Natural Entrance route, twisting and descending 229 meters from the mouth of the cave. The Big Room’s mostly level, 1.6-kilometer paved path winds past intricate formations created by mineral-laden water that has dripped and solidified over hundreds of thousands of years.

From ceiling-hung forests of delicate, icicle-like stalactites to massive geologic features resembling frozen waterfalls, you’re immersed in a surreal world of folded, rippled stone. 

Returning to the parking lot, we found the sunlight entrance, or natural entrance to the cave where you can hike down the 2 miles instead of taking the 79 story elevator down.  This is also where the great bat flight is observed at dusk in the warmer months and thousands of bats leave the cave to hunt for bugs.  It is quite a memorable scene, but in January all the Brazilian bats have gone south but always return here to put on this show for Carlsbad Cavern Visitors in the warmer months.  There are a few bat varieties that call Carlsbad their permanent home but are not nearly as prolific.  

Carlsbad Cavern is growing as the newest Lechuguilla Cave at 150 miles long and 1600 feet deep is one of the longest/deepest in the world.  It is only open to NPS sanctified research, surveyor and exploration teams.  

New Orleans

What a place and we hit it during Mardi Gras season which evidently starts on Three Kings’ Day annually  on January 6th, but evidently this last weekend in January it really gets serious.   We did our share of cocktail touring as Margot provided us with a URL that had a map of where to get all the famous New Orleans Cocktails starting at the Apothecary Bar where we had the most tender short ribs and a baked brie.  

We heard a lot of great music from mature afternoon ensemble at Fritzel’s Jazz bar, to the upright intimate piano man at the Three Muses on Frenchman Street (bartender, Xicho, made me a personal concoction the was orange, yet spirit forward), to the full brass band at the BMC Balcony Music Club, then finding the Piano man playing with another full band on Bourbon St, to searching for the dueling pianos which were just a bit too loud for us to stay, then to a Cigar Bar (yuck although it was well ventilated) and then finally returning to Fritzels for an evening of the most incredible music show of New Orleans style music by the Richard Piano Scott band and his trumpet player Katie Rogers. 

There were dueling trumpets because renowned “Michael” showed up to play with Katie which was already super without his guest appearance. 

Fritzels is an intimate bar where evidently there is music all day and night and the German influence is apparent with many German posters that are around the place. The energy in this night band was incredible and the being 20 feet from the band as said Micheal used a plastic drink cup to resonate all kinds of sound from his trumpet was quite incredible.  

Learned a bit about the early history of New Orleans during a walking tour through the French Quarter.  At one point Britain allowed criminals to start a new life in New Orleans  if they would agree to marry a prostitute. The French influence is all around and Creole is the term that is given to very poor French people who were among the first inhabitants.  Also there was a short time under Spanish control and evidently they were the ones that brought the brick and stucco work to the city under their short rule.  Haitians were also exiled here under British rule contributing to the vibrant colors of New Orleans.  Finally, Napoleon needed more money to fund his war with Britain, so he sold the city to the US in the famous Louisiana Purchase that made the US huge and included the colorful city of New Orleans.  Enough History, will save drainage and waste stories of early New Orleans for another time, just say that the first floor roofs of the rich would extend into the streets so that “drainage” could go into the street where during rain it would flow out. 

Cafe Du Monde for authentic beignets and hot chocolate provided a late night wind down  between the music and the cocktails around Bourbon Street  

They always served them right out of the deep fryer with plenty of powdered sugar, even had some from a corner coffee shop as we waited for the Hop-on-Hop-off bus.  Very similar to funnel cake, although are larger and therefore less crispy.  Also making the eating of them quite the scene of powdered sugar all over your mouth and clothes as you try and stuff the 1 ½ inch cube into your mouth which is not that big.  I’m assuming you can only get them hot, and that’s what makes them so delicious. 

