We were on the road by 8am, go us! *A quick note in here about KOA facilities – very nice. Best camping showers I’ve seen in a while. However, KOA isn’t about camping as much as it is about hosting RV drivers. It has a laundry mat, satellite television, and will deliver meals to your tent/RV. That’s not camping. Ahem.* We headed South through Carlsbad and White to the Carlsbad National Park. There’s a winding seven mile stretch through the park before you actually see the visitor’s center. It’s built over the caverns and allows two ways into the “big room”, through the natural cave entrance and via a 750 elevator ride. Guess which we did? Bet your ass we took that elevator.

Before you call us lazy, we did take an hour and half to tour the Big Room. This thing is a monster. Stunning. Amazing. Completely worth the $6/pp to get in and look around. I took pictures but they won’t do justice to this place. Let’s just say that I felt ripped off by Meramec Caverns for charging $18/pp when you can get a deal like this. We were starved after our exhausting elevator ride to the top, so ate a quick lunch at the cafe. I had tilapia with tortilla crust & Mexican spices — go, NPS! We bought some postcards and sent them off to those we deemed worthy (if you want to be worthy, send us your mailing address & consider donating to our road trip fund. The link’s on the right.)

There’s no direct route to get to Truth or Consequences from Carlsbad, so we took Hwy 180/62 South through Texas around the Guadeloupe Mountains (at which point we hit 2000 miles traveled) towards El Paso.

We finally stopped in the night at Truth or Consequences, NM for the hot springs! River Bend hot springs has 5 minnow pools right next to the Rio Grande. We stepped through all of them (107-102 degrees) and then soaked in the river (55 degrees, yikes!). Paradise. Glad we stopped.

BTW, if you plan to use AT&T’s wireless modem between Western Oklahoma/Northern Texas through New Mexico into Arizona, forget about it. They suck. Hard. There’s about 1500 miles of connectivity I DID NOT HAVE — not in Roswell, not in Amarillo, and not even in El Paso. *shakes fist at AT&T*

It’ 7:49pm. We’re going to soak the rest of the evening.