Road Trippin Part 1: Carlsbad Caverns

Last month, Spencer worked his last day at the outpatient clinic where he has been for over four years, to begin a new journey of starting his own business. And in the time lapse in between the last day of work and the first day of opening the new clinic, there was only one thing to do: Load up the kids and the bikes and a tent and a ton of food into the minivan, and set off across the country.

Road trip!!!!

We left on a Tuesday afternoon at 3:30, and we drove until 11:30 the next morning, when we landed in Carlsbad, New Mexico. I have never seen myself as much of a night driver, and I have to admit that I questioned Spencer's sanity when he suggested driving all the way through the night. But when I realized that the kids slept for 8-9 hours while we drove across the entire state of Texas, I knew he was right and it was definitely worth feeling like a zombie the next day.

So here we are at Carlsbad Caverns, our first major stop on our trip. The first thing Averi Kate did when we got out of the van was to jump over a cactus, so I knew it would be a good trip.

It was hard to have a picnic with those crazy winds blowing.

Everyone was so happy to be out of the van!

This is a place that Spencer visited back when he did his wild and crazy bachelor road trip before we got married. He was really excited for us to experience it too.

Oh the love.

We were in New Mexico!!!! It was surreal!

Going down into the bat cave.

It's hard to see but there were all these bats flying around the entrance to the cave. We had to walk under them to go in. In fact, it actually smelled a bit like bat pee (which I can now recognize) walking in, and I noticed that Claire kept smelling my hand (which I had just washed and smelled like soap) as we were walking. It was kind of weird, but it made sense.

Owen had the life, man.

The pictures aren't going to do it justice, but the rock formations in the cave were amazing.

Taking a break - it was truly a LOT of walking.

So we spent all afternoon at Carlsbad, then left and planned to drive for a couple of hours and find a hotel to crash and catch up on our sleep. We didn't count on the fact that it was spring break for Texas which meant that every hotel in New Mexico was full. We had to heat up our supper in a (full) hotel's microwave and then eat it on the road while we searched for the next (decent) hotel that had availability. We finally arrived in Albuquerque and found one near the airport. And even though there were planes taking off and landing all night, all five of us slept like rocks and felt much better in the morning.