Weekend in New Mexico: White Sands, Las Cruces, & Carlsbad Caverns National Park

We had a blast here. It's so beautiful, so vast. Take our word for it. This is cool. Good morning from White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. We have a really fun weekend on tap. We're going to check out the dune fields here. We're going to go into Las Cruces, get some food, get some coffee and even check out Carlsbad Caverns National Park. So we tried to visit White Sands and Carlsbad Caverns almost exactly a year ago when we road tripped from Washington to Texas during Christmas time. But unfortunately, that's when the government shutdown happened. So we couldn't access either of them. So we're very excited to finally get to explore them. Something that's really good to know about White Sands is that they have set hours. So they open the park gate at 7 a.m. today. There was a small line of cars when we got here about five to 10 minutes before. So try to show up a little bit early, but not too early because you will have to wait to get in. Yeah, another good thing to know is just next door is the White Sands missile testing range. And when they're doing their missile testing, they actually close the national monument for obvious safety reasons, I guess. And so if you're coming here, make sure to check that schedule. And lucky for us yesterday, they closed the park down for a couple hours. So good timing. Good timing. So there's a few things you can do here in the park, one of which is drive down Dunes Drive, which is an eight mile drive that takes you from the visitor center to the heart of the dune fields. We're on that right now. We're actually like driving on sands. Pretty cool. There's another thing you can do is you can bring or rent a sled to sled down the sand dunes, which sounds like a lot of fun, but we're cheap and we're not doing that today. There are also five trails in the park, including one that's a boardwalk, that's wheelchair and stroller accessible. But we hiked up to High Dune at Great Sand Dunes National Park, which was really strenuous. So we're going to kind of keep it more low key today and just play around in the sand. So White Sands National Monument is actually a gypsum dune field and it's 275 square miles, making it so large that they can actually see it from space. The highest dunes here are only about 60 feet high. And if you compare that to our trip to Great Sand Dunes National Park, they were 700 feet high and we climbed one and it was a workout. Science isn't really my best subject at all, but from what I learned, gypsum is kind of like salt where it dissolves in water and then it recrystallizes when the water is evaporated from it. So the mountains surrounding White Sand Dunes have gypsum in them. So when it rains, it dissolves the gypsum and it runs down the mountain to the basin. And then when the water evaporates, it recrystallizes. So gypsum is actually a common mineral in a lot of things that we use every day. It's in drywall and it's also in toothpaste. I thought that was super weird. A big bonus about this national monument is that it's dog friendly. As long as dogs are on a leash, Kona loves running around sand dunes. She's a crazy hyper dog and this makes her even crazier. So yay. And that does it for our time at White Sands National Monument. We had a blast here. It's so beautiful. So vast. There's all these dunes. So it's super duny. I'm bringing a sled next time. I want to do that, man. Big mistake. Yeah, but we had a blast here and Kona especially had a blast. Oh my gosh. That dog is too much. Sometimes she has sand all over her nose. She always has a little bit of a beard, but she has like a sand beard going on. It's like a white, she looks like little Santa paws or something. So we are going to head into Las Cruces now, which is about 45 minutes to an hour away. I can't totally remember. And we're going to go get our eat and drink on. We came to Picacho Coffee Roasters here in Las Cruces. It's a local coffee roaster. It's an awesome, cool space inside. They have a coffee bar. They have a cool mural, as you can see behind us. And like I said, they roast their own coffee in house. So we were talking with the owner and they've been around since 2009. And the name Picacho comes from this peak that's nearby in the area. So he said at their original spot that they roasted at when they opened up like the big garage door, the peak was just right there. And so he just threw what he saw out the window and then made that into the logo, which is really neat. So we got two drinks to share. We got a cold brew and a latte. So we were just walking around downtown Las Cruces and we stumbled upon this farmer's market. It is awesome. There are so many vendors. We think it's every single Saturday and they have all those Christmas decorations out. And we met this awesome guy that lives here who was telling us all about his travels to Mexico. This just totally exceeded my