Southwest Trip 2011 Day 2

We are up at 7am and head for the office. With a cheap room you get a cheap breakfast (BF). Cold cereal, fruit, juice, hot chocolate/coffee. I have cereal and grab some bananas for a snack before we head for Carlsbad Caverns (CCs). We take 380 to Roswell, home of a famous UFO sighting. Or alleged sighting. Most Americans know the story of Roswell, but perhaps our foreign TP members do not. We are not interested in the UFO stuff and head south on 285. After hitting the city of Carlsbad, we take 62/180 south to CCs.

Nice new Visitors Center at CCs, $6 to enter the caverns. Chris has been to CCs many years ago and says it is better to walk down to the Big Room. OK, off we go. It is all paved and in great condition, but pretty difficult if you have mobility issues. It is about 1 mile(1.6km) to the Big Room, dropping 750 feet(235 meters). My knee holds up, but I am starting to limp by the time we make the Big Room loop. There is a short-cut to the elevators about half way along the loop and we vote to leave the cavern. We have enough photos of all the cave features. After a elevator ride to the top, we leave CCs. There are plenty of yuccas at this elevation and we stop for a few photos. Chris decides to go back to Albuquerque via El Paso. Not the best choice as it the longer route. Once we make it to Albuquerque we hit another Denny's for dinner. They have a decent menu at decent prices, no surprises when you dine at Denny's. We drive north of the city to look for a room and choose Bernalillo. It is right at the junction at I-25 & 550, the road to Chaco Canyon. We price several motels and tell the desk clerk at the Super 8 that we can stay at Motel 6 for $50 including tax. She plays with the computer and offers us an AARP rate of $53 including taxes, includes BF. Since I see they have a waffle maker, so we vote to stay at the Super 8. We unpack, shower, a bit of photo editing, TV, bed at 10pm. That ends day 2 of our SW trip.