Texas and New Mexico

May 12 - 14

Wow!  It's a whole new world when you don't have internet connections or cell phone coverage.  We've been traveling and camping in Texas and New Mexico and there are some real challenges.  But it's been worth every minute!  You saw the last (proposed) campsite, but the next one was at Balmorhea State Park, a must visit if you are in Balmorhea, TX.  It's a naturally occurring spring that feeds a huge swimming pool, crystal clear, with  a couple of big, black catfish and tiny minnow type fish.  It goes from 3 feet to 20 feet deep with a giant pool in the middle.  

There's also a beautiful nature estuary. 

John finally got at chance to set up his telescope! We could see the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn.  Absolutely amazing.  The tent site was great and most of the lights were out by 11 p.m.   

We stopped at Sonora Caverns on our way to Balmorhea.  Pretty spectacular formations. Only a few pictures of these as you have to kind of use your imagination when it's dusky dark everywhere you turn.  The guide actually turned off the lights when we got to the very bottom.  Amazing how the phrase, "Complete darkness" becomes real!  

These sparkled like frozen cotton balls. 

This formation is called "bacon".  Imagine that!!! 

These are called fish tails.  I wish the true crystal effect of these was possible to share. 

Driving to the next campsite, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, New Mexico, we constantly saw these "dust devils".  They were constant everywhere you looked.  In this shot, you can just barely see two of them. The funnel would go straight up for miles! Speaking of devils .... the sun is of course pretty hot out here.  As John was driving, he kept turning down the air conditioning because the sun coming in  was warming his seat.  Your seat??? Hmm.  Turns out he had pushed the button for the seat warmer! New fangled cars!!! 

Here is the intrepid Mountain Man!! I'll show you the view from the top next.  Quite a hike, but really fun. 

There's a dark, palmetto looking bush in the center of the picture.  If you look  above it, at the edge of the road, you'll see a tiny, red spot.  That's our car next to our shelter.  Like I said, we were almost 7,000 feet up in the air.  Fantastic views!!!! 

This was one of two restaurants in the town we drove through (taking kind of the backroads).  Awesome food, friendly people, but we learned that the town population of 1500 has now shrunk to 800.  It seemed to be a common story in the Southwest.  

And this is a shot out the car window just before we drove into Santa Fe.  The skies are incredible out here.  Hope everyone is having as much fun as we are. :-)