March 26-30, 2026
I moved to the town of Carlsbad, NM intent on seeing Carlsbad Caverns as well as Guadalupe Mountains National Park. I stayed at the Carlsbad KOA.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
I cannot begin to describe the enormity of this cave. You have a choice of taking an elevator 750 feet underground or walking a series of switchbacks (paved) down the 750 feet. Once 750 feet underground you enter the “Big Room” where there is a paved trail that is more than a mile long. You pass incredible underground formations. The “Big Room” is over 4000 feet in length.
The mouth of the cave is known for dramatic bat flights that occur at dusk – 1000s of bats leave the cave at this time. I missed this but as I entered there were 100s of cave swallows flying about.
Still descending the series of switch backs.
Finally in the “Big Room”.
Everyone takes the elevator back to the surface.
Guadalupe Mountains National Park
The Caverns were about 40 miles south of Carlsbad and about another 30 miles south, in Texas, is the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. I finished the cave around noon and decided to drive the 30 miles to the Guadalupe visitor center and figure out what to to hike in the park.
I asked the rangers at the visitor center about hiking to the Guadalupe peak, the highest point in Texas. They advised that wind forecast for the next day was extreme and they recommended the McKittrick Canyon hike instead. Here in the far distance you see the Guadalupe peak.
The next day turned out to be extremely windy and the temps went from the 90s to the low 50s. I decided to skip hiking altogether and drove to Roswell – more on that below. But two days later I returned to Guadalupe and hiked the McKittrick Canyon trail.
The trail is a fairly easy 6.5-7 miles round trip taking you from the trail head past the Pratt Cabin and the Grotto (a very small cave) then onto an old hunters shed where you turn around and head back the way you came in.
Here’s the Pratt Cabin; about halfway to the end. Part of the sign says “The Stone Cabin, as Wallace Pratt called it, was built in McKittrick Canyon during the winter of 1931-32. Mr Pratt had purchased much of the land that is McKittrick Canyon following a visit he made in 1930. As Mr. Pratt stated. “I fell in love with it right now.” Mr Pratt’s love for McKittrick Canyon became a declaration with his donation of the canyon to the American people in 1961.”
I startled a deer as I approached the grotto. There were two but it took me a bit to get a camera ready.
The Grotto.
The turn around point is Hunter Ranch Line Cabin built in 1924.
Rosswell
I visited Rosswell the day before I hiked the McKittrick Canyon Trail. On this day the winds were extremely hi and the temps had dropped to the 50s.
Rosswell is renowned as the site of an alleged 1947 UFO crash. I went to the International UFO Museum and Research Center which has extensive displays and a huge library with research on nearly every reported UFO siting.
The story is that aliens detected a atomic bomb explosion in the deserts near Rosswell and made a move to visit earth. But their UFO spaceship crashed near Rosswell and the debris field was found by local ranchers. There are a lot of displays talking about the debris, how out of worldly it was, and the US Government trying to cover it up.
I was entertained by the artistic recreations of the aliens.
Sitting Bull Falls
Sitting Bull Falls is a desert oasis featuring a 150-foot, spring-fed waterfall cascading into crystal-clear pools in the Lincoln National Forest, approximately 42 miles west of Carlsbad. Signage at the site reads “Archaeological evidence indicates that this canyon has been occupied for the past 10,000 years beginning in the Paleo-Indian period. The first written account came in the 1860’s when soldiers encountered a group of Apache Indians camped near Last Chance Canyon.”
I visited on my last day in Carlsbad.
Next up Las Cruces.