Volcanoes and Caves

August 23^rd, 2026

Grants, New Mexico

Woke at 8:00am, body said nope.

Woke at 9:00am, body said nope.

Woke at 10:00am, body said dude, no.

Finally gave up on alarms, and would just let body wake on its own.  It did, at noon.

Got showered and dressed and decided I still had enough time to make the day trip I had planned to ride today.

Got the bike uncovered, grabbed what I needed and hit the road.

Headed up to the nearest interstate intersection, and then crossed over the freeway to grab a highway heading south.

Road a bit down this before I noticed I was very low on fuel.  Range said I should be able to go out and back, but this will be a close one.

Took only about 30 minutes to get south and up into the hills a bit.

Reached our destination, the Bandera Ice Caves and Volcano.

The site is next to an old cinder cone volcano (1 of about 30 in the region) which has a trail hiking up to the crater.  The other attraction is the ice cave.

This cave sits in a collapsed lava tube (one of the longest in the country) and due to some unique conditions, maintains a yearly temperature of 31 degrees (F).  This means the 20 feet of ice sitting on the bottom of the cave rarely melts below that, and it can gain a foot or two each winter as rainwater seeping in over the summer will collect on the ice and freeze.

I arrived, went into the shop and got the general description of what was out there and some history, then paid my fee to hike up the trails.  I also bought a hat as I had left mine at the motel and lots of hiking in the sun would not due my head any good.

I hiked up the volcano first.  The trail is along the cinder paths which are not too rough or steep, and winds up to the saddle where the volcano blew out the side of the caldera on its last eruption about 10000 years ago. 

The lava flow from that eruption went about 23 miles south of the volcano, merging in with flows from other volcanos in the 10000-20000 year time frame.

The saddle sits at about 8000 feet altitude.

I took some photos, enjoyed the scenery, examined some rocks, and then headed down.

About half way down, you can take a scenic trail out across the lava field in this area, which will slowly bring you down the rest of the incline and intersect the trail to the ice cave.

The ice cave, which as mentioned sits in a lava tube, is about ¼ mile beyond the end of this scenic trail.  The full hike is about 1.5 miles.

Once you reach the entrance to the collapsed area of the tube, you have to come down a steep set of stairs (think there are about 50-60 of them) to reach the platform above the ice in the cave.

As mentioned, the bottom of the cave has a large pool of ice about 20 feet thick.  This ice maintains itself year-round and helps to keep the cave at 31 degrees.

It also creates an environment where arctic lichen and arctic algae can survive. (How they got here in the first place is still a mystery as the should not exist this far south)

The cave has a wall built in the back from stone, which was started by native peoples and maintained by settlers in the region later.  The natives and settlers all harvested ice from the cave for at least several 100 years, possibly longer.

While ice harvesting was stopped in the 1940s, it also started its life as a tourist attraction around then as well.

The shop had lots of artifacts on display that were found in the area, mostly pottery and items left behind by natives that had lived in the area.

I hiked the short distance back to the shop and spent some time talking with the people running the place (I think the older guy might be the owner of the land) and some of the other guests visiting.

I later went inside to buy a cold drink and look at the aforementioned artifacts and browse the gift shop.

Finally decided to head back, so got going and took it slowly so I would hopefully not run out of fuel.

Thankfully it was mostly down hill on the way back and at slower speeds I arrived with about 30 miles of range to spare, so maybe ½ a gallon of fuel left.

Stopped at station and filled the tank, then went back to the motel.

I pulled off stuff from the bike, then sat down to work on my financial stuff again.  Verify card charges, balance accounts, paid off cards, and move funds as needed.

I then decided to walk next door to the burger joint for dinner.

As I was leaving, a guy in one of the rooms down the row asked if I had any tools.

He was trying to remove door panel to fix his electric window which would not go up, and did not have the socket size he needed.  Sadly, neither did I, but I did have some needle tipped vice grips, and that worked to get the bolts out.

But the problem was not something easy to fix.  Appears that the cable that runs the window up and down has become jammed, knotted or fallen off the spindle that winds it up and down.  Likely will need to remove the motor to even try and fix.

Guy decided he would wait till tomorrow and he has to take it to shop for a problem in his transmission as well.  Wished him luck, put my tools away and then went for dinner.

Burger place is small inside, but figured out what I wanted and ordered.

Took a long time for food to be ready, though they do make things after you order it, so that does make things slower.  Only 2 people and 1 online order were in front of me, but still took 20 minutes to get my food.

I walked back to the motel to eat and then started to work on the blogs.

Now that this one is done, I will try to get them uploaded as I am behind again, and then do a few other updates.  Then I need to get route done, so likely no video work tonight.

Tomorrow we will get into Arizona, and probably bit over half way across.  As I have already stopped at many of the sites along the route in northern AZ, I am going to skip most of that stuff tomorrow and just get to area around Flagstaff at least, hopefully bit farther (hoping to reach Williams).

Catch ya down the road.

Todays Route: