Our continual quest to visit each of the US National parks, prompted us to take a day trip to Carlsbad caverns while in El Paso this weekend.
Oddly enough we were quite familiar with the route has we were only about 11 miles from there this April when we visited Guadeloupe. To get to Carlsbad from El Paso you travel 138 miles on a rather barren and desolate road in the desert.
**Updated Below!
Once we finally departed, the kids were ecstatic about our camping trip this weekend. As we were preparing to leave, my son already started talking about the very, important rules of camping, as he’s discovered them over the years.
And the number one, most exciting rule is that **
camping is messy!
**
This one cracked me up, because while it is true, to hear him talk you would think he grew up in a house where he was never allowed to get dirty.
Van is fully packed… literally, I don’t think we could fit another thing in there. Careful opening the back door, the sleeping bags will fall when you life it up. Kids buckled in. Dog ready to drop off at my friend’s.
Wait, forgot the tip of the fishing rod. Back in the house.
Scott’s needs a ball cap. Back in the house. After packing, repacking, rearranging the car seats, returning to the house, oh 3 or 4 dozen more times, we are set.
While you might think that the potential pink eye, multiple ear infections, and laryngitis would scare me away from ever taking the circus crew on another national park vacation, it doesn’t. Just call me crazy!
I’ll admit, parts of our Texas vacation wasn’t all we hoped and dreamed it would be.
But, I am glad we went and eager to visit some more national parks.
So this afternoon I sat down to map out a potential trip to Florida.
Sorry to leave you all hanging with my sarcastic tribute to San Antonio…I’ve spend the last 24 hours prepping for and then hosting my son’s 5th birthday…(How did he end up being 5 already)? But, I’ll save that for another post… one involving sinister villains, and superheroes…be sure to come back next week for that one! I do want to clarify, that even though we did spend 4 hours in the urgent care facility, we did have a great time in San Antonio.
After 4 days of camping at both Guadalupe and Big Bend NP, the next big destination on our trip was to San Antonio. We were quite excited about showers, and more room to spread out. After checking into our hotel at noon, we were off to see the sights.
Where to first? The Alamo? The Children’s Museum? The River walk? So many choices…
We thought what better place to go to really experience the city than the urgent care clinic.
The sun’s rays cast a bright orange glow on the rocks when it rose in the morning.
As the day went on, the bees came out to pollinate the flora.
As the day progressed, we were able to pose for the very significant sign shot. Click here to learn of it’s high importance.
As the sun began to set the rocks began to change color yet again.
I’m trying my best to summarize our almost 2 week vacation, so as to keep you up to date with our circus adventures, without boring you with every.single.picture we took (if you knew how many pics we took, you would realize this is NO.SMALL.FEAT). I realized today though that I haven’t really posted any pictures of the actual parks yet. Hmmm…perhaps I should do something about that.
So, any guesses on which national park this is from?
picnic lunches
sweet treats
hot springs
big leaps
dirty hands
Besides taking in the beautiful scenery (of which there was much) at Guadalupe and Big Bend National Parks, we really enjoyed being able to just be together (most of the time). Each day at Big Bend we took a very, long picnic lunch. One day we went to the western portion of the park and enjoyed a leisurely picnic. I thought it would be fun to make our own ice cream in coffee cans using a recipe I had found online.