2020 Winter Camping Trip Day34-Carlsbad Caverns National Park

2020 Winter Camping Trip Day34, 2020/12/29

This was a jaw dropping experience. What a cave!

This day we went to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. I didn't know about this park, but Mr.N had been there and recommended it. 

This park is good, because National Park pass covers the cave entrance fee. In contrast, Mammoth Cave National Park requires everyone to buy a ticket to go into a cave even if you have a National Park Pass. 

Natural Entrance

There are two ways to go down into the cave big room area. One is a natural cave entrance, and the other is with an elevator. We took the natural entrance. This is much more fun! You go down, down, down with the natural entrance. The left picture is 5 minutes walk from the entrance. In the twilight zone, animals use there as a shelter. One of them is ringtail cats. I didn't know about the animal, but I saw a picture on the sign. Very cute! Even the sign says, "Ringtail cats are the cutest mammals you've never seen." I can't agree more. They are active at night and they can easily move around in the very rocky cave. 

There are thousands of decorations in the cave. Each one is different shape and it never gets you bored. Many formations are categorized where there are and its shape. For example, if it is hanging from ceiling, it is called stalactite (contains "c" in the word because it forms from ceiling: or at least you can memorize that way). If the decoration is forming from ground it is called stalagmite (contains "g" since it comes from ground). Columns are the connected formation of stalactites and stalagmite. In addition to that, flowstone, soda straws, draperies..etc. Many other formations are found. Some distinctive decorations are named like "Giant Dome" or "Totem Pole".

BIG

In the left picture is one of the biggest decoration in the cave. They are really big: it is hard to imagine from picture. In my guess they are at least 30 meters high. This is must see in person. 

Basically these decorations are formed by thousands of water drops from ground into the cave. The water absorbed carbon dioxide from air and soil and drip into a cave. These can dissolve limestone and absorb basic ingredient, because the water with CO2 is acidic. Then, once they come in, the carbon dioxide evaporate. In this state the water no longer hold ingredient: this forms the decoration.

From ceiling

Another picture in the right is decoration that amazed me. What a shape. Beautiful formation I had never seen. 

I had a lot of pictures, but too many to post here! 

After we enjoyed a lot, exit time. This was insane. It was not allowed to trace back to the natural entrance. People are required to take elevator. The line was so long. At first it was because social distancing. I thought the line was long because one household at one elevator ride. However, later we found it was just a chaos. No sign how many people can be in the elevator. The line didn't have 6 feet distancing enforced. Carlsbad Caverns NP is doing very bad job. 

I sent an email to the National Park Service. The email is as below. I sent in 2021 January. As of June 2021 I still had no response. I guess they will never respond.

Dear Carlsbad Caverns National Park,

I have a big concern regarding your social distancing practice. 

I had an insane experience and felt extremely unsafe and uncomfortable.

On December 29th, 2020. I went to Carlsbad Caverns National Park and toured the entire cave. I hiked in around 9:30 a.m., and I truly enjoyed the cave. 

Around noon, I was ready to go back and joined the line for the elevator. 

Along the line, there is no single sign to make people follow social distancing. Therefore, a lot of people were not leaving 6 feet space between households. 

For example, the family behind me was less than 2 feet behind. Besides, children took off their mask and parents didn't make the children to enforce mask wearing. 

Not only them, but many other children didn't wear masks AND screaming. 

The line continued until 1 p.m. It took exactly 1 hour to get to the elevator. At the elevator, there was no single sign of how many people are allowed to enter in the elevator together, or how many households are allowed to be in the elevator together. I saw 3 households entering the elevator together. I entered the elevator just with my partner to follow social distancing practice. 

This was an extremely unorganized and chaotic process. If this is continued, COVID for sure will spread in the cave. 

To avoid the worse situation,

• Need a sign for the line to enforce social distancing
• Need 6 feet apart sticker on the floor for the line area
• Need clear instructions how many people/household can be in the elevator at the same time
• Need rangers or volunteers to make people quiet and enforce social distancing near the line area
• Really need to limit number of people who can be in the cave at the same time

I went to Mammoth Cave National Park in November of 2020. This is a good comparison example, because it is another cave touring national park. 

