The Beaches of San Diego CA (March 25-27, 2019)

Sunset Cliffs

After weeks in the lovely, dramatic desert, we were ready to see some water…lots of water, so we headed to the Pacific coast and San Diego.  We were fortunate to get a camping spot on beautiful Mission Bay and spent our one full day in San Diego exploring some of the nearby beaches.

Ocean Beach

The morning was cool and overcast.  Our first stop was Ocean Beach.  We were impressed here, and at other beaches, how many public beaches and how much parking was available.  Ocean Beach has a dog beach, which we returned to later in the day with Tiki.  She was in her element swimming out to retrieve her ball in the cool, salty water.

Sunset Cliffs

San Diego waterfront

Sunset Cliffs were beautiful, dramatic, red cliffs overlooking the ocean.  We drove along the San Diego city shoreline, past the USS Midway aircraft carrier and several Tall Ship museums, and also past commercial wharfs.  The Midway was the longest serving aircraft carrier in the 20^th century (1945-1992).  It was built in a record 17 months but missed being used in World War II.

USS Midway

Imperial Beach

The town of Imperial Beach declares itself as the “Most Southwesterly Town in the Continental US.”  Since we had visited the Most Eastern Town (Lubec ME), the Southern Most Point (Key West FL), and Most Northern Town (Northwest Angle MN) – all in the Continental US, we were pleased to add this distinction to our list.  The beach was lovely, and the town dedicated to surfing.  There are metal profiles of different surfboards, with descriptive dates and surfer names along the sidewalk on the main street in town.

Tribute to Imperial Beach Lifeguards

Mission Beach

We stopped for lunch at Mission Beach.  While the other beaches were simply beautiful beaches and a pier, Mission Beach has a boardwalk, and shops, restaurants and people.  Lots of people.  You can rent electric scooters to ride along the boardwalk and terrify pedestrians.  We fled the boardwalk and walked along the beach among the sunbathers.  We had a fish taco lunch on the roof of the Sand Bar; the sign in the window said they served the Best Fish Tacos in San Diego, and they were the best we have ever had.

The view from lunch at the Sand Bar

There are a lot of things to do in San Diego, and someday we will return and plan to stay for long enough to do all of them.  

Mission Beach

Carlsbad Caverns Is Every Bit As Magnificent As People Say It Is! - New Mexico (March 22, 2019)

Soda Straw formations

So fine and delicate

There are two ways that you can descend in to Carlsbad Caverns (National Park).  You can walk down through the Natural Entrance zig zagging down 750 feet (almost 75 stories) over the course of a mile, or you can take the elevator down.  There is one way out of the caverns, by elevator back up.  And while you are in the caverns, you hike through an enormous chamber loaded with glorious and incredible stone formations.  If anyone has ever told you that Carlsbad was amazing, they were right.  Take it from two veteran cavern visitors; we spent almost 4 hours hiking in this cavern.

Looking back at the Visitors Center, on the way to the Natural Entrance

Natural Entrance path

Amphitheater - that dark spot at the top of the picture is the cave opening

We chose to hike through the Natural Entrance.  We had arrived by car driving to the top of a range of the Guadalupe Mountains.  The terrain was rugged dessert, with limestone cliffs.  After showing our National Parks pass and renting audio guides at the Visitors Center, we walked down a path through the desert to an amphitheater where they watch the bats leave the cave in the summer.  Below the theater the cave entrance opens as a huge, dark maw.  Slowly you descend into the darkness, switching back and forth across the steep sides of the opening.  Your eyes become more and more accustomed to the dark.  The park rangers have chosen not to light this part of the hike (except for 1 or 2 short tunnels created to continue the course of the path) so that wild animals will not be attracted to explore the caverns as well. 

Natural Entrance path

It gets darker and darker

The increasing gloom also puts you in mind of what it must have been like when Jim White, the first explorer of the caverns, and early visitors experienced.  Jim White found the caverns as a 16-year old cowboy when he saw what he thought was a cloud of smoke out in the distance.  It was bats leaving the cave, and his first descent started a lifelong passion for the cave, concluding with his being made the first chief park ranger in 1924.  Early visitors were lowered into the caverns by guano bucket.  Then a wooden staircase was built for visitors to walk down (and back up) 750 feet.  The current paths have been in place since the 1950s.

