There's an old Marty Robbins song, “El Paso” (which I knew about because of the Dead), which tells a sort of cowboy/gunfighter romance. I was close enough that I went by the famous Rosa's Cantina. The area looks like it's having some kind of major work done, but the signs on the window said that they were actually closed because of staffing situations. Either way, it was too early for lunch.

The thing that keeps reverberating for me on this trip is how I had so many mental shortcuts about what I thought different parts of the country looked like. My general notion for western mountains was this dark brown, rough mountain (this is approximately the view from out of Rosa's front window).

But then I went a couple hours down the road to Guadalupe Mountain National Park. This is  in the Chihuahua Desert, but the mountain is beautiful and covered with life.

Ok, life and a burned up tree, and there was also a sign shaming people for causing forest fires.

There was also a precursor to the Pony Express, the Butterfield Overland Mail, which had a station on the mountain. It went into general disuse around the time of the Civil War.

Guadalupe Mountain was so close to my real destination, it would have been silly not to stop. However, I should have done a better job being attentive to planning for Carlsbad Caverns, but I got lucky. This was one of my key destinations, and I didn't understand how long I'd be there or what the situations were constraining the self-guided tours. I approached the National Park entrance and its sign had a message: 7 miles to the visitor center. Then: "cave tour ticket sales stop at 2:15". My clock said 2:05. The speed limit for the road maxed at 40. Gulp! By luck or whatever, I got to the ticket counter around 2:19, and the lady was willing to process me because of other groups' cancellations. I'm sure that I said "thank you," and I realized during my cave tour that I was not as effusive as I should have been.

Down in the cave, I did realize that I was hungry, and a historic sign showing throngs of people touring and describing how they used to sell fried chicken (brought in from the surface, not fried in the cave, contrary to legend) and cold sandwiches did not help. Can't win them all. I guess I probably could have gotten some fried chicken from Walmart or the grocery store in Carlsbad, but I ended up just getting pizza.

The cave was gorgeous, with so much space. I bumped into a park ranger and asked if they did tours (there were audio navigation tours but I didn't notice the opportunity to rent a box). The tours I went on at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky were awesome, so I was astonished when he said that Carlsbad Caverns hadn't done normal guided tours since 1971! Maybe the guides quit when they stopped serving fried chicken! :)