Not to Miss in Southern New Mexico and Arizona

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Advance Planning:

• If you are traveling during the summer then book your campsites or hotels in advance.
• Book a tour of Carlsbad Caverns if you want a guided tour
• Book a tour at Kartchner Caverns

Day 1: Carlsbad Caverns

Followed by a 170 mile drive to White Sands

If you are in an RV stay at White’s City campground—a campground straight out of the 1950s, complete with a ‘Million Dollar Museum’ with a speaker blaring a boardwalk caller.

Get to Carlsbad Caverns early.  Start with the self-guided Natural Entrance tour and get the audio guides for kids and adults.  Both are good, although teenagers and even some pre-teens will likely find the kids much too young. Continue with the self-guided Big Room tour and then a guided tour if you made reservations. If you are at Carlsbad for an entire day during the summer, stay for the bat flight program each evening.

Neither my words nor my two dimensional photographs can possibly begin to describe the magnificence of Carlsbad Caverns.  In short—go!  It is spectacular in beauty, in soundlessness, in darkness, in speleothems, in expanse, in nearly every natural measure.  We explored for over 5 hours and heard not one complaint from any one—we were all captivated.

From Carlsbad to White Sands is about a 170 mile drive which is often more pleasant in the cool of the evening.

Day 2: White Sands

Followed by a 280 mile drive to near Kartchner State Park

Like Carlsbad, it is difficult to describe the beauty of White Sands.  The dunes are fabulous for imprinting footprints, fabulous for photographing, fabulous for making sand angels, fabulous for rolling down, crawling up, jumping off, but most especially fabulous for high stepping down, kind of like a run, which we called the moon walk—such a blast!  Here everyone will be a kid!

The 275 square miles of white gypsum sand has engulfed the desert creating the largest gypsum dune field in the world.  The Tularosa basin has the perfect conditions for creating this spectacular wonder—gypsum, dry air and wind.  Gypsum is soluble in water, so most everywhere else in the world it isn’t in crystallized form.  No water drains from the Tularosa basin, so all rain water that falls pools together in lakes and eventually evaporates.  As the water evaporates it leaves behind gypsum crystals which then get broken down by the wind and when broken into small enough particles, are blown into huge dunes across the flatlands.

Day 3: Kartchner Caverns

Stay two nights at or near Kartchner Caverns

If you are camping, Kartchner State is one of our favorite State Parks.  You need to arrive before 6pm, so if you are coming from White Sands, you will likely need alternative accommodations where you can arrive later.

Kartchner Caverns is a living cave as it is still wet and the formations are continuing to grow in the cave and a fabulous contrast to Carlsbad Caverns. The caverns were discovered in 1974, but kept secret until the mid 1980s and then developed as carefully as possible to protect the cave—and it is spectacular.  The cave is warm and humid—70 degrees and 99% humidity! 

And the sights are spectacular!  The soda straws, draperies, stalagmites, stalactites and other formations that are still growing are translucent—amazing to view.  Everything shines with moisture—the cave is subtly lit so visitors can view the formations. 

Outside the cave there is an excellent foothills loop trail for wonderful above ground vistas.  If you have teens, you can take an early morning walk while they are still sleeping!

Day 4: Bisbee, Arizona

Bisbee is a small town near the Mexico border, just under about a one hour drive from Kartchner Caverns.  There you can tour the Queen Mine—an outstanding Darwinian tour of a copper mine.  Our guide was a wizened prospector, or rather miner, who had lots to share about the life of a miner underground.  This isn’t Disneyworld; he didn’t waste time with frivolous admonitions such as ‘keep your hands and feet in the car at all times (not even possible as the ‘car’ was only 8 inches wide) or ‘don’t wander down any dark mine passageways’.

Day 5: Sonora Desert Museum and Saguaro National Park

Total drive about an hour up to Tucson

The Sonora Desert Museum is really more of a natural oasis than a museum.  There are plenty of activities for young children.  In addition there are animals and plants native to the desert in their natural habitat as well as a small ice cream stand which is always a good stop on a hot day!

The Saguaro Desert National Park is split into an East and West (also known as the Tucson Mountain District) portion.  Both are wonderful to visit, but walking in the desert in the heat of the day is draining for anyone— I recommend choosing one to focus on with your kids—whichever has a program on the day you are visiting that more interests your family.

More Time

If you have more time visit Sedona (a longer post on that in the future) and then head up to the Grand Canyon and the Hoover Dam (also topics of future posts).