Despite booking a “pet friendly” hotel, when I checked in Saturday night, I was given a form with all sorts of rules. The first rule: If I left my dog alone, they would call animal control. Absurd. So I quickly went online trying to find a true pet friendly place to stay. I called other hotels, filtered by pets allowed, but all of them said the same, no pets left in room. One even told me “no hotels allow you…
“The most arid, most hostile, most lonesome, most grim, bleak, barren, desolate, and savage quarter of the state of Utah – the best part by far” – Edward Abbey ** Canyonlands National Park in Utah is comprised of four unique and separate districts; Island in the Sky, The Needles, The Maze, and Horseshoe Canyon. All but Horseshoe Canyon are contiguous but separated by the Green and Colorado Rivers. The Maze has no paved roads and is only accessible with 4-wheel…
I haven’t been to Santa Fe since 1998, so decided to stay for two weeks to do all the museums and historical parks and sites in the area. I found a B&B, close to downtown on Paseo de Peralta which encircles the historic center. I could walk almost everywhere and not have to deal with parking. The room was very small and I didn’t have much space for “stuff” (I was quite spread out and messy!) but they had several…
Or is it? I don’t know but thought it would be fun to stop for a day when driving from Carlsbad to Santa Fe. I am a huge science fiction nerd, growing up watching the original Star Trek and reading Asimov and Heinlein and Clarke. I never did watch X-files. I might need to find that on streaming and start watching it. I did pull up the “Little Green Men” episode of Star Trek Deep Space 9 on Netflix as…
I stayed in Carlsbad to visit both Guadalupe Mountain National Park and Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Unfortunately, the Dog Fire, that started May 11th from lightning, closed much of Guadalupe Mountains NP. And I didn’t get reservations in advance for a tour of Carlsbad Caverns. They were booked for over a week. Luckily, however, I kept checking recreation.gov and got a tour Tuesday, June, 1st. I had booked 5 nights here thinking that would give me a lot of time…
The eighth wonder of the world. Truly amazing. I arrived in Carlsbad and stopped in the caverns on the way to town. I had hoped to get tickets then as well as general park info. I was told tours were fully booked until June 7th, 4 days after I was leaving. Disappointed but I thought I would continue to check recreation.gov per recommendation from the ranger. Boo and I did the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Trail and walked down to the amphitheater before…
Because of a large fire much of the park was closed. I visited the Piney Spring Visitor Center and did several short trails with Boo, when visiting on Memorial Day. The visitor center has a great exhibit on desert animals and plants. Well worth 1/2 hour or so of your time to stop and read the information. The Pinery Nature Trail, right behind the visitor center, leads to buildings from the Butterfield Stage, a 2800 mile route from Saint Louis…