Thursday - January 1, 1998: Carlsbad, NM to Roswell, NM
Happy New Year!
Not completely prepared to face life on the planet in 1998 this morning, so we headed underground for a few hours just to get our bearings...The exploration of the Carlsbad Caverns was just the right way to kick it off. This huge (and I mean huge to those Missouri folks who may have been to... say...Meramac Caverns before) set of caverns, features some incredible stalagmites, 'tites and other unworldly features in the largest underground chambers either of us have ever seen. Some 14 footbal fields worth of square feet in just the aptly named The Big Room.

Consisting of a number of self-guided tours, with a very cool Autoplaying-CD-ROM-Around-Your-Neck-Tourguide-Thingie we spent about 4 or so hours down there, which gave us time for a box lunch in the Lunchroom some 750 ft. below the surface of the Earth. We're only sad that we missed the summertime exit flights of thousand of bats from the cave's maw. But otherwise, this National Park definitely puts the "bad" in Carlsbad! Check 'em out next time you're in the 'hood!

Feeling more prepared to face '98, we ventured back to the surface and into the car at dusk for an evenings ride up the deserted and haunted highway towards Roswell, NM. Home of the infamous and alleged UFO Crash of 1947. As we drove under clouds of fog that floated just a foot or two above the car, we swore we saw atleast two different signs which both said "Roswell - 30 miles". Thankfully, the numbers finally started counting down below 30, and we arrived here, somewhat spooked, but with our wits about us enough to avoid the "Crash with Us!" advertisments at the Best Western, opting intstead to stay at the "Proudly Independent" Frontier Motel for the night.