Road Trip 2013, Week 2

 I know week 2 isn't quite finished yet but since I am bored out of my mind and the remaining day of the week looks to be the exact same as the previous few, I thought I would kill some time posting about the awesome week we have had (heavy sarcasm here).  The beginning of the week started out great.  We left behind "beautiful" New Mexico and headed into Texas for some big adventures.  Our first stop, and it was a very short stop, was Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  This park is mostly for hard core hikers who hike the mountains and find fossilized shells way up at the top.  A sea used to be in the valley millions of years ago and it is pretty cool that the fossils are at the top.  Luckily this park was right along the route and we didn't go out of our way for it.  At least I can say I've been there!

 Big Bend National Park was the next stop.  This park is at the very southwest corner of Texas.  It is completely out of the way and it has been called one of the largest but least visited parks in America.  I believe we were there in the off season, its too darn hot right now, or maybe what they say is true but we didn't meet many other people out there.  At the visitor center the ranger was talking about a lot of trouble with bears that day so we were hopeful we might run into some, but no such luck.  My family has been to so many parks with bear warnings but we have yet to see any.  Very disappointing.  Paul and I saw a grizzly in Denali in Alaska but I really want the kids to see a bear in the wild.  Someday.

 So Big Bend is down on the border of the US and Mexico.  We took a hike along the Rio Grande and looked over across the river into Mexico.  It was pretty cool.  There were signs posted everywhere about not buying things from the Mexicans across the river because then they would be illegals and we would be caught with contraband.  We didn't see any Mexicans out the day we were there because again, I think it was too darn hot.  Instead, we found copper and bead bugs sitting on rocks along the trail with a money jar next to them, asking for $5.  They were pretty cool and I wanted to get one but I had to set a good example for my children.  We do not purchase Mexican contraband!  Paul managed to maim more wildlife in the national park. He hit a warbler that only lives in the park area in the US and down into Mexico.  Hopefully by the time we visit the alligators in the Everglades he will have learned how to swerve ;)  Big Bend was an interesting place and I am glad we were able to experience it.

Here are the bead bugs we found.

The Rio Grande with Mexico on the other side of the river.

We never found a good place to dip our toes in the river but I was able to find this dilapidated dock type thing where we were all able to dip our fingers into the murky water and touch the Rio Grande.  Whoopee!

After Big Bend we were on our way to San Antonio.  Well, the Excursion (Maximus) felt like pooping out right outside of nowhere city Brackettville, TX.  We were only 5 miles out thankfully and were able to get a massive tow truck to haul both Max and the trailer and all of us at the same time back to town.  The driver dropped our trailer at the Fort Clark Springs RV park, within the walls of this historic Fort-turned-private community place, and then took Paul and Maximus to the shop.  This was the afternoon of Tuesday the 18th and we have been sitting here ever since!  Stewing in our own juices.  Shut up in the trailer with no escape.  Just looking at each other.  With no chocolate and no way to get some.  Until today when the shop said we could rent their work van which we promptly did and went grocery shopping.  We were out of milk and water bottles and we were dying.  I am a water snob I guess and I cringe when I have to drink out of the trailer's tap, even though Paul was nice enough to buy a filter for it.  I am a true Oregonian and I feel horrible for the trail of unrecycled water bottles we have left behind us but I want clean water thank you very much.  Tomorrow we will try swimming in the third biggest pool in Texas(!) which was being cleaned today.  Its fed from a stream so I don't know why they bother cleaning it but I won't argue with them.  Maximus is supposed to be fixed by tomorrow night or Saturday morning and then we can say hasta la vista to Brackettville Texas.  

A couple more things I have learned out on the road this week:

1.  I will never choose to eat a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich just for the fun of it once we are home safe and sound.

2.  The key to a successful road trip is to keep the kids on the brink of starvation.  They are lethargic and sit quietly and don't argue with anything you say.  Once they get food in their stomachs watch out!  They are pinging off the walls with their new found energy.

3.  Make everyone pee whenever you stop.  Even if they don't have to and  just peed 20 minutes ago. Go again.  I guarantee it will be worth it.

