https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.345085765524146.86458.100000681752669&type=1&l=aa99b13c6a

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the aura that remains when I leave the Cavern.

Could be

Is that north-west New Mexico I see?

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KI: 17967159

Capulin Volcano maybe?

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semplers' shards

We're pretty sure that the Cleft is at the other top corner of New Mexico, since that is where a big trade route runs.

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KI: 17967159

The pic. I posted in not NM......but when I saw it I wanted to go there...jump the fence and call for Zandi.....

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the aura that remains when I leave the Cavern.

Shorah all,

It's too bad angelmyst's picture is so small, which makes it very difficult to tell exactly where it might be located. I guess it helps to know it's not in New Mexico, though.

semplerfi's Capulin photo is a tempting possibility since its overall shape is quite similar to Zandi's caldera at The Cleft. However, Capulin is a great deal larger, and you can see that the vegetation there is significantly different. Its far northeast location in New Mexico puts it very near Colorado and the more forested land and temperate climate there. DLordofTime is referring to the Camino Real, which ran more or less up the center of New Mexico from north to south and was a well-traveled trade route between Mexico City and northern New Mexico in bygone times. In New Mexico, it more or less followed the route of the Rio Grande river (which is more than 100 miles west of Capulin; and nearly 200 miles west of Carlsbad Caverns BTW) and is the most likely candidate for the well-traveled caravan route described in The Book of Atrus.

Personally, the DRC photo of the caldera continues both to tantalize and frustrate me. It could be from many places in central and northern New Mexico. Some day, I may have to do a series of road trips to see if I can't find that particular formation from that particular vantage point... This would be a long-term project though, as New Mexico is a very big place (the fifth largest state in the US, topped only by Alaska, Texas, California and Montana).

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It might help to start with the address of the DRC office:
14617 Old Caverns HWY. Carlsbad, New Mexico 88220

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OpenUru.org Minkata Test Shard is
OU-Minkata Shard Testers Guide (in laymen's terms)

We're pretty sure that Carlsbad Caverns are just a decoy designed to keep us away from the real Cleft and D'ni.

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KI: 17967159

Shorah again,

Tai, thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, such a location doesn't exist (at least according to Google Maps). When you search for 14617 Old Cavern Hwy, Carlsbad NM 88220 (there is no "s" at the end of Cavern for this road name), you land in-between the address numbers 7501 (to the north) and 674 (to the south). Most likely, this is where the outlying southern areas of Carlsbad end and the county addresses begin. If you follow this road south, the rough addresses climb up to about 2200 and end when Old Cavern Highway crosses Whites City Road (which leads west to Whites City, the nearest community to Carlsbad Caverns). The road, which by now is a crude dirt road, continues south until it reaches the New Mexico/Texas border, at which point, it joins an east/west road (also a crude dirt road, unlabeled in Google). Oddly enough, Old Cavern Highway doesn't go very near Carlsbad Caverns. So in addition to the DRC offices being located at a non-existent address, this pseudo-address isn't located very near Carlsbad itself or Carlsbad Caverns. Altogether a remarkably inconvenient location.

This part of New Mexico is riddled with countless crude dirt roads, mostly to provide access to oil and gas pumps and their storage tanks. The eastern part of this geographic area is flat, flat, flat! I lived about 60 miles east of Carlsbad for a few years (in my mis-spent youth) and remember Carlsbad being an Eden compared to all points east. There are tales to be told about that little adventure of mine, but they will have to wait for a different time.

At any rate, this is another example of the Mysty things I puzzle over in my spare time. It has been an interesting adventure in its own right, trying to track down these locations on the surface, something I started during the last Cavern closure. It continues to entice and elude; and occasionally keeps me up at night too.

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Yes, well, of course, it's a fake address. They probably even added the "s" on purpose to make it less likely to be confused with a real address. (I copied & pasted directly from the DRC site.) Just sayin' that if that's the location Cyan chose for the pretend DRC office, then that would be the place to start to begin looking for the pretend caldera.

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OpenUru.org Minkata Test Shard is
OU-Minkata Shard Testers Guide (in laymen's terms)

While this may not be the true entrance, this and the project that surrounds it, looks like it should be.
http://rodencrater.com/. I suggest that anyone interested in things Mystie research this massive artwork.

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Life in the Arctic teaches that no mater how bad things are now, they can always get worse.

Shorah again,

Yes Tai, I understand the whole "fake" thing. My personal project is from the In-Character POV, trying to chase that particular phantom down its rabbit hole from up here on the surface and to see where it takes me. Part of the fun of this project is to see just how far the rabbit hole goes, how much of the surface here in New Mexico can be seen and understood from that IC place. Which is why I'm hunting for that elusive entrance (the DRC site photo shows that something real exists out there somewhere, even if it's not in New Mexico).

I suppose if more fans lived here, we might have a group project going to scour the countryside and find Zandi's property and the entrance. (Note to self: does anyone know how many of us live here in New Mexico? Maybe I should just ask...)

I happen to find it both challenging and rewarding to see how far the IC perspective can be pushed here. So IC-ly, the bogus address would mean that the actual DRC offices existed elsewhere and that they had their reasons for publishing their location as being somewhere down a desolate dirt road in the outskirts of Carlsbad New Mexico. Probably for privacy and/or security, I would think. I know I'd be tempted to do something similar if I was researching and restoring the find of a lifetime...

Noxid, many thanks for that link to Roden Crater. Although the overall shape is a bit more symmetrical than what we know from our own visits to Zandi's property, the vegetation is spot-on for what we see when we visit The Cleft and what we see in the DRC photo of the site. It would be fascinating if Roden Crater turns out to be some sort of top secret restoration and commemorative work in honor of the D'ni.

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