Day 4 - June 25

Day 4: June 25th 29,606 on the odometer.

We get up somewhat early by our standards and head back to the caverns to tour the cave. The park road has some turns and hills, so it is a good ride. The very low speed limit and moderate traffic keep things from getting really fun though.
There are a few different cave tours you can select. We pick a self guided tour that should keep us busy for an hour or two. It is a big complex so we won’t see all of it. What we do see is pretty impressive. This is a very big hole. The bird and bat droppings make the entrance smell bad, but that quickly fades as we get further in. It is refreshingly cool, although the sweatshirts we brought with us are entirely unnecessary. There are lots of interesting formations. We pick routes that should give us a pretty good sampling of everything the cave has to offer. The place is so large it doesn’t seem crowded even though there are a lot of visitors. I wouldn’t mind spending more time here, but we have places to go and more things to see.
Next up is Roswell, which Ceci has been dying to see. We want to eat at the famous AlieInn (sp?), not realizing at the time that it is near Area 51, not Roswell. We spend a little time at the visitor center checking e-mail and getting tourist information. After a fast food break we head out hwy 380 to San Antonio. A brief thunderstorm brought some relief from the heat as we left town. Not much rain, but the wind slowed us down quite a bit. I was leaning pretty hard just to keep the Bandit on the road. Actually, for a while I was hanging on for dear life. We are dodging tumbleweeds, something Ceci had previously only seen in movies and cartoons. Past that the roads were pretty good; some gentle sweepers with good pavement. I think I’d have been happier just skipping Roswell completely and taking 82 through the mountains and Cloudcroft , but it wasn’t bad.
Somewhere around Hondo we pass a N.Y. style pizza place, but we don’t stop there. We take a break around Valley of Fires, where Ceci sees her first lava flow. We drive past White Sands and the Trinity site without stopping, I don’t think it’s open for tourists right now anyway. As we get to San Antonio, (“Not really New and Not Really Mexico”) Ceci crosses the Rio Grande for the first time. This is a good day of firsts for her. We stop for gas and a snack at a nice little old station before heading north on the interstate.
The road is uninteresting, but the miles are just flying by. We make such good time we decide to proceed past our planned stop and go through Albuquerque to Bernalillo. We stay at a Super 8 hotel that has guest laundry and a free continental breakfast. It is much better than the hotel we stayed at in Carlsbad and is $20 cheaper. When we stop I notice that Ceci’s saddlebags are beginning to sag and are getting closer to the exhaust pipes. I’ll have some work to do in the morning. It takes us until nearly 11:00 to finish the laundry and get to bed. At 374 miles, this was our longest day so far. Especially considering the lengthy stops. I am saddle sore and tired so I fall asleep quickly.