Louisiana to Carlsbad

After leaving Poche's fishing camp we drove Northwest to Terrell Texas near Dallas where we spent two days and saw an old friend, Bill Arwood. I met Bill while working on acceptance of an ESS office in Shreveport La. in 1973. Bill's Western Electric crew installed the office and I was involved with it's acceptance for South Central Bell. As Bill moved from site to site and job to job our paths crossed many times in many different places. Bill has always been a great friend and one of the smartest people I know. He is currently a professor teaching at Richland College

After leaving Terrell we drove to Big Springs Texas and spent the night at Whip In RV park. This is the first location where both wifi and cellular coverage were almost non-existent.The park roads were unwashed gravel - pretty dusty location but fine for  a one night stay.

From Big Springs we continued on to Carlsbad New Mexico via US highways and ended up in Carlsbad RV Park & Campground. There was very little traffic on  the road making it a pleasant trip

We arrived fairly early set up and decided to drive the 15 miles up to Carlsbad Caverns to sign up for some tours for the next day. While there we went ahead and toured tie "big room" which is close to 4,000 feet long 625 feet wide and up to 255 feet high.  The floor of the room is 725 feet below the surface and it took us about two hours to walk the 1.4 mile paved path around the big room.

 Rather than descending the 725 feet via the natural entrance we took the easy way down via the elevator. The first thing you see on the cave floor is a snack bar originally built in the 1930's -go figure. The following are some pictures of a few of the formations in the big room.

The last picture is of lodging near the visitor center