I arrived in Carlsbad a few days ago and, after surviving two days of very significant winds (25-30 sustained, 50 gusts), I did the local big tourist venues. One afternoon I drove 35 miles to the very remote Sitting Bull Falls; although the paved roadway was just fine, I only passed four cars in both directions. And, once to the Falls I was the only car in the parking lot and saw no one else. It got me to thinking--a 35 mile location, a 25 year old pickup truck and an aging body--that this was possibly not the best decision; I made my photo opportunity hike pretty short. Moving on to the next day, I traveled in the early morning the 70 miles to Guadalupe Mountains NP; again it is a reasonably remote location with roadside signage warning of "no services for 130 miles". The NP are the remains of a 250 million year old marine fossil reef and includes the abruptly rising El Capitan Peak (used as a navigation point by early settlers) and the nearby Guadalupe Peak, the highest in TX at 8751 feet. Later in the day I stopped for my third visit (first with Boy Scouts in 1963? and second with my son in 2002?) to Carlsbad Caverns NP; this was a very quick visit because the elevator is out-of-service (broken cable) and the only way in/out is to walk along a nice paved but narrow trail. Now, it is a 1.25 mile walk and a 750 foot descent to the bottom and each step down is also a step up, so I elected to make it a pretty short visit and turned around at the half hour point to be able to be out of the Cavern before the Park Rangers began to force folks back up the trail. On my previous visits I had always walked in and used the elevator out so I had really never viewed the entry point from the trail. And, since the trail was probably designed for walkers only down, having two-way traffic was a bit cumbersome; there were lots of struggling visitors who had apparently over-estimated their ability. And, today I visited the Living Desert Zoo and State Park in Carlsbad; it was a nice two hour visit with very thorough displays explaining the flora and fauna of the local desert area. My highlight was watching three very active bobcats.