This post is really late...

In our mad dash across Texas, we drove from Fredricksberg to Bahlmorhea State Park.  We had spied this state park on our trek east and decided it would be necessary to stop on the way back.  There is a spring here which was excavated back in the day to provide a VERY large swimming pool.  The water is crystal clear, the bottom of the pool is limestone, and swimming companions include ducks, fish, and turtles.  From here we headed north into New Mexico for another go at Carlsbad Caverns.  Neither of us had been inside the main cavern since we were kids and we did not expect it to be as big or bigger than we had remembered.  We really enjoyed the tour; however, the food court and gift shop at the bottom were quite surreal.


The winds were really picking up and made our driving pretty exciting.  Turning west once again we found ourselves in the mountains near Riodoso.  We stumbled onto the town of Lincoln and once inside the museum there we realized that this was the site of the Lincoln County Wars and Billy the Kids big escape from jail.  The museum had a fantastic display and the ranger informed us that the doc had taken her tonsils out on his kitchen table.  She also said that she didn't even get ice cream, just some crappy pudding. We wandered through the jail that held Billy and saw where he shot the two deputies to escape.  We meant to camp before we got to Riodoso but ended up ditching the mountains and stopping at Three Rivers Petroglyphs.  The brochure said that they had over 20,000 petroglyphs and we questioned their count until we started looking around.  There was literally a petroglyph on every rock.  They may have underestimated the count.  We also did a big hike up a beautiful canyon to a grass covered peak to take in a great vista.  We saw another couple who asked us if we had seen the mountain lion in the den next to the trail.  Somehow we missed this but were not eaten.

Our last ventures included a stop near the New Mexico/Arizona border and our last night was spent at Fool Hollow Lake in Show Low.  It was pretty surreal to see the peaks again!