Drive 2007 - Day 11 - Drives - Beneath the Waves

Drive 2007 - Day 11

article and photographs by Ben Lincoln

This day of my drive was almost entirely spent at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, in the southeast corner of New Mexico. Carlsbad Caverns is one of the most remote National Parks, but it is also one of the most impressive. I remember hearing one of the rangers there say something to the effect that the number of annual visitors would be twice what it is today if they could just move the cave to a more convenient location. The nearest town (other than Carlsbad itself) that most people from out of state have heard of is Roswell, at about 100 miles away. The distance is compounded because no interstate highway goes anywhere near Carlsbad. The state highway provides some great scenery, but is an indirect route and the speed limit is significantly lower.

Despite all of this, I would highly recommend a visit to anyone who is even sort of interested in caves and/or geology. I ended up taking quite a few photos inside, but like so many other things Carlsbad Caverns is something that needs to be experienced in person. Eventually I would like to go back, with battery-powered infrared and ultraviolet light sources. The interior is light very nicely for humans by the Park Service, but for reasons of efficiency (and not generating too much heat, I imagine), it's all fluorescent, so I couldn't take any multispectral photos inside during this visit.

Carlsbad Caverns Exterior 2

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Some plant life on the National Park Service road that leads to Carlsbad Caverns. The UVA version of the shot is omitted because the plants occupying the entire foreground were out of focus.

Date Shot: 2007-09-10
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 35mm(?)
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-04-26
Version: 2.0

Carlsbad Caverns Exterior 4

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Growing on the rocks above the maw of Carlsbad Caverns is this field of cacti. The main entrance to the cave is just below the bottom of the photo.

Date Shot: 2007-09-10
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 50mm(?)
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-05-02
Version: 2.0

Carlsbad Caverns Entrance 1

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This is a shot of the last part of the entrance that receives good sunlight. The rocks show a bit of variation in the ultraviolet and infrared, but most of the colours are artifacts of the shadows shifting between shots.

Date Shot: 2007-09-10
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-05-02
Version: 2.0

Carlsbad Caverns Entrance 2

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This is a shot of the last part of the entrance that receives any sunlight at all. The UVA and NIR shots were a bit blurry, but suffice to show in false colour that it's likely the interior would be pretty interesting if someone were to bring along appropriate lighting to photograph it.

Date Shot: 2007-09-10
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 35mm(?)
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-05-02
Version: 2.0

The inside of Carlsbad Caverns is essentially the Jungian archetype of the "big, mysterious cave". Until I saw it for myself, I didn't really think that there were any actual caves that looked like it does.

Carlsbad Caverns Interior

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Numerous shots from inside Carlsbad Caverns. Due to the fluorescent lighting, there are no non-visible versions of these images. They were created through long exposures on a tripod, usually with me waving a flashlight around while the shutter was open to supplement the available light.

Date Shot: 2007-09-10
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Various
Filters: LDP CC1
Date Processed: 2007-09-27
Version: 1.0

I should also mention that great effort has been made to ensure that almost anyone can experience most of the public areas of Carlsbad, even if they're in a wheelchair or have similar mobility restrictions^[1]. While the main entrance requires hiking downhill inside the cave, there is an elevator from the surface to the "Big Room" of the caverns.

I mention "the public areas", because not all of Carlsbad Caverns is accessible directly. There are a few additional sections which were visitable in the early 20th century (the rickety "dangerous-looking ladder" pictured above was the means of reaching one of them). Today, the Park Service offers ranger-guided tours of six other parts of the caverns which are not part of the self-guided main area. If I do get a chance to go back, I'd very much like to take advantage of those tours, which visitors are recommended to make reservations for in advance. There are also areas that are not accessible to the public at all - Carlsbad Caverns is truly staggering in size, and the Park Service works to preserve some of it in its completely natural state. Don't let this dissuade you from visiting, as there's already more than enough to keep you occupied for several days if you are so inclined.

On my way north towards Albuquerque and Interstate 40, I passed through Roswell. Originally I had been planning on stopping there due to its famous UFO story. I have a lot of mixed feelings about UFO reports. I believe there is other intelligent life in the universe - it's just too big a place for human-kind to be all there is. On the other hand. I'm pretty skeptical of most "UFO sighting" type reports, because it seems to me that after decades of this sort of thing, if there were actual alien spacecraft visiting the Earth someone would have taken a decent photograph. However, there have been enough reports by credible people in various militaries around the world that I can't discount the possibility entirely. If there were aliens visiting the Earth, I imagine they would behave in the way that those more-credible reports describe them - keeping their distance, making observations, and not staying around for very long^[2], much like how humans monitor bears and wolves in Yellowstone^[3].

