Santa Fe and Taos NM were cool artistic types of towns with a lot of cool art galleries and places to eat. These town were basically the southwestern equivalent of New Hope, in fact I saw one picture that looked a lot the Canal by Lambertville and it turned out the artist was a NJ transplant from New Hope.
From Santa Fe we headed to the Carlsbad Caverns in the southwest corner of the NM. I have seen a lot of cave but nothing can compare to the size and variety of these caves. The main chamber of the cave is over 8 acres (unbelievable). To get to the main cave you can take an elevator or walk a mile down a steep path that descends over 800 feet. I chose to walk into the cave which was awesome. It took me about an hour to make my way down the path which was not easy as some paths of the path were over 20% grade. This was the off season so I was the only one walking down the path so I had the cave all the myself.
From Carlsbad we headed west across the state through some very diverse terrain. Most of NM is a high plane desert with some vegetation but there are also beautiful pine forest at the higher elevations and some really bizarre places like White Sands which is just a set of sand dunes in the middle of no where
After touring NM we ended up spending a few days in Tucson at a nice spa resort. We saw a lot of cactus here and also spent a night at Kitts Peak Observatory where the we got to spend a couple of hours under clear cool skies looking through their telescopes at some planets, nebulas, and star clusters.
Our vacation ended in Phoenix with a visit to one of my wife's friends who now lives there.
The desert country southwest is pretty but it is so dry and barren that it made me miss the green of NJ. It was a cool place to visit but not a place I would want to live.
