Hiking Underground at Carlsbad Caverns National Park

All right we're going through this big caged door. Things are getting real. Hey we're Mel and Jay. Together with our cat Benny we're traveling from Hope, BC all the way to South Padre Island, Texas y'all with lots of stops along the way. We've just crossed the border into Texas. But we're not staying here yet. We are on our way to Carlsbad Caverns National Park which is in New Mexico. But to get there, the easy way for us anyways, is to dip down through into the edge of Texas a little bit through El Paso. We managed to find one of our favorite fast food places. Mel is off to Chick-fil-A. What do you see? No trip to the States is complete without a stop at Chick-fil-A for us. Yummy. Well it looks like it's all full. It's a really popular spot. So gotta keep on going to our backup. That's too bad. It looks like a good spot. What's the backup? So there's one that's a bit of a rough road but that's actually north of the park. Let's see how far is that. 12 minutes from here. And then there's two other boondocking spots that are quite close to here but like basically gravel parking lots. I'm worried about the rough road one. I think we should try the rough road one first and then go for the parking lot. Okay it's 3 30. Yeah 12 minutes. Head south There's a path to the right. I think if you spot we can do it and from there it gets better. So we made it up the super sketchy hill and we found a nice spot here but I'm just not sure there's room between these rocks. All right we're backing in. All right go ahead. Tiny bit to the left. I'm aiming him to be right between these rocks. A little more to the right. A little more to the right. That's looking good. Sun's getting low. This spot will definitely do for tonight. A little bit of road noise. Pretty exposed but other than that not bad. This place has just turned really windy. Our carpet's a mess despite putting rocks on it and our slide is just flapping all over the place. We're gonna try the beach ball thing again. It's even blowing our chair away. So the wind is getting the better of us. We just sat down after Jay put those beach balls under the slide topper and like within seconds a huge huge gust of wind came and blew it off into the desert. We both leapt up, we jumped up, and Jay managed to retrieve it. It's a little deflated though so I don't know. I've got to look for some holes. Oh yeah there's the hole right there actually on the red stripe. I think it came in contact with one of the many cacti in here. And to prevent the other one from also blowing off now we have taped it. Duct tape to the rescue my friends. Special no residue duct tape. Get some. It saved us more than once. So the beach balls didn't quite cut it. We had to bring the slide in. It just got way too windy. And now we can go to the caverns without worrying about the slide topper flying off and tearing. Look at the longhorn! This place just seems massive. Are you excited? I am excited. Thanks to Aviators Overland. They told us it's really worth it so we're gonna check it out. 75 stories down. Getting kind of quiet and eerie and echoey now. And we're not even in the cave yet. This is crazy. A little bit creepy to be doing by ourselves. But I feel okay because there's a trail to follow. All right we're going through this big caged door. Things are getting real. That was cool. I've never seen anything like it. Back to the elevators. 750 feet in just under a minute. And now we're just like in an office building. That's so weird. Never mind we're like a cave. Oh it's so bright. It is a little bright. I might have to put on my sunglasses. Oh light, light. Still pretty breezy. I think the wind's died down a little though. You've got to come and check out Carlsbad Caverns. It's spectacular. We usually like caves but this was really cool and I would highly recommend it even if you don't like caves. All right let me show you around our little camp here. It was one of three different spots that we found on iOverlander around Carlsbad Caverns that are free. It's pretty simple. You can see it's just a rocky plot and there's been some homemade kind of fire pits built in here. Let me show you one on our site and that's kind of it. Now for us it's been really really quiet here because the road in is gravelly. Some some kind of dips and stuff so um it's not for two-wheel drive vehicles although we did see a civic come up and down so I don't know. You'll have to use your own judgment if you do decide to come here I guess. The road gets worse the further up you go so we managed to get a semi-level-ish site. There's been a few kind of single overnight people coming in in the evenings and leaving first thing in the mornings. We'll have spent four nights here by the time we leave and it's been really quiet otherwise. A little bit of road but nothing too crazy. Benny approves. I should note it's been windy. You can probably tell from my hair. First morning we woke up it was gorgeous. Very calm and then all of a sudden it got super windy with 80 kilometer hour guests and that was a bit of a nerve-wracking day but otherwise there's just been a constant steady breeze and it's been pretty comfortable. Well good morning we have just packed up from our spot here in Carlsbad. We are on our way this morning. We're headed to Big Bend National Park. We'll see you next week. Bye. Oh I think the timing on that maybe cut me off. Nope I'm gonna start that again. Didn't like how I said it. What? Make sure you don't miss the next video by liking, subscribing, and turning on notifications. Oh and don't forget to check out our website and sign up for our weekly email blast. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you in the next one.