When I actually got to Roswell, I realized that (as in other cases), I just wasn't interested in seeing human-produced attractions on this type of trip. However, the town itself did little to clarify for me the likelihood that there was an actual UFO crash in Roswell. Aside from that story, Roswell is Anytown, USA. The rural parts of this country are full of thousands of such places, which could be equally famous if they had been the location of a supposed UFO crash. I don't mean this in a negative way - I mean that if an alien spacecraft were to crash in a random location within the US, there's a good chance it would be some place like Roswell. However, having grown up in a small rural town myself, I know that this kind of environment is also a good breeding ground for rumours and legends that have little (or no) basis in reality.

Just north of Roswell proper, I stopped at a restaurant ("Luana's Mexican") which does set Roswell apart from the town I grew up in, in that it is the best Mexican/Southwest food I've ever had. I would unreservedly suggest it to anyone who is visiting the area. Among other things, it's the first place I've ever eaten jalapeno poppers which were actually very spicy instead of mild.

The Southwest during the rest of this trip was bone-dry, but continuing north on state highway 285 towards I40, I saw a Southwestern rain and lightning storm for the first time. Rain in the Northwest is fairly frequently but almost always mild. Apparently the opposite is true in the Southwest: it is rare, but when it happens it is a truly furious storm. I could see it from a great distance on the highway; a single enormous cloud sitting on the ground, with a well-defined edge. Inside it was flashing with bright purple lightning. Unlike the lightning I grew up with, these bolts would form and remain for up to a second, strobing like old neon while holding the same shape the entire time.

When I entered the cloud, I was nearly blind due to the thick fog. The raindrops were giant, ranging in size from about 1cm (3/8") to about 3cm (just over 1"), and averaging about 2cm (3/4"). They splattered like transparent paint, and came in such a torrent that by the time I was out of the cloud, my car was cleaner than if I'd taken it to a carwash.

I drove well into the night, passing back over the border into Arizona and stopping between Winslow and Flagstaff. I would later learn that by doing this, I had missed out on the famous mesas of northern New Mexico. There are none in the southern part of the state, and so I assumed they were actually just in northern Arizona, much like how there are no Saguaro cactuses in New Mexico or Texas. I certainly wouldn't mind visiting this state again, so next time I'll be sure to see the areas near Albuquerque and Santa Fe in daylight.

Date: 10 September 2007
Starting Mileage: 66016
Ending Mileage: 66639
Distance Travelled (Day): 623 miles
Distance Travelled (Trip): 4285 miles
Gallons of Fuel Purchased (Day): 13.6
Gallons of Fuel Purchased (Trip): 128.5

GPS Map of Day 11

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Footnotes

1.	Baby strollers, unlike wheelchairs, are not allowed inside. The Park Service recommends bringing a baby backpack instead.
2.	This assumes that the hypothetical aliens are benevolent. I believe this is a fair assumption, because if intelligent aliens with the means to reach the Earth had hostile intentions, we wouldn't stand a chance. So much of popular science fiction is based around the premise of humans encountering aliens whose technological advancement is more or less equal to our own, but this is so improbable in the real world that it can essentially be discounted. It took millions of years for humans to evolve and reach our present level of civiliation and technology, but most of what we take for granted today in terms of that technology is less than 100 (or 200, in some cases) old. The chances of a truly alien race on another planet reaching the same level of scientific understanding within anything like that same timeframe are so small as to be virtually nonexistent. In all likelihood, they would either be many thousands (or even millions) of years ahead of us, or they would be that far behind us and wouldn't even have radio, let alone the capability for interstellar space travel. Even assuming that they were somehow "only" 1000 or 2000 years ahead of us in terms of technology, if they were warlike then such a conflict would be the equivalent of today's US (or Russian, etc.) military fighting a campaign against the armies of ancient Rome or China - no contest at all.
3.	Science fiction is rife with stories like Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series, Greg Bear's Anvil of Stars, and Fred Saberhagen's Berserker novels, which tell of vast conflicts on a galactic scale involving self-replicating, intelligent war machines. Recently, I saw a news story about the progress being monitored in wolf populations re-introduced into areas of the United States. This got me thinking - what if Earth were actually a "preserve" for the last remains of a highly-advanced, intelligent, self-replicating, adaptive weapon? Evolution has certainly turned up some incredibly dangerous pieces of work (including us). If the descendants of the races who survived an ancient war were anything like us, they might feel hesitant about truly wiping out a particular type of life, even if it were a type of life that had proven deadly to them in the past - much like wolves or cougars were to pioneers and settlers in the early US. While I think this is unlikely (if fun to puzzle through), it would fit in very much with the supposed behaviour of "space aliens" visiting the Earth in UFOs, at least if we assume similar motivation between alien and human scientists. Conspiracy theorists may take additional pleasure in adding this to their list of reasons that human expansion off-world has been slow at best - such aliens would have a vested interest in keeping us confined to our "wolf preserve" by subtle manipulation of society, just as we do our best to make sure that bears don't take up residence in our cities.