6/24-6/25 New Mexico, Texas

Yesterday we spent an extra day relaxing by the lake. Of course it was cloudy and cool out. 

Today we woke up early and headed to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. 

We did the self guided tour to the "big room". You can either take an elevator down or hike down 1.25 miles that drops 800 feet down into the cavern. 

The hike down was steep and windy and dark. There were bats flying around the entrance and it smelled like what we are guessing to be bat piss. 

It was really cool heading down into the caves, much different then what we've been doing this trip. We both said we felt like we were in Disney world and it was all man made.  

My phone pics did not get good but the pic below shows a tiny portion of the never ending walk down in through the cave. 

And below we finally reached the "big room". Hard to tell in the pics but it was impressively big for being in a cave. 

We then went to Guadelupe Mountains National Park. We did a little 2.5 mile hike through the dry desert...

...and suddenly popped out at a little spring sprouting life to a little woods. 

We drove down into south western Texas right outside of big bend national park. We drove alongside a raging lightning storm and saw a bunch of little tornados. 

And a random blimp in the middle of no where. 

 There's really no national forests in Texas area, plus it's hot and AC is needed, so we will probably be scouting out RV parks for Texas. We had found an rv park online that had openings, but the address took us to some old guys property. We ended up hanging out there for a little and chatted with him. He said the average IQ around here is 40, he was from Southern California but moved out because of the "crazy people", and that Mexicans try to cross over here all the time but it's good because none of the drunks around here will work 😂. At the end he said bye and told us to come back anytime we like. Gotta love Texas. 

We found the RV park (a locals backyard). Got a great deal because the whole towns water is currently out. All we cared about was electric anyway. Although we don't have our typical forest view, we are the only ones here besides one contractor.