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Published: January 31st 2009
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After spending a month working in New Mexico I got a three week break. I was contemplating going to Phoenix since my birthday was during those three weeks. I had called a buddy of mine who lived in Austin when I got out of the field,but didn't here back from him that night.
The next morning I was all packed up and was literally sitting in my truck at about 7am contemplating whether to drive to Phoenix or Austin when my phone rang. It was Nagel, from Austin. He told me if I went to Austin I could stay at his house, it turns out that he was pretty much living with his girlfriend. I couldn't really say no to a free place to stay for a week so I headed to Austin.
I knew Nagel worked an odd schedule and wanted to spend time with his girlfriend so I was pretty much on my own for the week I was there. I sent out a few e-mails on Couchsurfing to see if I could find some people to chill with. I got a response from a great woman named Emily to go deep water free climbing near Austin
within a day of sending out e-mails. I got a new camera thanks to Nagel working at Best Buy.
We climbed on 30 foot cliffs and when we fell it was just into deep water. The camera that I got was waterproof, so I was excited to test it out and jumped with it in my pocket. We jumped off cliffs, climbed, swam, and had a good time. The people I met were all chill and I keep in contact with them to this day.
The next weekend was Austin City Limits, I wandered around the park and 6th street amongst tens of thousands of people, watching live music and people watching.
Nagel and I also went kayaking on a river, no rapids just nice views and hiking. The hiking was flat…but the trees there are pretty interesting and it was enjoyable.
After Austin I headed to San Antonio. My friend from high school, Rob, had moved there within the last year and I stayed with him, his wife, and one year old. Rob was in school and when not at school, studying, or taking care of his kid he was gaming, so we didn't go
out much together other than to play a few rpg sessions.
I went out to First Friday's, which is similar to something that goes on in Phoenix too, where local artists show off their art in a part of the city. There's music, food, art and tons of people on the streets. Again I met people from Couchsurfing to show me around town and had a great time, except when I went to drive home I found out my truck had been towed. Luckily one of the couchsurfers I met, Samantha, was still nearby. I called her up and she gave me a ride back to Robs. The next day I got my truck after a hefty towing fine!
I was nearby the San Antonio Missions state park so I walked around there. The spanish missions are a couple of hundred years old and the churches still hold masses. They were beautiful and gave a great experience of life in the old west. The missions were not only churches but forts against some of the natives that the spanish had conflict with.
After leaving San Antonio I headed to Carlsbad, NM to see Carlsbad Caverns and almost
ran out of gas on the way. There's one spot on the I-10 where there's not a gas station for hundreds of miles…its crazy.
Anyway I made to it Carlsbad in the evening and didn't know where I was going to sleep. I was hoping I could camp in the park and went to the visitors center just to find out it had already closed. However; there were still a lot of people around and I saw many of them walking in a specific direction so I followed to see what they were all there for. It turns out I arrived just in time to see the bat flight at dusk.
It was an amazing sight to witness. First one..then two..then three…the ten…then a hundred….then hundreds and thousands of bats flowed out of the cave making a black flittering vortex that swirled in the fading light. Every few minutes something would change in the vortex and a flight of bats would escape the vortex to fly off into the coming night. I sat for 20 minutes and bats constantly flew out of the vortex, but the main vortex didn't seem to be reduced in mass because others constantly
were flying into from their cavernous home. I left the amphitheater so that I could take pictures and find a place to sleep before the night.
The next day I took the self guided tour and the Kings Palace ranger guided tour. The Kings Palace tour was about an hour and a half and the self guided tour was 2.5 hours. It was a great four hour tour of these amazing caves. I've been in a lot of caves but never anything as amazing as Carlsbad. The sheer size of the rooms and formations is mindboggling. In the main room of the cave you can fit 14 football fields. It's truly epic in scope….there are columns hundreds of feet high, stalagtites that fall from the ceiling 30-60 feet, stalagtites that reach up many times the height of a man. There are "drapes" several feet wide that are translucent. I'm sure my meager words do not do it justice, nor do my pictures show the true beauty of this magical place.
I can't wait until I can go back and take the harder tours where you get to climb around and wear a headlamp to go to the unlit
places. One of the things that made the cave amazing was the lighting. They excellent lighting gave the whole cave a depth that I've never see. You can really get a feel of it in the pictures I took, although the scope of size is difficult to see in the photos.
If you ever have a chance to go to Carlsbad, it's in SW New Mexico I suggest you go. The walkways are handicapped accessible so anyone can go and the main room is a self guided tour, so you can take as long as you want to walk around it.
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