As you reach the “twilight zone” between light and dark you start seeing fantastic rock formations.  At the bottom of the descent there are rest rooms, a snack bar, and gift shop.  From here you start the 1 ¼  mile walk through an absolutely enormous limestone chamber called the Big Room.  The Big Room is 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide and 255 feet high at its highest point.  It is heavily decorated with stalagmites, stalactites, soda straws, draperies, columns, flowstone, popcorn and other interesting formations. 

This is said to look like the baleen in a whales mouth

Some of the formations like the Hall of Giants and Mirror Lake are pretty famous.  What was impressive to us were the thousands of delicate soda straws hanging from the ceilings, and the popcorn like formations which was everywhere.

The path is paved and has railings

Popcorn everywhere

Given that the caverns are below desert, it is surprising that some of the formations are still wet and being formed.  It takes months for a drop of rain from the surface to soak its way into the cavern.  The Chihuahuan Desert gets 10-inches of rain a year.

  

Some of the original entrance stairs

The whole area is part of the Guadalupe Mountains, which is also a neighboring National Park.  265 million years ago, West Texas and Southeast New Mexico was covered by an inland sea.  A reef of sponge and algae formed at one end.  Tectonic uplift lifted this reef into what is known today as the Guadalupe Mountains.  The activity caused cracks and fissures which grew through chemical reactions eroding the limestone inside the mountains, and building these formations.  The mountain range is loaded with caverns.  Guadalupe Mountains National Park is rich with fossils from the early reef.  The fossils also exit in the Caverns, you can’t see them because they are covered with formations.  We also made a brief stop at Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

Hall of Giants

  

Flow stone

We have visited many caves in many states, Luray Caverns in Virginia has fancy formations, Mammoth Cave is long and has few formations, Wind Cave in South Dakota is memorable because it was Marina’s first cave experience, Tom Sawyer Cave in Missouri is tied to Mark Twain, as well as other interesting caves.  Carlsbad Caverns is beautiful, and immense and so worth the visit.  Here are more photos...

An early National Geographic exploration group descended this ladder - pretty scary

  

Mirror Lake

Gypsum stone erodes in these lines that look like drill marks

This formation is wet and still forming

Happy hikers

Guadalupe Mountains

Rafting the Rio Grande, Trelingua TX (March 19, 2019)

Paddling our raft

If you have been following this blog for a while, you know that we like to get out in a boat on any body of water we come across, so it should not be a surprise to you that we couldn’t wait to raft down the Rio Grande.  We took a floating trip with tiny rivulets but no white water to speak of.

The Rio Grande

Trelingua is a dusty crossroads to the west of Big Bend National Park.  Its sole economy is tourism; providing housing and restaurants for visitors to the park and as well as guided driving, rafting, and horse riding tours.  The town is located between the national park and Big Bend Ranch State Park.  The state park is huge, encompassing 55% of all of the state park lands in Texas.  Our raft trip started and ended on state park land, and floated between the US and Mexico along the Rio Grande.

Our crew getting in the raft, early morning and cold

To get to the spot to put in the raft, we drove on hair-raisingly steep roads through the state park.  Our guide, Anna-Cole, pointed out places where vehicles had left the road.  We saw a wrecked car and tanker truck abandoned on the side of the cliff as we were rafting later in the morning.  Recovery had been made impossible by the terrain and so the wreckage was left there to rust.  Our tentative plans to leave the Big Bend area by that route (which we thought would be “scenic”) were quashed.  No way we wanted to drive our rig up and down those crazy hills! 

Looking back at Dark Canyon from our Mexican sand bar

We were joined in our raft by another older couple and a lovely family with two elementary school aged children.  We were placed on the raft with some of us on each side, and the guide at the rear and were told to "paddle" (2 times, 3 times) or "take a break".  Mostly the lazy current of the river and the efforts of our guide, Anna-Cole, did the work.

Anna-Cole making our snack

The trip took us through gentle rolling hills with cane grasses on the side of the river.  We saw turtles sunning on sticks along the shallow areas.  Eventually, we passed through Dark Canyon.  The igneous rock is actually light in color, but weathering and microbes have stained the outer surfaces of the rock black.  It was dark and shadowed inside the canyon.  After we floated out the other side, we stopped on a sandbar for a snack of fruit, cheese and cookies.  The sandbar was on the Mexican side of the river; Anna-Cole explained that there was a mile "grace space" on each side of the river where people could cross back and forth and have a snack on a Mexican sandbar.  The remainder of the trip was again through gently rolling hills.

Happy Rafters!

It felt good to be back out on the water again, and to see this interesting area from another point of view.