Continuing on our return trip, next stop was Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas near the New Mexico border. We checked out the visitor center and went for a hike in the afternoon before continuing on to camp on some BLM land in New Mexico near Carlsbad Caverns National Park. The following day was of course to visit Carlsbad Caverns.
We bought tickets for the self-guided tour and spent several hours enjoying and following the extensive walking paths of the cave system. There are ranger-led tours to some more isolated portions of the cave but these are very limited and get booked up well in advance. After exploring the cave at our leisure and having lunch back in the van, we waited around to join the ranger-hosted twilight event to learn about the bats that use the cave for much of the year and to wait for their grand, swarming, evening exit from the cave. No photography allowed (or any devices or talking for that matter) but we did get to watch many hundreds stream out. Apparently at later times of the year, you can see many hundreds of thousands of bats exit the cave.
We camped on some more BLM land that evening but woke the next day to a forecast for severe high wind and dust storm expected for hundreds of miles in every direction later that day. We had already planned to restock food in the town of Carlsbad so we ended up just renting a hotel room in Carlsbad to sit out the storm.
On our return trip from watching the eclipse in Central Texas, Darlene and I first headed to the southwest edge of Texas to spend a few days exploring Big Bend National Park along the Mexico border.
We didn’t have campground reservations and of course everything in the park was booked out for weeks but we were able to snag backcountry sites which you can only reserve in-person 24 hours in advance. These are a handful of very dispersed but specifically designated sites along some of the unpaved back roads. Know that some of these roads require high clearance 4×4 vehicles and some of the sites are very remote, requiring hours to reach. We actually chose not to take one of these sites because we didn’t want to have to spend so much time to get to it and from it. As it turned out though, we spent over an hour trying to get to a camp area outside the north end of the park. In hindsight, we should have looked to find a campground out the more built-up west entrance of the park.
Anyway, we spent three full days hiking, biking and touring very different areas of the park, from desert to mountains and along the Rio Grande. If you go, make sure you don’t skip out on the really well done Fossil Discovery Exhibit.
On our way to Texas to see the eclipse, we enjoyed an afternoon checking out the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona: lots of wide vistas and pretty landscapes, some pueblo ruins and petroglyphs, Triassic era fossils and of course lots of colorful “rockified” (okay, petrified) tree remains everywhere.
Darlene and I joined a small group trip in Northern India in late January, booked through Explore!. The tour began in Delhi and traveled across much of the Rajasthan region of northern India before finishing off in Agra and returning to Delhi after two weeks. We then took a little extra three day excursion to Rathambore National Park in search of tigers to cap off our visit to India.
We had a fun group of the nine of us (everyone from the UK but us), plus our wonderful Indian tour leader Inder Singh (“Indu”). We also had an additional local guide at many of the historical sites we visited. India proved to be quite the experience – from the crazy anything-goes, honk-to-be-heard traffic of every form and size to the innumerable historic sites and temples to the massive crowds of super-friendly Indian people everywhere. Oh and of course so many curries and other Indian dishes to try!
A 10-minute video montage of our trip. (Smaller/lower quality version here)
Starting in busy Delhi, we visited a number of temples, tombs and a mosque over two days before traveling by train into Rajasthan. In Ajmer, we visited one of the oldest mosques in India and, not being a place visited by foreign tourists, we were approached by lots of folks wanting to take selfies with us. That evening we stayed at a rural Maharaja’s palace now converted into a heritage hotel where we were treated to an ox cart ride into the neighboring village.
We visited the massive Chittorgarh Fort the next day on our way to Udaipur in the south. In Udaipur, we saw a performance of Dharohar folk dancing and toured the City Palace before Darlene and I succumbed to a tiring cold and missed out on the boat tour across Lake Pichola as well as a demonstration of miniature detail painting. We were feeling better the next day as we continued on to Jojowar, stopping off at a beautiful Jain temple.
Our next stop was to see a demonstration of handcrafted Dhurrie rugs by Roopraj Prajapat – and have the whole group tempted into buying some rugs! We then continued on to visit the Mehrangarh Fort and Palace as well as visit another busy street market in Jodhpur.
Then we were on to a long drive and our deepest point into the Thar Desert of Rajasthan, to Bikaner. Along the way, we visited the Karni Mata “Temple of Rats” where tens of thousands of rats make a home and are cared for, worshipped and given offerings. (While Darlene waited in the bus. ;-) In Bikaner, we were given a tour of the Junagarh fort and palace, saw some havelis (traditional highly decorated mansions) while exploring a street market, visited another miniature painting artist and the girls got painted in henna while the boys played foosball.
On the way to Jaipur, we took a driving break to see some more havelis in Fatehpur. With two days in Jaipur, we toured the Amber Fort and Palace, visited the astronomical observatory park of Jantar Mantar and the City Palace but also were treated to more Indian handcraft demonstrations – few came away from there empty-handed!
And yet on we continued to Agra for the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort of Agra and the Baby Taj mausoleum, with a stopover at another red sandstone fort at Fatehpur Sikri.
On our return to Delhi, the rest of our group headed home to England while Darlene and I boarded a train for Rathambore in hopes of seeing Bengal tigers in the wild. Unfortunately, none were to be found on our three excursions into the park over two days. Hey, but Darlene bought some more Indian handicrafts!
It was a great trip overall but I admit to being put off by the constant street crowds, the noise and air pollution and the garbage strewn everywhere – lining the streets and filling the river beds. However, we’re both still happy to have had the opportunity to visit India and we very much enjoyed our group and Indu’s enthusiastic guiding.
We reached the final destination of our road trip down SR95 on New Year’s Eve: Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. The area is full of scenic trails, grand vistas, gorgeous rock formations and lots of bouldering and rock climbing opportunities. As usual, we found places to camp along dirt roads on nearby BLM land.
Due to Red Rock Canyon’s popularity and close proximity to Las Vegas, you have to purchase a timed entry reservation online to access the scenic loop road and its associated trailheads but the system works well. One thing I’d recommend to make the most of your time is to spend a day exploring the Calico Hills area from the other side – from the free-to-access Calico Basin area – so that you can have more time for other trails on the day you reserve entry to the scenic loop.
Continuing south on SR95 from Tonopah and Goldfield, we came through Beatty and reached the Goldwell Open Air Museum a little before sunset:
We spent the next two nights in a spot in the hills outside Beatty and ventured out on our bikes to explore and visit the remains of the mining town, Rhyolite. We also encounter some wild burros both out in the desert and in the middle of the town of Beatty.
Next stop along Nevada’s SR95: another once-booming mining town, Goldfield, and the International Car Forest of the Last Church:
There’s a few old buildings and several collections of abandoned mining gear in town. We skipped those but did swing by the old “pioneer” graveyard in the outskirts of town to see some unusual epitaphs:
To continue our road trip down SR95 in Nevada, we returned from our Berlin ghost town detour and camped out near Tonopah at the base of the Crescent Sand Dunes, in sight of a solar concentrating power plant:
The following day, we visited the freaky fun Clown Motel and the neighboring graveyard from Tonopah’s early mining days:
But we spent most of the day checking out the very interesting Tonopah Historic Mining Park:
