Carlsbad Caverns

New Mexico is so beautful. Jack is in 7th heaven being back in the desert climate. Yesterday, in camp, we had a really nice, mellow day. We spent the morning doing school and then the kids worked on our book illustrations (they're writing a little book about the trip and doing all the illustratons). Sammy was working on Hannibal, MO, and decided to be Mark Twain. See picture below. There's also some pictures from the LIving Desert Museum we went to on Saturday.

We were very excited to have Rhody and Charlotte fly into El Paso yesterday and meet us at out KOA yesterday afternoon. The kids jumped for joy when they saw their car pull into the lot. We all ate dinner in the RV, and then Lilly and Sam went back with R and C to their hotel in Carlsbad. Jack was my solo roommate last night. We listened to Harry Potter book on tape. Excellent.

This morning we all drove out to the caves. It was absolutely awesome. I liked it way more than I thought I would. It took about an hour to walk down a narrow, steep (dark) path. Your voice could carry 1/4 of a mile, so you had to whisper. Like the bats in Austin, the Mexcian bats had already migrated. Missed that again! Note to self, bats migrate in October.

We surfaced from 750 below to have lunch in the RV before driving to Alamogoro, NM, about 3 1/2 hours west. The drive was absolutely beautiful. The White Sands Nat'l park is just six miles from where we are staying tonight. Since Rhody is retired military, we are able to stay on the base in a family unit, complete with a small kitchen and sitting room. Dinner was beer, brownies and pizza. Not in that order, but close.

Tomorrow we'll see White Sands, Rhody and Charlotte will drive south to El Paso, and we'll head north towards Albuquerque. It's so fun to have two adults with me. I even had a map reader for part of the drive. And the reader wasn't nine years old.