There also is the famous Sazerac House that evidently is a museum, distillery, place where you can get instruction on cocktail making among the tastings and gift shop offerings.  We will save this for next time as us old folk need to take it easy since we didn’t get home until 1am last night.  We did try the famous Sazerac Cocktail at the Apothecary which has a licorice-like flavor.  The Jazz and the Mardis Gras museums that sound cool and will have to be for a next time

Generally, our first New Orleans experience was a Monday and we found it to be less crazy than our contrived expectations ~ probably much different toward the weekend and two weeks before the day of Mardis Gras.  I think we will stop in New Orleans every year on the way to Florida.

The New Orleans WWII museum was  outstanding at depicting how our nation valued democracy and was willing to come together and defend the world against fascism and is such a contrast to Maga Republicans today that are just interested in proliferating their party power and disgracefully hold-up much needed aid to Ukraine after invasion by Russia.  Can’t help but feel ashamed –  all those young men that died for these principles and now we are abandoning that for which they sacrificed their lives. 

San Antonio, Texas – still cold,cold

It was freezing, and the normal warmer and outdoor establishments along the River Walk were just too cold to enjoy.  Sadly some of the plant life had frozen.  

We did find the 1930’s era Hotel Emma with dark wood and leather couches clustered around roaring fires which was perfect for the freezing temperatures.  

We also found a really cool restaurant called Cured where you could choose house cured unique thinly sliced meats and cheeses for your personalized charcuterie board – yum.  

Of  course, there is the Alamo to get a bit of history, but never quite understood how the US annexed Texas. It seemed like there was no fighting, it just happened and was so unlike the power controls between the inhabitants of the land and the Mexican and earlier the Spanish government. 

Although no war was a good thing, it seems like there is a history that I have missed.  We stayed in a really nice BoonDockers Welcome and were thankful we could get electricity to run our space heater that ran all night.   

What follows is just a recap Florida bound trip and good memories catching up with a few friends along the way.  Our first stop Maricopa, Arizona and a stop to see Terri and Steve.  It is here that we convinced our friends to sign-up for a windjammer sailing cruise on the J & E Riggins, a 120 ft schooner while we are in Maine this September.  Fall Colors with our friends, before we knew it Jim and Trish were to be on board as well and we were looking forward to spending more time with our good friends. 

Prescott Arizona and a stop to visit friends Dorothy and Rich and the Palace Saloon  Restaurant which had all kinds of period  western artifacts and an ornate gigantic wooden bar – very cool. 

We were happy to have our tiny 20 year-old space heater as our first stop in Gallup, New Mexico campground was completely snow covered and Vinny had his first driving on snow experience. 

The roads were fine, but boy was it cold and it was supposed to continue for the week.  No boondocking for us, our space heater was our friend ,and it ran pretty much all night long for about 4 days straight.  

Placitas New Mexico, the one outside of Albuquerque, there are two in NM, (we almost went south to the wrong one) to visit Try Number 3 with our friends John and Karen.  The first two visits had been sabotaged by Covid.  The Albuquerque Balloon Fest plans would have to be a do-over, as we abruptly returned to Ridgecrest in 2022, only seeing the hot air balloons from the highway. It became clear that the best alternative was to get back to Ridecrest ASAP  before I too would start to feel bad, and I would have to write a blog entry about “Covid Recovery in a Van”. Luckily, we made it home, and although I too would test positive, we pulled through with some old fashioned medical remedies.  2023 Try with a visit would be our friend John getting Covid and canceling their visit to Ridgecrest for my John’s retirement party in 2023. Well 2024 worked out and we had a nostalgic visit  with our once-upon-a-time Ridgecrest friends as the Eagles lost again, and we got a look at the night sky and the Pinwheel Galaxy, 2.73 million light years from earth.  

The triangulum galaxy is the third largest member of this three, and it along with andromeda will collide with the milky way so make sure your affairs are in order about 3 million years from now.  No more Karen horse stories, retirement is  all about photographing celestial events and cats too and wild horses.

I will try and keep up from now on. We are happily in Florida visiting ocean, mangroves, open mic nights and lots of music with our good friends Bo, Julie and Darlene