This post was written Monday night, I just couldn't get WiFi to cooperate until now...
This part of the trip works better in my mind when I break it into parts.
Part 1 - Roswell. After leaving Albuquerque we made our way three hours down the road to Roswell. While Roswell and ABQ seem like nice cities, most of the rest of the towns we passed through in New Mexico were dilapidated and sad. We arrived at our Roswell hotel well past regular bedtime, and I was eager to throw children into their beds. The first room they gave us, however, only had one king bed. Ha! Can you imagine all six of us trying to manage that situation? We got that mostly remedied, but still only had two queen beds and no pull-out sofa. It was a, uh, cozy night.
At 5:55 am the next morning the alarm went off. Seriously?! Is there a conspiracy somewhere to keep me from sleeping in even a little? Breakfast was excellent. Aubree and Bryce want to keep a tally of which hotels on our trip have the best breakfasts. So far Roswell’s Hampton Inn is in the lead (but there hasn’t been much competition yet).
Before leaving Roswell, we decided to spend a little bit of time exploring. We stopped by the UFO museum. It was pretty lame; we only stayed for about 20 minutes. We ended up spending more time in the gift shop than the actual museum. Thane’s goal for the trip was to add to his key chain collection (which currently stands at 2). He was pleased to find his first new addition.
Part 2 - Carlsbad Caverns. These Caverns are seriously in the middle of nowhere. I’d debated whether or not to scratch them from our trip, but I am so glad we didn’t because they are amazing! The entrance to the Caves is unreal. It is also quite stinky from all the birds that nest in the entrance rocks.
We took the Natural Entrance down into the Big Cavern. This hike consists of about 1.5 miles of steep switch-backs leading straight down. It was 95 degrees outside, but the caves remain a fairly constant 56 degrees. A totally down-hill, cool hike? Bryce said he could hike like that all day long. Even Nellie never complained.
When we got to the Big Cavern, I knew it would be a large room, but I was totally unprepared for the scale of the place. We hiked an additional 1.3 mile loop just to see the whole thing! From parts of this area, we could see down to the lower caves. That’s even more mind bending! There we were, hundreds and hundreds of feet underground, and there were even more caves beneath our feet.
Thankfully, we were able to take the elevator back up from the Big Cavern. I’m definitely not in good enough shape to have been able to hike back up the way we came down. From there, the kids worked on their Jr. Ranger booklets. To finish them off, we watched the Carlsbad Caverns movie. This one was, by far, the best of the three we’ve seen.
The kids were sworn in again as Jr Rangers and got their badges. We unanimously agree that Carlsbad Caverns was awesome.
Part 3 - Carlsbad. Today, we put the “bad” in Carlsbad. Not long after leaving the Caverns, the check engine light in my van came on. Ugh! One of my biggest fears was having car trouble during a time I was by myself in the middle of nowhere. I looked up a mechanic in Carlsbad and we arrived around 4:45 pm. I pleaded my case long enough to get one of the employees to do a diagnostic check, but it just came up as a general piston misfire. I spoke with Mr. Boss-man of the shop and he said, “Carlsbad is the worst place to break down. It’s grown so much, that everyone is months behind. If you haven’t noticed your car running badly, I suggest you drive to the next town to find a mechanic to help you.” Of course, the “next town” isn’t anywhere close to here. Double ugh.
We had dinner at Burger King, because it was late, and I was stressed and that was the first place we passed. Then we made our way to our hotel and found that it’s pretty ghetto. Triple Ugh.
Tomorrow morning I’m going to try a different mechanic’s shop. Hopefully they will be able to help us because we’re supposed to have 6 hours of driving to our next destination.
To be continued… (and hopefully it continues in a positive way).
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