Mammoth Cave is doing well for social distancing. They limit the number of people to be in the cave at the same time. They have rangers every 0.2 mile in the cave.

The rangers not only explain about caves, but also help people keep social distance. 

I hope Carlsbad Caverns National Park immediately revises social distancing practice policy and I hope I won't see clusters emerging in the park. 

Best regards.

2020 Winter Camping Trip Day33-Big Bend National Park Day4

 2020 Winter Camping Trip Day33, 2020/12/28

First part of the trail

Day4 in Big Bend National Park! We did 3 hikes on the final day in Big Bend. First one was Chimneys. 5.6 miles with 400 feet elevation gain. First 2 miles are completely flat in the great plain like in the left picture, then there are hills. These hills are quite interesting, because there are many petroglyphs and home of Native Americans remains intact. 

Chimney in the distance

On the way we saw cactus, but they were mostly red. I heard that it was drought in 2020-2021 winter, probably that was the reason they were red. Some were completely dead. Hope they will get some rain soon. 

Chimney is the rocky portion in the distance ahead in the right picture. The most interesting area is the most left rock. 

Petroglyphs

There are many petroglyphs on the rock. It is literally a lot. For me it was hard to tell what they meant, but it is exciting to see them. Some are wavy lines some are like faces? Some are circles and crosses. It is interesting to think what they were trying to convey by these, or maybe they just had fun drawing. 

house

Next interesting stuff was a house! There is a rocky area with flat ground with roof: rock is a shape like roof for the flat area, as you can see in the left picture. Wow. People lived there. This is a harsh environment: super hot in summer and cold in winter. How could they live there? How did they sleep? On the rock? In the cold? A lot of questions. It is fun thinking about them. 

Hole

Another evidence they were actually living there was many holes. As you can see in the left picture, it is obviously human made. These holes were used to grind stuff like grains and nuts etc. The holes were really used for years since they were very deep! One of them were more than 30 cm deep. Also I saw some portion of rocks were black, maybe due to fire. They might cook over fire. 

This hike was really nice: somehow this is not popular and nobody in the chimney area when we were. On the way back some people were going to the chimney area. I highly recommend this hike. 

Mule Ear

The second hike of the day was Mule Ear Spring hike. It is 3.8 mile out and back with minimal elevation change. 

Why is it called mule ear? It is a cute reason. You have an answer in the left picture. You can see the trail as well in the picture. The trail go towards and pass along the mule ear and goes to the spring. Spring itself is not very impressive, just like a small paddle, but it was okay. 

Mule Ear

This left picture was taken when we were passing the Mule Ear. It is a cool rocky structure. 

It was very nice to see the Mule Ear, so we sat down on the good viewpoint and enjoyed seeing it with snack. The Big Bend was quite a way: Texas is big and Big Bend is the real south end of Texas, but it was definitely worth going there.

Santa Elena Canyon

The last hike we did was Santa Elana Canyon. First of all, it was very popular trail and hard to get a parking spot at the trailhead. Besides, this was our third hike of the day, which was evening. For most people this might be the first or second hike of the day. 

The canyon is massive. That's real immense. As you can see in the left picture, it is very tall. The right side in the picture is US side and the left side is Mexico. This is amazing sight. Only down side was that there were many yahoos. Maybe early morning would be a good time to go there.

 

2020 Winter Camping Trip Day32-Big Bend National Park Day3

2020 Winter Camping Trip Day32, 2020/12/27

3rd day in the Big Bend!

