GREETINGS FROM CARLSBAD, New Mexico (NM) USA
For the keen observer, you will know that we visited Carlsbad on our “Across the USA” 2012 tour.
Last time we arrived from the south and this time from the east. For this trip, it is a good link point into wider parts of New Mexico we have not covered. It also gave us the opportunity to re-visit Carlsbad Caverns National Park and hopefully to see parts of the caverns we did not do last time.
After a little delay last night while the girl at the airport sorted out doing a release of an “Enterprise” car for an “Alamo” rental (eventhough they are basically the same company) we managed to get the replacement car sorted out so our second car for the tour is a GMC Terrain – similar in size to the Jeep.
First stop for the day was the Walmart at Abilene to stock up on essentials – mostly Adrienne’s cosmetics supply of course !
In these parts of Texas, as we found last time, the countryside is pretty open, scrubby and flat and dotted with little oil pumps in field after field. But this time there are also huge wind farms and the large turbines almost transfix you as they overwhelm the surrounding area. Thanks to the recent rains however, it was a lot greener than anticipated though !
Rather than sit on the Interstate, we decided to head toward Carlsbad via the cross country option.
Just north of Abilene is Fort Phantom Hill. It is an old US Army and Confederate Army outpost but only really had a life for the last half of the 1800’s – a patchy one at that – and has pretty much been abandoned since then. In the 1970’s it was added to the US National Register of Historic Places and since the 1990’s the Fort Phantom Foundation has maintained it as one of the “most pristine historic sites in Texas”. It was very interesting with remains of the old fort stone buildings (log walls and thatched roofs were lost in a fire not long after it was abandoned) and historical details of its part as one of the many lonely frontier outposts of the US Army in that era.
Just further on as we turned to head west on TX180, we went through the town of Anson. It got its name in honor of Anson Jones who was the last president of the Republic of Texas – an independent sovereign country between 1836 and 1846 before being annexed by the United States.
Mind you it was originally called Jones City so he won either way !
Further west we came to the only real “large” town along the route to Carlsbad – called Snyder. Like many a small Texas town I think, it started life as a trading post (for buffalo traders in this case), earned a reputation (“Robber’s Roost” due to the “nefarious nature of a few residents and lack of law enforcement”), built up with the coming of the railway and boomed with the discovery of oil.
Luckily it has managed not to “bust” and oil is still a significant industry for it today with the population fairly stable at around 10-12,000. In most other towns we passed along the way today I think the cemetery had the biggest population !
Across the border from Texas to New Mexico, we reached Carlsbad early afternoon thanks to the 1 hour time difference from Central to Mountain time. Carlsbad has a rather unique distinction of having “a river which actually crosses itself” – the Pecos River. This river runs from the mountains of New Mexico for almost 1,000 miles, down through West Texas before meeting up with the Rio Grande. It is an important source of water for the northern parts of the Chihuahuan Desert. Back in the late 1880’s, a group of settlers set about building irrigation canals from the Pecos River to feed land in the semi-arid Pecos Valley. The centrepiece, at the northern end of town, became a 145 feet flume which carried 8 feet of water from the main canal back across the Pecos River ! And Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” made it famous as the “World’s Only River That Crosses Itself” – so it must be true !
The original (wooden) flume carried 9,000 gallons of water per second. But it was no match for flash floods which washed it away twice in the 1890’s. In 1907, with a Federal grant, the current 47 feet high and 497 feet long concrete structure was built. At the time it was the largest concrete aqueduct in the world. These days its a bit leaky and weed-choked but apparently still works after heavy rains.
There is not much to the town of Carlsbad itself. Coming in from the east/north this time we actually drove right through town but like many of the towns we find it has a very “industrial feel” and influenced heavily by the surrounding commercial activities. Having said that, the Tom Tom took us on its usual “back street” route to get to the flume and the section of residential area backing on to the Pecos River was quite flash with some big homes and manicured lawns.
Our main goal in this area was to visit the nearby Carlsbad Caverns National Park again. Didn’t quite work to plan though ! We were going to hike in the main entrance and down into the caverns, however with thunderstorms about and Adrienne not feeling the best ( our usual holiday colds developing !) we decided to leave our visit until late in the afternoon.
At this time of year, the caverns are home to large numbers of Mexican free-tailed bats. At around sunset every evening, they emerge from the caves and head off looking for insects and water. It’s quite a spectacular show seeing them come out in vast numbers – well that’s what the brochure says. When we arrived at the Visitor Centre, we were told that with a lot of recent storms parts of the caves were flooded to some extent and with further thunderstorms forecast today (we had one just as we had an early dinner at the local “Chili’s” chain), the show had been cancelled. In any case photography or video is not allowed so we wouldn’t have got pictures of the show anyway.
So we headed back into town to relax and sort out things for tomorrow – we are still both a bit jet lagged so an early night will do as good.
Today’s Trivia – Carlsbad is the home of the first skateboard park in the world !