Carlsbad and West Texas

Heading towards Marfa

On March 24, 2022,  the weather was much cooler as we left El Paso heading towards Guadalupe Mountains National Park on US-62. We saw a sign that said in front of our path said there were no services for more than 160 miles. Before reaching the mountains, we drove near some salt flats. Since reaching central New Mexico, we have been in the Chihuahuan desert ecosystem. Over the course of this trip, we will see three of the four North American deserts, missing only the Great Basin, but we saw that last summer.

The national park is located in the highest mountain range in Texas. Our first stop in the National Park was Pine Springs Visitors Center, where there is a ruin from the Butterfield Stage Station; it was really cold and windy! From there we went to Frijole Ranch History Museum, which includes a school house, bunk house, barn and settler’s house. It was much too cold to walk very far outside. It was in the low 40’s, with wind and rain, plus occasional hail.

We then drove towards New Mexico and up towards McKittrick Canyon, where we were brave enough to try a walk, until it started hailing again. We headed back to the highway and went on towards Carlsbad which is at a lower elevation. We stopped for a picnic lunch (in the car, due to the wind) in the area of Rattlesnake Springs in Carlsberg Caverns National Park. From there, we drove on to Carlsbad, and went to the Living Desert State Park, which is a New Mexico State Park and not related to the park with a similar name in Palm Springs. It is landscaped with plants of the Chihuahuan Desert and has a few animals, many birds, and an active colony of prairie dogs. 

We then went to our hotel in Carlsbad, where we will spend two nights.

March 22, 2022

This morning we went to the Carlsberg Caverns National Park, about 30 minutes from our hotel. We had a timed entry ticket for the Cavern for 9:00 a.m., allowing entry between 8:30 and 9:30. We entered via the Natural Entrance, which required walking down about 800 feet over a 2 mile pathway. Some of the trail has a 20% grade. Note, on this day, it was warmer inside the Cavern than on the surface. 

Trail down to the entrance. 

We were surprised at how large the cavern is. There were no small spaces to squeeze through like at Lehman Cave we visited last year. We took a lot of photographs! But it is very hard to capture on “film.” The trail meets up with people who took the elevator (!) down to a loop trail to the Big Room. This trail through the cavern is a bit over 1 mile and took about an hour. We did not walk back up, but took the elevator and walked through the nice Visitor Center. 

We left the park and stopped along the way stopping at the beautiful Walnut Canyon. But it was still cold, and we skipped the longer hike. We returned to the town of Carlsbad around lunch time. After lunch, we went to Carlsbad’s Heritage Park with its roadrunner statues and historic structures including the first homestead built in Eddy County. The Pecos River Flume from 1903 is there. It was the largest concrete structure in the world when it was built. 

We saw another town mural.  Finally, we visited the interested Carlsbad Art and Culture Center, which has nice exhibits about local history, a collection of Indian pottery and a small collection of art. 

March 23, 2022

The weather was starting to clear up—at least the sky was blue. It was still not as warm as normal for this time of year in the Chihuahuan desert, however. We left Carlsbad and headed south back into to Texas. Today, we will be changing time zones into Central time. We crossed into the Lone Star state on US 285, but there was no sign on the state line! The first part of the drive was through oil country (Permian Basin) with lots of “hotels” (actually, trailers) for oil workers. And lots of oil tanker traffic. It was the only place outside California that we encountered much traffic at all.

We stopped after 1.5 hours or so in Pecos and went to the charming West of the Pecos Museum. It has room after room of memorabilia, including an old saloon and a huge collection of artifacts from the 19th Century.

From there, we took TX17 south, went west for a small bit on I-10, and took the continuation of TX17 into the Davis mountains. We entered a pretty canyon one the way to the small town of Fort Davis. We were now in Jeff Davis County, and both the County and town are unfortunately named after that Jeff Davis. There is even a national historic site there. We did not visit the site, but had lunch in an old time soda parlor. We then took a scenic loop drive through the Davis Mountains, past the McDonald Observatory on TX Rtes 118 and 166 (photo top of page), and then south to US 90. This covered a portion of the 75 mile scenic loop of the Davis Mountains State Park. As an aside, we had tickets for a program at the Observatory for Friday, but ended up skipping it given how cold it was getting at night and how late we would get back to Marfa (the sun didn’t set until after 8:30 p.m.). 

We next drove west past the small settlement of Valentine and visited the Prada Marfa art installation. In addition to the building, the sculpture is surrounded by a fence onto which were hung many hundred “locks of love.” 

Then we turned toward the east on US90 and drove about 30 minutes on to our destination, Marfa. We took a short walking tour of the town and saw quite a few attractive, old buildings and art galleries. It was still cold! Our hotel is located in the center of town, between the railroad and the police station.

Above is the 19th Century Presidio County Courthouse, just up the block from our hotel.

Tomorrow, we start our dive into Marfa’s art scene.

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