Carlsbad - San Antonio (11/20/2005)

This week we visited Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and San Antonio, Texas. We are on our way to Florida for the winter. We started the week in Deming, New Mexico at a small park (essentially in the middle of nowhere). The manager/owner of the park in Deming, without being asked, logged onto the internet and found us the cheapest gas in the area, at a Flying J just across the border in Texas. We had heard before that Flying J publishes their daily gas prices on the web. In the current gas market this is a big help.
Then we spent a few days at Carlsbad to see the Caverns. At Carlsbad Caverns we walked from the Natural Entrance to the Big Room which is a 1 mile walk down 750 feet (with lots of switch backs). Then we walked around the Big Room which is shaped like a cross 1800 feet in one direction and 1100 feet in the other. The Caverns were amazing with lots and lots of different formations. Much of the time you could imagine crowds of fairies watching you as you walked through the room. It was windy and cold above ground at the entrance to the caverns and a standard 57 inside the cavern. Since the bats only live in Carlsbad during the summer we will have to come back some summer to see them.
San Antonio was mostly overcast and coolish. Downtown San Antonio is lovely. The Alamo and River Walk were awesome. We took a bus into downtown from the RV Park, walked around the Alamo, took a boat on the river, and then walked around the River Walk. Since it was chilly we did not stay for the evening. Downtown looks like it would be awesome on a warm evening, (lots of lights on the trees) so San Antonio is another place we want to come back to some time in the future. I find the more places we go the more places we need to come back to visit. The area around the RV Park was not as nice as downtown although the RV Park itself was very nice with lots of plants and lots of Pecan trees.
While in San Antonio at the RV Park we met a lady at the who just spent the summer in Kenai as School host (A basic job from the school district to prevent vandalism. 2 couples stay in their RVs on school grounds and walk around the campus once each day.) She loved it. They met lots of people at church, visited Seward, Homer, and Soldotna and generally had a great time. In between volunteer hosting at State and National Parks and now School hosting you can stay in a lot of places for just a small amount of work.