Day Eight

Today we went to Carlsbad Caverns. They were unbelievable. The coolest thing (by far) that I've seen so far on the trip. I'm going to see a whole lot of national parks and monuments over the course of the next week, but this definitely started things off on the right foot.

You descend through the Natural Entrance down a mile-and-a-quarter slope, ultimately making your way into what's called The Big Room: big enough for six football stadiums to fit inside. The cave is lit by over 1,200 light bulbs that park rangers have put in over the years, and without them, the cave would be pitch black.

I brought my tripod and set long exposures (anywhere between two and 30 seconds) to capture as much light as I could. I came out with five pictures I love, that I posted on Flickr and will re-post here.

After we left the Caverns, we headed West once again and hit a few time zones. Time zones are weird in this area. We were in Mountain, then tracked back to Central, back to Mountain, and wound up in Pacific. We're going to be in Pacific most of today, but go back to Mountain for a few days in Utah. It's super weird.

Along Route 10, we stopped in Arizona at THE THING?, which is just as tourist-y and trashy as I had hoped it would be. I can't tell you what the thing is, mostly because I'm not sure.

You walk through three rooms of just random things, talking about how they were all "the thing" whenever they were made. It's weird.

Then you get here, at the end. This is The Thing:

Some kind of mummified mother and child? I guess.

Then we drove south of Tucson to the Longhorn Grill in Amado, Texas. The place looks awesome during the day, and even cooler at night.

I had a steak with a salad, veggies and boracho beans, which are beans cooked halfway with water, then halfway with beer and tequila and jalopenos and black pepper. They were really good. Everything was good. Well worth the trip!