Hidden Valley Ranch Campground - Working Cattle Ranch - More Petroglyphs

Tuesday we moved from Mountain Meadows RV Park in Tularosa, New Mexico to Hidden Valley Ranch in Deming, New Mexico (full hookups and all the salad dressing you can eat!).  Actually, this is a working cattle ranch with hundreds of head of cattle - most of which are out on the range - we saw quite a few on the drive in.  

Our Route

Entrance to the ranch/campground

Our Site

View From Our Site

View of the ranch and campground from a hill behind the office (click to enlarge)

Views from around the ranch

View of part of the 7 mile long dirt road to get to the ranch

There is a petroglyph site just a few hundred yards from the campground - 100's of petroglyphs  about 800-1000 years old.

View from petroglyph site showing the campground in the background

Lots of wildlife - Jack Rabbit (below), Coyotes, Road Runners, etc.  - I've been trying to get a picture of a road runner for a couple of weeks with no success - they are really almost as fast as in the cartoons

Lots of types of cactus

The Cane Cholla cactus are starting to bloom

Cloudcroft, New Mexico - Elevation 8700 Feet

On Saturday we visited Cloudcroft, New Mexico, a small resort village located in the Sacramento Mountains at an elevation of about 8700 feet.  It was 70 degrees in the desert when we left and 40 degrees at Cloudcroft when we got there.   The town has many shops and is located in the Lincoln National Forest which has many hiking trails mainly on the old rail bed of the El Paso and Northeastern Railroad built in the late 1800's.

The Downtown Area

Donna, Darby and an 8 foot wooden Indian

We hiked one of the trails to one of the many railroad trestle bridges.  We only went two miles but it seemed like five at the 8700 foot altitude.

View from the trail - the white near the center of the image is White Sands 4400 feet below (the White Sands are at 4300 feet elevation) and about 30 miles away.

One of the unique bridges on the railroad route

The bridge collapsed in 1960 - this is what is left

Mountain Meadows Campground, White Sands National Monument, Worlds Largest Pistachio

We are now in Tularosa, NM at Mountain Meadows RV Park - this is just a few miles north of Alamogordo,  New Mexico.  The park is not bad - we are in between two buildings so I couldn't get a good picture of the site but it is better than it looks - we are away from the other campers and have a lot of space.

Our Route

 Our Site

The arroyo behind the campground

Close-up of the arroyo

View of our campground from the desert with Sierra Blanca peak (11, 981 Feet) in background 

We spent part of the day today at White Sands National Monument - the pictures below don't really capture the uniqueness and scale of this place - it is truly breathtaking - 275 square miles of white sand dunes located between two mountain ranges with many peaks in the 7000 to 8000 foot range.  This is a place that shouldn't be missed if you are anywhere near the area.

The visitor center - built in the 1930's in authentic Pueblo Revival style 

Panoramic view of the dunes (click to enlarge)

View Of The Dunes

Donna And Darby On The Dunes

People sliding on the steep dunes with flying saucer sleds

                                                       Donna And Darby On The Dunes

More dunes

The road in - note that they have to use a snowplow to keep the road open due to drifting sands

More Dunes

View of our truck from the dunes

On our way back from White Sands we stopped at Pistachioland, home of the world's largest pistachio.  This is a pistachio farm and winery with a large gift shop. 

Donna in front of the 30 foot pistachio

Part of the pistachio orchard

Also on the way back we stopped to take another pic of Sierra Blanca Peak from a different angle

Carlsbad Caverns National Park - Carlsbad, New Mexico

Today we traveled to Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  I saw the caverns in 1969 or 1970 but Donna has never seen them.  We went to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky last year and Carlsbad Caverns is far and away more impressive.  The rooms and chambers are many times larger that those at Mammoth Cave.

The entrance to the park

Donna at the entrance to the visitor center

The natural entrance to the caverns.  You have a choice of entering the caverns at the natural entrance or taking the elevator down to the main caverns.  We chose the natural entrance which adds about a mile to the self guided tour which makes the tour about 2.8 miles altogether. The main caverns are about 800 feet underground the "Big Room" is about 4,000 feet long, 625 feet  wide, and 255 feet  high at the highest point.  250 million years ago this area of New Mexico was an inland sea.  The caverns were formed when the sea dried up and surface water eroded the limestone.

A formation on the way to the main caverns

One of the large caverns at the 800 foot level

The rest of the photos are of formations in the main caverns

Note the people near the center of the image - helps you visualize the scale of things

The caverns were quite impressive and we would recommend stopping here to anyone traveling to this part of the country.

We are leaving our BLM campsite in the morning - next stop - Roswell, New Mexico.