Colorado Cruiser: Carlsbad and Texas Hill Country Ride

Yesterday I only rode 180 miles South to Raton New Mexico. I like getting up early to ride, but if I'd stayed in Colorado Springs, I would have been riding in 28 degrees. Since I made it down off the Colorado Plateau, I was only going to be riding in 38 derees.

I was up and out the door of the hotel this morning by 6:30. After a quick breakfast at McDonalds I put on my warm weather gear.

QUICK FLASHBACK!! - 2 years ago I did a very similar ride to what I'm doing now (Read it here). When I did the ride from Pueblo down to Raton, I nearly froze my hands off. Right after that I bought some heated riding gear and I always keep that gear on the bike, even in the summer (You'd be surprised how cold it can get in Colorado in the Summer). END FLASHBACK

So here I am on a chilly morning in Raton, but it's not un bearably cold. In fact, with my heated gear on I was really pretty warm. I headed South with the sun rising off to my left.

I had my camera on a lanyard hanging around my neck and I kept looking around for anything (ANYTHING) worth taking a picture of. Nothing. New Mexico has some long boring sections in it.

Finally when the sun had risen higher, I noticed my shadow off to my right and took a picture of my silhouette.

All day I just meandered South. I wasn't pushing hard at all. As it turned out, maybe I should have pushed a little bit. I stopped every couple of hours for water, gas, and sometimes a snack.

I stopped for lunch in Roswell. I figured that I should get some good Mexican food while I was in New Mexico. It's not that we don't have great mexican food in Colorado Springs, but, . . . we don't. It was very good except the chilli-relleno was filled with american cheese.

Someone told me everything in Roswell was about aliens, but I didn't see it. Other than a few billboards, it looked like any other small city. I was surprised to see just how large the Roswell was, because it took nearly half an hour to ride through town.

After lunch the temperatures really climbed. I'd started the day at 35, and now it was approaching 90. I twisted a bit more on the throttle and made it through Carlsbad at 3:00 and was out to Carlsbad Caverns National Park around 3:20. As I entered the park, I stopped to get pictures by the sign out front, then rode the 7 miles up to the visitors center for the cave. As I walked in, the ladies at the desk said "You missed the last elevator by 5 minutes". I guess I should have hurried a bit more through the day or skipped the picture.

I looked through the visitor's center, then headed back out. I stopped for a few pictures on the way, including a panoramic view of the road coming in. I've been playing with 360 degree panoramas lately, especially since I found a simple app for the iPhone to make them, and bought a cheap mount to hold the iPhone on a tripod. I figure if it's really easy to do, I'll actually do them.

Back where the National Park road meets the highway is a small town called Whites City. It looks like it only exists for the sake of tourism. And it looks like tourism isn't that great anymore. Most of the buildings are vacant, and there are only 2 hotels left running and 1 cafe. It feels like those route 66 towns that close down. I wonder if tourism is really that bad for the caverns.

My shadow on the highway