Eclectic Parent

We started off a little slowly on our 2nd day. The kids were thrilled that the hotel’s continental breakfast was glazed donuts. They were bouncing off the walls while we tried to pack!

Carlsbad Caverns is a huge set of numerous limestone caves. We did the easy self guided tour and it was definitely enough. The 1 hour trek took about 2.5 with our junior park rangers with us. We’ve got numerous photos but those will have to wait a bit. The Big Room cavern that we walked is approximately 600,000 sq ft of stalactites, stalagmites, columns where the two meet, huge mounds, ribbon like formations called draperies, bumpy formations that looked like coral and where called popcorn and the clearest pools of water I’ve ever seen. In some places if we stood still enough you could hear the dripping water. It was quite cool 750 feet under ground. I’m glad we brought jeans and sweatshirts. The obvious difference from summer day to year round cave temperature was quite diminished by the fact that it was only 65 and raining above ground with almost no visibility. Of course, when you live in the desert rain is cool too.

The Chihuahuan Desert is the wettest desert in North America; it looks like the Sonoran Desert after the wettest wet season ever and some miracle grow. Similar plants but crammed together, green everywhere. We’ve been talking about watching this change as we drive. We ate lunch in the parking lot and looked at the junior park ranger book. The kids were disappointed we missed the hundreds of thousands of bats that fly out of the cave at sunset the night before but it was time to get on the road.

We read the Texas page of Wish You Were Here by Kathleen Krull, which was recommended by Aunt Jackie. So many kids books about the states have random trivia; we picked up - and returned one- that had facts like ‘it’s illegal to tie a giraffe to a lamppost’ although I’ve forgotten which state. Wish You Were Here is quite good, just enough good info for young kids; it’s out of print but we grabbed it used from Amazon. We stopped for gas in Pecos, TX and searched the ipod for the American Tall Tales by Jim Weiss for the story of Pecos Bill. Somehow it didn’t make it on the ipod but about 8 hours of other stories did At dinner for the last two nights we’ve played Dinner Games. It’s a fun fabulous set of verbal games that can be played at dinner, in line or in the car and it’s wonderful grandma got it for us - tonight’s dinner was the slowest ever. Last night we pulled a card to have one person chose a letter sound and then everyone name an object they could see that began with that sounds. We dropped the part about being first and had everyone take a turn. Tonights card was a memory game. “Miss Pagetti likes her spaghetti with . . . ” each person said one thing, the next person repeated in and added another. It goes round and round until no one can remember the entire list. We ended up with “Miss Pagetti likes her spagheti with meatballs, candy, clam sauce, potatoes, cheese, a toilet, a flower, french fries, garlic, puke, pee, anchovies, poop, chocolate sauce, blood, eye balls, peeps, spinach and ginger” ewwwwww!

After a quick bike/scooter ride around a park we hopped back in the van. Another night of not getting to a hotel early. Tonight we made it was far as Kerrville, Texas. Tomorrow San Antonio, the Alamo and heading to Houston to see a friend.