From this point on all my dispatches will be issued from my impossibly tiny dorm room on the lovely St. John campus. I'm finally all moved in, and somewhat recovered from my first day jitters, so I've got some down time to report on our journey up. It's truly beautiful here, but before you get majestic scenery pictures you must listen to me yap for a little while.
Will and I lit out early Friday morning from Fort Worth. Armed with coffee and no fewer than three GPS devices, we traveled through West Texas and parts heretofore unknown to us. You've probably heard (or perhaps you know from experience) that there is not much to see in West Texas. I know nothing about science, but this is a scientific fact. Our notable sites included a town we had never heard of called Anderson (anyone?), which is surprisingly large and has no fewer than six (six!) Mexican food restaurants on the main drag. Further down the road, great swaths of sleek wind turbines spanned the horizon. They seemed to go on for miles in every direction, fading into the dusty distance. I tried to count at one point, but there were more than I could see clearly, much less count. Plus, I'm an English teacher, so I get stuck at 20.
After about 6 and a half hours we made it to Carlsbad, NM and checked into the Trinity Hotel. If you find yourself in Carlsbad I highly recommend, nay, insist, that you stay there. The beds are giant and fluffy, and the bathrooms are really something else. I could bathe all three of our dogs in the bathtub, EASY. And by easyI mean they would all fit, not that they would sit like placid little supplicants while I sprayed them with soapy water.
We ate lunch at Cortez Mexican Restaurant. Will had a sopapilla stuffed with ground beef - a New Mexico specialty. It looked quite epic. Then we headed back into the desert to check out Carlsbad Caverns. This is one of those things that you must do. Even the surliest of teens would drop his Gameboy (insert relevant modern equivalent), suspend texting behaviors, demonstrate genuine interest and awe upon entering. First, I give you the unassuming wrappings:
A lovely view, I grant you. Stark, dramatic, emphatic about where one may not park. But in no way indicative of the things below. Here is the entrance to the cave:
As we wandered through the caverns, I had to remind myself periodically that I was looking at entirely natural creations. The vast strangeness of it is really difficult to describe, so I will let Will's photos speak for me.
Amazing that all of this was created just by water and dirt:
No comments:
Post a Comment