Road Trip Day 1–Houston to Carlsbad, NM

It’s 11am as I write this and we are making good progress as we cross Texas today.  We stopped twice at gas stations to empty bags of Aaron’s stomach contents, stopped at 2 rest-stops for bathroom breaks and exercise, and have already had to change Christian’s jeans.  We’ve watched a movie (Cars), played on the DS (mostly Mario Cart), started a book on CD (The BFG by Roald Dahl), and read out loud to each other (Elder Maxwell’s biography by Bruce C Hafen – FABULOUS read!). 

Paul took the first shift starting at 5am and drove til 7 where we stopped at a rest stop for breakfast.  Fabulous rest stop!  I wish all rest stops were brand new and had great playgrounds! 

Then I drove us through San Antonio and once my navigator remembered it was his job to keep us on the right freeway, we had smooth sailing!  We stopped again at 10:45 at an older rest stop and played ball and ate an apple before embarking again on our trek.  Fort Stockton is in less than 2 hours where we’ll stop for lunch and our next break before leaving I-10 to cut up to New Mexico. 

The kids have done fabulous so far (knock-on-wood) and we’re having a great time.  I’ll write more this afternoon!

Well, now it’s 9pm and we are just a few minutes away from our hotel in Carlsbad.  The drive across Texas continued to be fairly uneventful.  We did take a picture of the thermometer in our mini-van.  It showed that it was 106 outside!  It was a very hot day.  We are thankful for a van with working AC!

We arrived at Carlsbad Caverns around 3:30pm and we immediately went into the cave. 

It was awesome, truly awe inspiring.  Paul carried Christian in the Bjorn and the rest of us walked.  It took us about an hour and a half to explore the “Big Room” of the cave.  There is so much to see and we only saw about half.  I must have taken 200 pictures just inside the caves, so obviously I won’t post them all, but here are several of my favorites.

 

Christian was so happy to be carried and see everything.

It was hard to capture just how enormous the caverns were. 

Soda straw formations

Jen & Brian

Stalagmites & Stalactites almost unite

The Boys… Brian was tired and being difficult at this point and was trying to frown.

Aaron pointed out that this formation looked like toes.

Brian got tired, and whined the last 30 minutes, but other than that we all did great.  By the end my belly was feeling very heavy, but with the baby and camera in front and the backpack in back, I felt quite encumbered. 

After walking through the cave and viewing a short video about caves after, we waited and hung around for sundown to view the bat flight.  Typically the colony of Mexican White-tailed bats that comes to the cave in the summertime is about 400,000 large.  Unfortunately for us, the current drought in the area is likely one of the reasons that colony has NOT come to Carlsbad.  Instead we waited for several hours and saw a few hundred bats fly out.  Not nearly as impressive as we had hoped.  Plus, by then Christian and Brian were just DONE with their day and were exhausted. 

We left a little disappointed at the bats, frustrated with our kids, and tired ourselves.  We did have a great day, but not a very exciting end of the day.  We’ll be at our hotel in a few minutes where hopefully I can connect to the internet and post this.  Lets see what tomorrow brings!