expectations. We were starting to get very hangry, so we came to a spot called Habanero's to have lunch. It's our kind of place. You order at the counter and then they bring you the food. We always love fast, casual type places where it's a little bit cheaper and it's pretty quick. So typically we like when Mexican restaurants have free chips and salsa. This place does not. It was like $1.99 or $2.99. But the salsa looks perfect for me. I don't like chunky salsa and it's like very liquidy. So it's right up my alley. And even though the salsa and chips were not free, they did give us a free soup. So that's a plus. It is a I'm not exactly sure what the name of it is, but she said that there are beans and Mexican noodles inside. I don't know. I don't think I technically can eat it. So I might have to sit this one out, but I'll give it a try. So I've seen these noodles in the grocery store, these little skinny little noodles, and it's called Fideo. So this is Fideo soup. I always wanted to try it. Tastes like a bean chicken noodle soup. It's good, though. I only had a chance to try one chip with salsa and then the food showed up. So we have so much food we need to eat. So we got two things and we're going to split them. And so the first thing are carne asada tacos, and they look bomb. They have guacamole on them. We have salsa on the side. We have some rice and then some beans. And I love refried beans. I grew up just eating refried beans. So I'm very excited. And there's cheese on top, which is even better. So for those of you new around here, tacos are probably or definitely our favorite food of all time. We even went to Mexico City just to eat tacos earlier in the year. So we're pretty hooked on tacos. So we really wanted to have like a sticker created for Adventures of A Plus K. And we thought, what's more fitting than a taco sticker? So our friends Chris and Sarah from Let's Be Us designed a taco sticker for us. And we're actually doing a little giveaway on Instagram right now. We're giving away 10 taco stickers. So if you don't follow us there, go check that out. It ends on Sunday, December 22nd. So then we'll announce the winner on Monday. But it's a cute little taco sticker. So if you like tacos, definitely enter so you can rock tacos wherever you go. Yeah. And we'll link Chris and Sarah's channel below. So if you're not watching their videos yet, finish this video and then click over to their channel, hit subscribe and watch all their videos. They are awesome. Sarah deals with all of my texts every single day. And we're going to hang out with them this winter. So we're going to have some fun videos coming your way and collaborating with them. So make sure to keep an eye out for those ones. And the second thing we ordered is the chicken mole enchilada plate. So it comes with rice and beans. But the star of the show is the mole enchiladas. So mole is like a traditional Mexican sauce that sometimes it takes like hours to cook and make. And they put all kinds of spices and different ingredients in there to boil it down and make a delicious looking sauce. Sometimes it's like 20 to 30 ingredients. This one is 18 ingredients. It says on their menu. So it looks like a it looks delicious, but they put cheese on top of there and then it looks like some sesame seeds and then there's chicken on the inside. All right. Here we go. First bite of mole enchiladas. That's awesome. At first, it's like sweet, but then it's spicy. But then it's like got like a smoky flavor to it. You can really taste like tons of different ingredients. I don't know. That's really good. So something I think we forgot to mention is that mole typically has chocolate in it, which is added at the end of cooking. So I've always been very intrigued by this dish and how chocolate with spices and all that would work together. It's complex, huh? That's really good. Yeah, I just got a little bit of spice at the end. It was sweet at first. That's delicious. Why haven't we been eating mole anymore? This is so good. It's like a flavor explosion. You can't go wrong with a beef carne asada taco. Got the guac on there. Put some of the salsa that came with it. It's excellent. It has like a nice grilled flavor. Excellente. Our next stop is Carlsbad Cavern National Park, which is also in New Mexico. But oddly enough, if you're driving there from Las Cruces, you actually go south into Texas, go across and you go back up into New Mexico. Weird. So we are going to start the drive now, but we're going to make a pit stop in El Paso for the rest of the day to see some friends. So we will pick things back up in the morning at Carlsbad Caverns. We made it to our 22nd National Park, Carlsbad Caverns. So Carlsbad Caverns is just under 47,000 acres big, and there are more than 119 caves which formed when sulfuric acid dissolved limestone. And only a handful of these caves are accessible to the public. And we're going to check out a couple today. And similar to yesterday at White