Returning to Carlsbad
The final day of our travel weekend brought us to Carlsbad, New Mexico. Here we would visit the Carlsbad Caverns National Park and even a quick trip to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Again, I have been to both in my past, but Kerri had been to neither in her adulthood. We went with the full-monty visit, hiking 700+ feet down the natural entrance 1-mile trail into the cavern. There we followed the 1.5 mile big room trail which showcases not only the enormous scale of this cavern, but also many of the spectacles of nature. If you are counting, that is four National Parks in three days for us, including a fair share of driving to get from the first to the last.
We stayed the week just outside of Carlsbad. Here I would get the truck’s transmission serviced as it had been well over 2 years and the truck does more than it’s fair share of towing. Beyond the Chevrolet dealership in town, only one other business would do the work, but they botched the job and within 24 hours of their work the truck was nearly un-driveable. Remember in my last blog post I mentioned Las Cruces, New Mexico being the location of both of my mechanical break downs in my years of travel. Well, we had just passed through Las Cruces a few days prior, and now we were broken down. I think it is confirmed that Las Cruces breaks vehicles!
We were to leave for Big Bend National Park on the Saturday, but Friday ended with the truck still not working. In a hail-Mary attempt, I went out Saturday morning and purchased all the parts to redo the work that the shop botched. It was only after I get back to our camping spot that I crawl under the truck and find out none of me 200 pieces of tools will fit the nuts. So, a run back into town for more tools… seriously, an American truck that has metric nuts? What is this world coming too?
It was not the end of the day’s frustrations though. After removing the transmission oil pan, and all it’s fluid and oil filter, it was only then that I noticed that the local auto parts store provided me the wrong parts!!! One may think this is a rare instance, but nearly every single time I have gotten parts from a chain-store in my life, the wrong parts were provided the first attempt. Thankfully, the parts store admitted their mistake and delivered the correct parts to our GPS coordinates. Within an hour, the truck was back together and we were ready, although weary, to roll into Texas and our of Carlsbad, which we did right away the following morning, only a single day behind schedule.
During this time of crisis I remembered that this was what stress feels like. It has been so long that I have had a stressful day that even a minor issue (and this was only minor compared to other people’s problems) really took it’s toll. We both were relieved when the truck got us out of Carlsbad, and were even happier when it got us to Texas (that sounds weird to say). Our adventure gets to continue, on schedule, stress free, thanks to having the right tools, and the know-how to get the job done even in the middle of a desert.
We are so glad you are so handy and were able to get the job done, even with the frustration of the auto parts store selling you the wrong filter! I take it all is still well with the transmission.
Yea, the truck is doing very well since the work was re-done.
My 2007 Chevy van is a mixture of metric and SAE fasteners. So I carry socket and combination wrenches of both types.
US285 between Carlsbad to Pecos was one of the ugliest stretches of America I’ve ever driven. It’s oil fields and the highway is a nonstop stream of tankers hauling fracking chemicals. I hope you found a more scenic route.
Yea we went down to Marfa as well, so the route brought us back to Guadalupe Mtns, then south via 52 I think it was. Not the mist scenic, but definitely not the ugliest.