Oct 19th to 23rd - Texas, New Mexico

Oct 19th - Friday - Grand Prairie (Ft Worth) TX
We took a tour of a federal printing and engraving facility today. They print money, stamps and other “controlled” items. The tour takes place on glassed-in elevated walkways looking over the production floor. There are 2 museums - past and present. Very interesting.
We were then going to check out the downtown stockyards area but just ended up driving through as we didn’t really feel like doing any shopping and did not see anything else and parking at the same time.

Oct 20th - Sat - Grand Prairie TX
Next door to the RV park is a huge weekend market area - some literature says 120 acres and some 154 acres, including parking I‘m sure. Vendor counts range from 2800 to 3500. Either way, it is huge! There are buildings with walls & doors, large covered areas and open areas. We wandered in the morning and bought a tripod for our satellite dish. So we went back to the rig for lunch and to rest our feet. Then we went back, bought a couple more small items and then it was just too hot and our feet were tired. It got to 92 degrees - just perfect to pull out the big recliner lawn chairs and relax in the shade.

Oct 21st - Sun - to Lubbock, TX
We weren’t exactly sure where we would end up today. We have a tire on the 5th wheel that is wearing badly. We actually replaced it before going to Alaska and then of course never found the underlying cause of the problem. Terry figured we needed to stop at an RV repair place but kind of forgot that today is Sunday so that wouldn’t happen. He looked online for tires matching the ones on the other side that we had to replace when we had the blowout but they are sold by Les Schwab which is only in west coast states. So we just kept going and ended up in Lubbock.
We are in cotton country now. Miles and miles of enormous cotton fields. Some are being harvested and others are still green. Just before Lubbock it was 95 degrees and ½ hour later it was 75 degrees. We hit the cold front that has been in the weather forecast for a couple of days.

Oct 22nd - Mon - to Carlsbad, New Mexico
If anyone is following our trip on a map, it appears that Lubbock was out of the way to get to Carlsbad. You are correct! I was looking in the PA book for a campsite and saw one at Post which is about 40 miles from Lubbock. I asked Terry if that was where he had wanted to go and he said yes without actually looking at the map again. It wasn’t exactly the right direction but we didn’t figure that out soon enough. Then we thought we could find an RV repair place in Lubbock so carried on.
This morning Terry decided to replace the worn tire with the new spare which should get us to a Les Schwab to get matching tires. So we packed everything up and then changed the tire in the RV site - much better than trying to do it on the side of a highway!
The landscape is very flat and dry. More cotton and then the addition of oil pumps, hay and some cattle. We arrived in Carlsbad a little too late to go to the caverns so hit a grocery store and kicked back. Later we realized that we were in a different time zone so could have squeezed in a visit to some attraction.

Oct 23rd - Tues - Carlsbad, NM
Busy day today. I entered four days in my word processing file for my blog but we do not have wifi so I will have to wait to post it. We went to the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens just a few miles away. Having been to the Desert Museum in Tucson, we were not overly impressed with this one. Even though animals were in “natural” environments, I felt sorry for them being in captivity as they did not have acres to roam in. The weather was nice though so I enjoyed the walk.
Next we went to Carlsbad Caverns. I couldn’t talk Terry into walking the extra mile by using the Natural entrance so we rode the elevator down and toured the Big Room - it was amazing. Unfortunately, you cannot capture the immense size with a camera as it is dimly lit with highlights on certain features. We rented an audio “tour guide” so, along with guide boards, we had quite a bit of information as we walked for about 1 ½ hours. We were going to stay and watch the bats fly out of the Bat Cave but they were guessing that they would leave about 5:30 and we didn’t want to stick around that long. Last night they estimated 4:30 and the bats did not fly until 5:30 so we could have had a long wait.
We found a visitor information site and picked up booklets for other New Mexico areas as we will take off tomorrow.