Seven-hundred fifty feet below the Chihuahuan Desert, in the pale illumination of dark passages, lies Carlsbad Cavern. Facilitators Hilary Marshall and Rachel Falcone took a peek underground at this National Park on their long drive to Fort Worth, TX from Las Cruces, NM. The cavern’s decorations–formed drip by drip as water has seeped into the limestone bedrock of the cave beginning 500,000 years ago–are stunning beyond words and images. “The Big Room,” like an underground sea, captivated us with both its vastness and subtle details.

Facilitator Hilary Marshall (left) can be seen forgoing a sore neck to get a closer look at the Cavern’s ceiling formations.

Above ground and within Texas’ borders, we drove through one of the region’s many ghost towns. Orla, Texas, an oil supply center in the mid-1960′s boasting a population of more than 200, is now only a monument to what it once was.

Below, a sign for the deserted Orla Grocery and Gas Station reels folks in with its honest words: “It’s a long way to anywhere from Orla Grocery….”