My wife and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary with a visit to Carlsbad, New Mexico and nearby Carlsbad Caverns National Park. The caverns are spectacular — life time “bucket list” worthy. Nearby Guadalupe Mountains National Park, just across the state line to the south in west Texas, is also worth a visit.
The surprise of the trip was the owners and the story of the historic hotel where we stayed in downtown Carlsbad. The Italian Balzano family and their business partners have created a local dynasty with the Trinity Hotel and its Italian Restaurant at its core. They also run a farm, vineyard, winery, and a couple of game arcades in development. We had the good luck to meet Dale Balzano, one of the senior members of the family while he worked the reception desk at the hotel and restaurant. He told us of the family history originating in Trinidad, Colorado around the turn of the 20th Century where his grandfather and relatives made names for themselves — both good and bad!
The restaurant serves up New Mexican inspired Italian fare including lobster ravioli with green chile-infused Alfredo sauce and similarly spiced chicken Parmesano. They were fabulous. The Balzano Farms vineyard makes Spirit of Seven Rivers wines including a Montepulciano D’Abruzzo, a Sangiovese, a Pino Grigio, and other Italian varietals that are well worth trying. A business partner’s vineyard in nearby Deming, NM, Luna Rossa, produces promising Nebiollo and Barbaresco (varieties from the Piemonte region of Northwest Italy). I bought a few bottles from both vineyards to add to my home cellar.
The most unusual thing we learned from Dale Balzano is that New Mexico overtook Georgia about two years ago as the nation’s leading producer of pecans! Balzano Farms grows pecan trees among their other plantings. We saw pecan tree groves for a long way up US 285 from Carlsbad, through Roswell (yes, that Roswell!) to Vaughn, NM.
The area is also one of the biggest producers of natural gas. There is a refinery at Artesia, NM, about 25 miles north of Carlsbad, and wellheads with their telltale drill towers and pumps dot the horizon all around southeastern New Mexico. The oil capital of Texas, Midland, where the Bush family began making their fortune in oil, is about a two hour drive east.
We drove down to Carlsbad last Monday with a reservation for a self-guided tour of Carlsbad Caverns on Tuesday morning. While we elected to take the elevator down 750 ft. to the start of the mile long walkway through the main parts of the cavern, the natural entrance, which I walked to and down later, is amazing. What you see here is the amphitheater positioned at the natural entrance for viewing the annual mass bat migration out of the cavern.
This trail leads down to the same place where the elevator drops you off to begin the mile long walkway through the main halls of the cavern.
As you can see, the stalagmite and stalactite formations are beyond description. It was spectacular. The so called Big Room was amazing. It’s hard to believe such large open spaces can exist 1,000 feet or so below the surface. And, there is an even lower level that is only accessible via guided tours. Those tours are not being offered now because of the national politics on the surface! Sigh… But the steel ladders down to that lower level look intimidating! So, maybe it’s okay…
To make our way home more interesting and to break up the drive, we decided to spend a night in Taos, New Mexico. Taos deserves a posting or two in its own right so, I will not spend much time on it here. Stay tuned for more.
Suffice it to say, we found a comfortable hotel, the Hotel Don Fernando de Taos (part of the Tapestry Collection by Hilton), and a nice local coffee shop for breakfast the next morning. Taos Java coffee shop on the south end of town was just across the Paseo del Pueblo Sur (Highway 68) from the hotel. Their espresso and lattes were flavorful and well-made. Their muffins were very good, too. We were then ready to head home via San Luis, Colorado and La Veta Pass, which I have written about elsewhere in this travel blog.
A Finis Terrae 