Friday began as C.J. slept peicefully in the car, when all of a sudden Dave and Mike hurled
themselves into the car at around 7:00am shivering and shaking more than enyone I have ever
seen. Aparently they imerged from their sleeping bags comfortably warm and a little sweaty.
When their skin made contact with the cold, morning air, their systems shut down and they
could no longer function. After several minutes of hilarious (to C.J. at least) convulsions,
they calmed down and returned to normal. C.J. Promotly fell asleep again as the car beagn to
roll. Our destination this morning, Carlsbad Caverns, the biggest underground caves in the
western hemisphere.
Mike gave us an excuse to pull over after he reminded us of the Mexican food we ate on the
way.
We stopped only once to clean out the car for the first time on the trip which tookabout 40
minutes and filled three garbage bags. No one said a road trip is a clean endevour. Incidently,
Dave found his speeding ticket amidst a pile of food wrappers and napkins which brought back
the memories of his carelesness.
We arrived at the caves after a quick drive and were amazed to no end at what we saw. But
i'm afraid that the images are going to have to wait, cause I'm sitting here with Robert and
Conrad at at American Copier havin' and beer and we want to get the hell out of here and
enjoy the rest of the night. Okay, we'll leave you one to drool over.
As we were uploding a couple of Connrad's frieds came in. Pictured, Connrad, Jack and Jonny.
Now we thought it was worth mentioning, Jack Daniels (middle) has a wife named Cherri Brandy,
and their kid? his name is Chasin Whisky!(whisky's his middle name) True story, he just told
us!
Okay, okay, cave time. We arrived at the caves mid-morning and prepared to see somthing
pretty neat, but nothing prepared us for what we were about to walk into.
he entrance was hundreds of feet wide and went straight down.
In all we hiked over 2 miles of the 30+ miles of cave that have been explored. The deepest
point was almost 800 feet down containing one particular room called the 'big room', with 280
foot ceilings and the equivalent square footage of 14 foot ball fields! Most of the pictures
we took came out to dark so we made enhancements of as many good ones that we could. These
pictures can hardly do justice to what this place really looks like.
Even nature has a sense of humor...
Getting back from the caves landed us back in Roswell where we hooked up with the guys at
American copier again. They showed us a great time after which we were exhausted and for once
we planned ahead and got ourselves a camp site and Bottemless Lakes Campgrounds.
Being used to Michigan camping, it was kind of wierd seeing no trees. Mike wasted no time
in setting up the tent and dave made us Peanut Butter and jelly sandwitches and even sliced
them into triangles for us! CJ busted out the telescope as Dave and Mike both passed out.
Hazy conditions made telescope viewing iffy at best. Fighting fatigue, C.J. struggled to
sea much of anything before passing out in the front seat of the car not to wake up until
morning.