4.  My kids are awesome road trippers and they have adjusted to our being stuck in nowhereville very well.  I am so proud of them and so thankful that it hasn't been any worse than it already is.  Hopefully this week coming up will be full of fun adventures for them as we make our way back into civilization.

Road Trip 2013, Week 1

 A few years ago as Paul was coming up on being eligible for his 8 week sabbatical, we decided we wanted to spend it on the road, touring our great country.  I love National Parks so we plotted a general course and put off the sabbatical for a year and half in order for the kids to get just a bit older.  But not too old, we didn't want to deal with surly teenagers who didn't want to be around us.  I would much rather deal with my little ones I think.  On June 8th we headed out on what we hope to be a 56 day cross-country road trip.  I say hope, but I really think we can do it.  The first day we made it as far as Heyburn, ID.  No excitement, just a long day of driving to break us in.  Day two we made it to Utah.  We took a short sight seeing trip through the BYU campus in order to show the kids my old stomping grounds, but I couldn't make much sense of campus anymore with all the changes so it was a very short trip.  That evening we made it to the West entrance of Zion National Park, where we explored for about an hour and then found our camping spot in Hurricane, UT.

 Zion was absolutely gorgeous.  Its like the Grand Canyon in reverse.  Instead of being on the ridge of a canyon looking down, you are on the bottom of the canyon looking up.  It reminded me a lot of Yosemite except with red rocks instead of granite.

 Here is our mode of transportation for our trip.  A 36 foot long travel trailer.  So far it seems to be fitting us well and we make use of every inch of the space.

We hiked the riverwalk trail in Zion Canyon all the way to where the trail ends and you reach the narrows, where the canyon walls close in on you.  The people behind us are crossing the river and hiking upstream to the narrows.  We felt like the kids weren't old enough to take that on so we only went as far as the end of the trail. It would be fun to go farther someday when little legs have grown into big legs.  Zion was hot out of the canyon but our walk was pretty doable as long as we stayed in the shade.

Night two Bree fell out of her top bunk and cracked her right eye on the ladder I think as she fell down.  She has been sporting a lovely black eye for a week now.  Her lips are also severely chapped and she won't let me treat them, and her hair is a horrible dry mess in this ridiculous heat so not many of the trip pictures have her looking her best.  Ah well, this is how goes.  

June 11th found us on the road headed south towards the Grand Canyon.  We stopped at Pipe Springs National Monument to see what it was all about.  Good thing I bought the National Parks pass before we left so we get into all the National Parks and monuments free.  This would have cost us $25 but it totally wasn't worth it.  It was an old tithing ranch for Mormon settlers, with the house they built as the focus of the tour.  The best part of it was watching the ranger try to entertain my kids while trying desperately to hold in her anxiety about them touching her precious relics.  Skip that one if you ever come across it.  We drove along the Vermillion cliffs (pictures above) and they were just amazing.  Absolutely beautiful.  Its hard to believe rocks can be so interesting but for a week now we have been in awe of just that.  Rocks.  We made it to our camp site in Cameron, AZ that night where we ate our Navajo Tacos at the Trading Post.  YUM!  Paul and I ate there 11 years ago on our road trip together.  It was fun to revisit it.  But the camping there was awful, which we expected.  There is a reason I live in the northwest.  I can't stand the heat and the dryness is killing me.  The southwest is stunning to experience as a tourist but I could never live here.  I have bottles of lotion staged in each room of the trailer and I feel like bathing in it still isn't enough.  Its driving me crazy and I really don't know how people live here.

 June 12th we made it to the Grand Canyon!  Or the Can Canyon as Bree called it.  She talked about it for days leading up to it.  She gave it a rating of "beautiful and amazing."  She was fearlessly hanging on fences next to drop offs into the canyon, while Paul and I were trying to block her and scoop her up if she got to close to things, which happened often.  I don't know if she is fearless or oblivious though.  It was hot here too.  We got up early to try to beat the heat but when its 85 at 9am there really is no such thing.  We loved it though, and I think the kids did too.  One of my favorite National Parks.

