Roswell to Santa Fe – Ruby & Axel

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Caroline Wise and John Wise in Roswell, New Mexico

In the scheme of things, I don’t think it ever occurred to me that we’d make it to Roswell, New Mexico, which plays host to America’s most famous alleged alien crash site. There’s not a lot more besides aliens and those trying to make a dollar off the fame of them out this way; well, there is a lot of gas and oil, apparently.

Ruby and Axel Rieke in Roswell, New Mexico

This is when Ruby and Axel submitted to their abduction adventure and willfully left us for some undetermined amount of time, only to rematerialize later this day, telling us of their anal probes. True story.

Caroline Wise in New Mexico

With nothing else going on in Roswell, we headed north to continue our journey across New Mexico.

John Wise, Ruby Rieke, and Axel Rieke in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Our destination today was Santa Fe.

Ruby Rieke, Caroline Wise, and Axel Rieke in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Dinner was at the incredible Cafe Pasqual’s; maybe I should say it was at the incredibly tightly packed and very busy Cafe Pasqual’s. Tonight, we fell in love with New Mexican cuisine.

Carlsbad Caverns – Ruby & Axel

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

John Wise and Axel Rieke at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico

Spent the day before driving from Phoenix to Superior to take Ruby and Axel through the town U-Turn with Sean Penn was filmed after watching it with them. From there, we continued on the scenic route eschewing Interstate 10 as we headed to Globe and Safford before entering New Mexico near Mule Creek. Down through Silver City, we traveled south to Deming, where the I-10 was unavoidable until we were able to merge on the US 180 outside of El Paso, Texas. We arrived a bit late at the Best Western in Carlsbad, so maybe driving 598 miles of scenic route wasn’t the best idea, but we were adamant that we’d avoid major freeways, so we accomplished that to the best of our ability.

Yes, Axel and I are reaching out for the giant nipple.

Caroline Wise at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico

Early in the morning, we arrived at Carlsbad Caverns National Park and sadly took the elevator in as we didn’t appreciate yet what the natural entrance had to offer as this was our first visit, and we had reservations to visit the Left-Hand Tunnel at 9:00 and didn’t want to be late. These photos were taken in the Big Room if I’m not mistaken. While you can’t see it in this photo, Caroline is wearing cords, and it wasn’t even the ’70s anymore.

Ruby Rieke at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico

In the afternoon, we had reservations to visit the King’s Palace in the cavern, and from there, we needed to get going for Roswell where we were spending the night. This is our friend Ruby Rieke. As for our impressions of the caverns here in the southeast corner of New Mexico, we were so enthusiastically impressed that we would return many more times after this.