After leaving Carlsbad, we crossed back into Texas, driving through El Paso to get to Las Cruces for the night. The drive through the Guadalupe Mountains was simply breath-taking, and the national park there is well worth a return visit for a few days of backpacking.
Way back in the Permian period, over 230 million years ago, the part of Pangea around what is now Carlsbad, New Mexico, was the basin of the Delaware Sea. The accreting remains of sponges, algæ, and other organisms slowly formed a reef, which, after the sea dried up and much later geologic changes occurred, became part of the Guadalupe Mountains.
Water seeping through the eventually eroded reef formed sulfuric acid which carved the huge chambers that would become the Carlsbad Caverns. In subsequent times, the percolating ground water would dissolve a little limestone on its way down, and deposit calcite as it dripped to the chamber floors, leading to the spectacular speleothems that now decorate the National Park.
Although the smaller grotto-crawling tours were all booked, Knox and I went on the self-guided tour of the Big Room (the largest cavern chamber in the Western hemisphere; the first in the world is in Borneo) and on a group tour of the King’s Palace (a collection of smaller chambers).
Words cannot begin to do justice to the majestic beauty of the caverns. At times the elegant coolness of the stalactites reminded me of the Fortress of Solitude. Sometimes the stalagmites formed an eerie, other-worldly pageant. In more whimsical moments, the flowstone and draperies resembled thick cake batter dripping off a spatula.
The Spanish missions in San Antonio, TX are gorgeous. We saw The Alamo, as well as Misión Concepción, Misión San José, and Misión Espada. It was interesting, though, that the information panels seemed to be very much pro-mission: they portrayed the Spanish as benevolent workers trying to improve the Indians, and gave short thrift to the suffering and collapse of the native populations.
On our way through the sprawl that is Houston, TX, we decided to take a detour to visit the Johnson Space Center. The official visitors center is called Space Center Houston and gets mixed reviews in my book.
On the plus side, it does have some original rockets, capsules, and a moon rock, though the gallery is somewhat hidden off the main exhibition space. There are two tours of the actual center. Knox and I took the Blue Tour, which goes to the Rocket Park (where you can walk around a real Saturn V rocket) and to the VIP gallery of the actual control room used in the Apollo 11 and 13 missions (among others). Interestingly, the control room currently in use for the International Space Station was just one floor below us. We did not go on the longer Red Tour, which takes visitors to the current space shuttle control room.
The big drawback of Space Center Houston is that it is structured very much like an amusement park. It’s got a playground for the littlest ones, some very basic science exhibits, and several video games that are supposed to be “simulators.”
Except for seeing the actual facility and the warehouse-sized Saturn V rocket, I’d say you’re better off going to the National Air and Space Museum.
