Day 10 - Calsbad NM to Amarillo TX

 2000 miles under our belt now and we're a third of the way into our trip.  The morning started off with a visit to the Carlsbad Cavern National Monument.  This is the largest cave in the Western Hemisphere.  The self-guided walk starts with a descent to around 750ft under the surface. Here's the initial walk from the cave entrance   

 Here's a shot of a person (Nige) by the left hand pillar, centre photo.  The scale of this cave is incredible and photos don't really tell the whole story.  It was massive.

 There's a walk-way to the right of this picture to give you a feel for the size of the space.  Remember, we're 750 feet under the surface here.

So often the scene was one of an alien landscape - with all sorts of weird shapes going on.  There's a silhouette of a person in the front of this picture too. Looks like Nige again.

A final shot from the caves, showing stalagmites and stalactites.

We enjoyed the walk so much, instead of doing what everyone else did - hop into a lift to carry us  back to the surface - we walked out the way we came in.  I think the locals thought we were nuts.  But what a bonus - we got to see the cave twice!

Back in the car and bound for Roswell, New Mexico, 100 miles to the north and scene of the famous 1947 UFO sighting and alien capture (!) But first, here's a cool Corvette we parked behind at the International UFO Museum and Research Center at Roswell.

Here's me outside one of the many Alien shops in Roswell, NM.

.And inside.  Here's a spooky creature...

And some more...

Oh dear...this guy's not in good shape...

 Here he is again...

A typical UFO shop in Roswell.

Back in the car again, heading, this time, for Amarillo smack dab in the middle of the Texas panhandle.  Yep, back into Texas for the last time this afternoon.  This was a three-hour, 200 mile hike, past some very cool little towns and old derelict buildings, a bit like this one.
 

Here's a sky shot for you, Chris. Just fair weather cumulus today, I'm afraid.  We're too far west for anything too exciting from the sky at the moment.  There is a small dust devil there, if you look very closely.

A railway line ran alongside the interstate for quite a few miles today.  Great to see three or four engines pulling huge long trains of double-stacked containers.  Some carried large truck trailers.  Another thing we saw quite a bit of on this leg was cattle farms.  Unlike NZ, cattle farming here seems to be all about very high density farming.  There's no grass here of course so they're fed on pre-baled hay.

One small town we passed had an F1-11 Aardvark bomber sitting on a plinth outside a petrol station.   This particular aircraft was used in Operation Desert Storm.

But these days, the pigeons are finding it home...

We turned off the main roads onto a farm road (well, that's what they call them) like this one...


 ...to find Cadillac Ranch.  A monument some local made involving a bunch of old Cadillacs buried in dirt at the same angle as the pyramids.  Yes, I know, sounds a little crazy.  On the way, we found a farm with some Bison  Here's one...
 

And here are some of his mates.

Just as the sun was about to set, we found Cadillac Ranch, in a field beside the road.

It's all the go to spray-paint your own bit of art on these pieces of art.  There just-so happened to be a crowd there doing some filming and they had some left-over paints, so we used these to paint messages back to our families.

Here's my final artwork.  What do you think?

Art or not?

Of course others have to pick up on the idea.  Here's a local RV camping ground...

That's about it for today.  We're driving through four states tomorrow...Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Colorado, ending up at Colorado Springs in the Rockies.  The next few days should be a little different to the past few.  

Just to finish off, here's the sunset tonight, at Amarillo, Texas.