Sands, the park has set hours. The caverns don't open until 830. So we got here a little early. So we're going to head into the visitors center and get our customary park patch, and then we're going to get exploring. So normally entrance into the park is $15 a person. But when someone was asking how they pay, the woman said that their ticketing staff is all really sick. So I guess that means no one's paying today. I don't really know. But yesterday we got our new annual parks pass, which is $80. We've talked about it many times because we love it. But yesterday was $20 to get into White Sands. And today would have been $30. So that would have been $50 just for this weekend. We paid $80 and we can get in free everywhere for a whole year. So it's totally worth it. So there are two main things we wanted to see here at the park. One, the natural entrance and two, the big room. And before we got here, we thought there were two separate things. But we just learned in the visitors center that they're actually connected. And you take the natural entrance down to the big room. I think it's about a 1.25 mile hike down the natural entrance to the big room. We hear it's pretty steep. They do have an elevator. So if you're in a wheelchair or have a stroller, you can take the elevator down. Or if you just don't want to walk, you can do that, too. But we really want to see everything. And if you take the elevator, you miss the natural entrance. So we're going to walk. Let's do it. All right, so we're making our way down into the natural entrance. And I'm whispering, one, because the lady at the entrance told you to. And two, if you talk loud enough, it's really loud. And because it's like an echo chamber. But like we said earlier, it's a one mile and a quarter trail down and a 750 foot elevation loss gain. This is wild. It is massive in here. It's absolutely blowing our minds. It is pretty steep. So it's a bunch of switchbacks, but they're paved, but they can be kind of wet because there's water dripping from the ceiling. So just keep that in mind. It's apparently always 56 degrees down here, too. So it's slightly chilly, but not too bad. But this is crazy. It's really hard to film, unfortunately, because it's so dark in here. So hopefully we can throw up a few photos that we've taken that maybe turned out OK, but take our word for it. This is cool. It's eight point two acres, and it's the largest readily accessible cave chamber in North America. There are so many stalagmites and stalactites in here. We had to do a little refresher on our way over here earlier to remember which one's which. So stalagmites come up from the ground. The G in stalag, like G for ground. And then stalactites are from the ceiling, like C for ceiling. That's your little trick. It brings me back to elementary school when we went to Natural Bridge Caverns near Austin. This is just I could be in here all day. Now we're cheating and taking the elevator. I know we say this all the time and we truly do mean it every single time. Maybe we're just easily amused. But that was one of the coolest things we've ever seen. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the dictionary definition of awesome, you might see a picture of Carlsbad Caverns there because like every time you come around the corner, like, oh, look at that. That was awesome. Like, I don't know. It was it was cool. No photos or videos can truly do it justice. So we'll try to not ramble about how amazing it is. Just come check it out for yourself. I feel like it's extremely underrated. Yeah, for sure. I mean, like similar to the Yellowstone experience I had, like going into it, I didn't really know what to expect, so I wasn't that excited. But man, like it's way bigger than you think it's going to be. Every time you come around a corner, there's like different features. It's just it's different everywhere you look. It's just wild. We could have literally spent hours and hours. Yeah, just staring at everything, reading all the signs. I'm sure most people do like you come and make a whole day out of it. But oh, my gosh. Amazing. So as we mentioned at the beginning of this vlog, we visited this area last year during a big road trip from Washington to Texas. We went to El Paso. We hiked to the highest point in Texas at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We went to Big Ben. We went to Marfa. We went to a ton of places. So if you're visiting this region of the U.S. anytime soon, go check those out. Maybe you'll get some ideas. We'll link to them below so you can find them easier. We are now headed to Texas, to Austin for the holidays. But we have a lot of fun and delicious things planned for the three weeks that were there that we can't wait to share. So we hope everyone has a happy holiday and we'll see you next time. Bye. Happy holidays. I can't get to your cheek. And the latte. Dang it. So white soons, white soons. Next up is Carl bad. Carl bad. Carl is bad. Carl be bad.