The first hike we had was Window. The trailhead is in the back of Chisos campground. Usually you can drive into the edge of campground and park in front of the traihead, but it was closed due to COVID. To be honest that didn't make sense at all. Instead everyone was required to park in the overflow parking and walk inside the campground. The overflow parking lot is big. Sometimes National Park Service seems to close the area for no reason, although they claim because of COVID. In fact they close to be lazy: I am sure about that.

blue jay

Anyway, we started hiking. The trail is less than 5 miles total. This kind of mid-distance trails are relatively crowded, but still able to do with social distancing. On the way there were few people since we started early. A blue jay was along the trail and one particular bird stayed close. He might have been expecting food, but instead I just took a picture. I don't want wild birds tamed. I looked at zoomed in picture and amazed how furry he is! Also the legs are thin but look sturdy. Impressive body. 

potholes

The last portion of the hike is in the wash: this is the way to the window. We saw many potholes. First time I saw potholes was in New Zealand. It is massive power of water to make such holes. 

Walking in the wash is usually not straightforward, but it is in National Park. Why?

steps in wash

National Park Service (NPS) made steps multiple places as you can see in the right picture. Ha! If this was in the BLM, there would be no stairs for sure.

Window

Then we reached the Window. It is like a window! (left picture) Blue sky is in the window and the big rocks lines made a nice window shape. I liked it. We took pictures at the edge of the window.

The edge of window

Below the window is the cliff. So there is no way to go beyond that. Actually it is dangerous to go too close to the edge. As you can see in the left picture, the rock at the edge is extremely smooth. I touched it and it was like silk! I can imagine all the water go into this point and drop into the valley below: the force to smooth rock by that tremendous amount of water should be huge. 

After we enjoyed the edge and took pictures, we sat down side of window to make room for other people and had snack. While our picnic, more and more people reached the window and took pictures in turn. Among them one guy was extremely chatty and he talked to every single hiker. He is around 40 years old now and was he was telling people his father and he as 10 years old took a picture at the same spot as he did on that day with his daughter. 

After Window we went to the top of the hill to have a nice view that guy was also there again. His name is Dan, and he is from Dallas, Texas and with a wife from Vietnam or Malaysia (I forgot but she is from South Asia) and his 10-year old daughter, and he was talking to every single person again on the hill. One of them was a guy from San Antonio, Texas living in now California. They agreed that California is beautiful but not sure about Californians: they think that people in CA are too progressive. It was interesting to hear what Texans think about. Not many opportunities exist like that. 

Another hiker trapped by Dan was an old German female. She is at least 65 years old. She was going down to the valley to another end of trailhead. Her husband would pick her up at the trailhead. After she talked with Dan she proceeded descending. From the top of the hill she was all the way visible. At some point she took a break and stopped for a while. Then Dan got dramatic and said, "She doesn't know what she is doing. I will go back to trailhead and tell a ranger." We were thinking, "She is fine." And she was fine walking after taking a break. 

Amazing view

Dan was a little too chatty, but other than that, it was great. The view was amazing! Before I came to Big Bend, I had no idea what it looks like, but I loved Big Bend so much. Also December is a great time to visit there. It is not too cold and totally manageable camping there. 

 

 

Not only this! We had another hike. Lost Mine. Since parking lot was full, we parked in a turnout. We saw at least 10 cars got tickets due to parking along the road (not turnout). There are multiple signs of no parking on road, so they deserved them. FYI be careful. 

Interesting colors

Lost Mine is a good medium size hike, 5.3 miles with 1237 feet elevation gain. The view is continuously great. There is an interesting story why it is called lost mine. Spanish settlers came and they found mine having gold. The native Americans these area who were forced to work as labors for mining were told to wear blindfolds not to get an idea where the mine was. This is why it is called now Lost Mine. Is it true? Nobody knows, but according to the sign, most likely the mine didn't exist but just this is known as a storytelling.

Great view

On the way back to the Lost Mine summit, we saw deer. We saw really really interesting and very funny male deer's behavior. It was a mating season when we were there, and one male was chasing a female. The female was absolutely no interest at all in the male. She ran away very fast and went far away from him, however, he didn't give up. Then he approached her and stopped 10 meters away from her. She kept ignoring him and continued eating. Then abruptly he started walking toward her by stomping his foot. It was so funny to me. Was he trying to impress her? It seemed like that to me. Sadly to him, the female deer again ran away. She was not impressed at all but annoyed. It was very interesting sighting.