To visit the cave at Carlsbad Caverns National Park you need a timed entry ticket. We had gotten tickets for early afternoon. We got ours about a week in advance, and it was filling up. The caverns are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Donna didn’t want to do too much after yesterday’s long hike on Guadalupe Peak. In the morning, we went to the Living Desert State Park on the north side of Carlsbad.

Today we hiked up Guadalupe Peak. The trail head doesn’t have much parking, and the previous day was very windy, so we expected that this hike would be very popular today. We tried to get going early and arrived at 7:40am getting one of the last parking spots. There is additional parking lot 2/3 of a mile away.

Today was forecast to be very windy, up to 55 mph gusts, so we chose McKittrick Canyon as our hiking location for the day. The winds would be crossing the canyon mostly, not roaring down the canyon.

We arrived late last night and didn’t get going so quickly in the morning, and we made a stop for lunch groceries before going out to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We arrived around 11am and the visitor center parking lot was full, and they had rangers out directing folks to other places in the park.

We headed to Beaver Marsh early in the morning to get another chance to look for otters. We didn’t see much.

We had a quick stop at the Boston Mills visitor center and then hiked along the towpath from Station going south looking for birds and at Brandywine Falls loop trail and the Ledges loop trail.

We took our bikes on the train from Rockside to Botzum and rode the bikes back to Rockside.

Today we stopped at the visitor’s center and did a little more hiking.

Today we did some more biking and hiking at Indiana Dunes.

After driving through the rain the previous day, we arrived at Indiana Dunes National Park the evening of May 31.