Day 16 Recap

After deciding there wasn’t much in the El Paso area we wanted to do, we decided to head to Wichita Falls, Texas to visit Andrew (someone Aaron graduated with and went to church with) at the air force base there. We ended up making only two stops along the way, although only one was scheduled…

The two-lane highways in western Texas have speed limits of 75 MPH, and why not? There is not much out there to slow down for. We were cruising down one of these roads, probably going near 80, when suddenly there’s a stop sign. I hit the brakes and barely managed to stop in time, although everything in the back seat ended up in the floor. As I pulled away, I guy came and whistled at us, so I backed up to the side of the road. Apparently, all the border control can afford there is a five-foot stop sign to get people to stop.

Apparently blowing through a border patrol stop is a bad thing. They brought the dog out to search our car. While that was happening, this officer was asking us the dumbest questions. “So you don’t come through here very often?” This after I’ve said we’re from Illinois and have never been here before. It’s no wonder he’s working at a small border patrol stop in rural Texas instead of somewhere useful.

Our scheduled stop was Carlsbad Caverns. I wish I could have stayed to see the bat flight, but we just walked through all the paths in the caverns. Supposedly it would take three or four hours to walk everywhere that we went, but I looked at all the distances and saw no way it would take us that long. We made it through in at most two hours. It was tough to get good pictures in the dark, but here are some of the better ones. Carlsbad is famous for having the largest open chamber in North America and for having some of the biggest columns. The first is pretty much impossible to get a picture of, so you’ll have to be satisfied with the columns.

For at least a couple hours on the way to Wichita Falls, there was an electrical storm all around us. Very little rain, but a lot of lightning that lit up the sky. That was our first experience with a storm in “tornado alley.” We ended up driving through at least five storms (and having another blow through while at our hotel in Wichita Falls) in the two days that we were in Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas. This after we spent a few days without seeing a cloud.

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