I have to start off by saying how impressed I am that Dave can drive on those crazy rural freeways and their insane road work! But we did finally make our way back north of Carlsbad near Roswell, NM. The park is called Bottomless Lakes State Park. We are really liking the state parks of New Mexico. This one had water and electricity for $14/night. It is one of the things we like about New Mexico- probably because many of the residents are very low income, accessibility is a big deal. And it seems to be statewide. Many areas of free Wi-Fi and cheap entrance fees to museums. Free often for residents of NM.
Bottomless Lakes are cenotes, or depressions from the neighboring mesas. The salty caves below eventually wash out because there are many cracks in the rocks that allow the limited rainfall to move through the layers of sediments. They filled with water from the underlying ground water, or aquifers. They definitely have bottoms, but they are deep. Some people use them to practice scuba diving since the lakes themselves are relatively small. The surrounding landscape is high desert creosote land with some cacti. But as we moved north from Carlsbad, it was remarkable how the number of cactus plants diminished.
We also had fun exploring Roswell. It is hard to believe the whole Alien landing was in 1948. The city has seriously embraced and promoted the alien thing. But it is a truly thriving and beautiful ( in a desert environment way!) city. I think it might be our favorite NM city yet. And we found some really good Mexican food, which is always a way to get to us! We also found an amazing nature preserve called Bitter Lake that had quite a few birds on it. Again, we’ve discovered we are 2-4 weeks early for most stuff we would like to see. So there were a lot of ducks and snow geese galore, but we missed the Sandhill cranes, and were too early for most of the smaller tweety type birds. We did see a desert cottontail along the trail, a Swainson hawk, and a RedTail hawk. And the ever ubiquitous doves. I did see ring neck pheasant on the roadside around the lakes on the way back.