 Mason has been humoring me all trip listening to my limited knowledge on rock formations and kindly looking out his window when I call out yet another formation that pretty much looks like all the others I pointed out to him.  He is sitting right behind me and he has turned out to be my traveling buddy.  He puts up with me the best I think.  What a sweetheart.  He bought this cool hat at Zion and is now collecting pins at all our stops to fill it up.  He seems to be just the right age to appreciate all this and is having a great time.  I think.

Mason held up the world at the Grand Canyon visitor center.

 The 13th we were supposed to be headed south to Phoenix and Tucson, to Saguaro National Park to see the giant cacti, but the weather report was for 111 in Phoenix and we just didn't feel like our bodies or our vehicle could handle the heat.  Mason was severely disappointed because he was really looking forward to those cacti, and Paul and I really wanted to head south, but we had to choose the unpopular route.  It turned out to be a good choice though.  We headed north east and saw Monument Valley, where all the old westerns were filmed.  It was beautiful rock formations once again!  You can see it was also very windy by Bree's hair.

 After the valley we stopped at Four Corners.  The three youngest are now able to say they have been to Colorado!

 Darcy wasn't having a good time at Four Corners.

 We hit the Continental Divide in New Mexico on the 14th.  We also drove into Albuquerque in search of the Mormon temple, which we like to find along our route, and that was kind of a disaster.  We were able to drive by the temple and snap a picture and then Paul maneuvered our beast of a vehicle through the streets till we found a Wal Mart to stock up on supplies.  Can I just digress for a minute and say what an amazing guy my husband is?  He has been put through the ringer driving our massive caravan around but he has been awesome at it.  He got us through the city, he drove us safely through a blinding dust storm that threatened to blow us off the road, and he can back-up on a dime.  I am totally impressed by his driving skills.  And his putting up with me skills.  But we won't get into that.  We saw tumbleweeds roll across our path in the windstorm which excited all of us.  Simple pleasures.  For most of New Mexico I was wondering what earthly reason it had for existing.  Totally ugly worthless desert.  Even the cactus are ugly.  Mason and I nicknamed one species "the Big Uglies."  They are really a species of Yucca I think.  Appropriate name.  Southern New Mexico has some treasures though we have found.

That evening we pulled into our camp sight in Alomogordo, NM, dropped the trailer, and sped to White Sands National Monument.  We were trying to get there before the visitors center closed so we could get a stamp in our national parks passports, and so we could get the obligatory fridge magnet and Mason's hat pin.  It closed at 7pm and we got there at 6:53.  I told you Paul was amazing.  White Sands was a great find.  It was beautiful, soft, huge sand dunes out in the middle of the desert.  We were out there for an hour and a half just enjoying the sunset and the kids had a blast rolling down the dunes.  Great place for kids and sunset is the best time to visit.  I think the kids would rate that as their top spot so far.

Today we made it to Carlsbad Caverns.  I didn't really think about how being 750 feet under the earth might effect my kids until we were already down the elevator into the caverns.  Thankfully no one was claustrophobic but Drew and Bree were pretty uneasy at times.  I even caught myself thinking about what would happen if the roof caved in.  It gave me a greater appreciation for what trapped miners go through.  The caverns were amazing though.  Spectacular.  Crazy that we could be down there.  Bree refused to walk so she got a piggy back ride from me the whole 1.25 mile trail.  Little stinker.  I didn't want her to cry because it would echo off the walls.  She played me pretty well.  Little stinker.  The caverns really were other-worldly.  I would recommend visiting if you aren't claustrophobic.  Its quite an experience.

 On the way back to our camp site from the caverns we saw a tarantula crossing the road!  Not this guy though, he is still living.  I believe Paul squashed the first one we saw.  On accident of course.  I still feel horribly guilty about maiming wildlife in a National Park.  We saw this guy on the road on our way to watch the bats all fly out of the cavern at dusk.  Unfortunately it wasn't a mass exodus like some of the pictures out there, but it was still pretty cool to see them all flying around.  Tomorrow we head south to Texas!  Hopefully I can find the time and the internet service to blog about this upcoming week.

In the week we have been out on the road I have learned a few things:

1.  Mason has been blessed with the gift of tongues.  I don't know when or where he picked it up, but he seems to speak in a sort of Jabba the Hut jibberish constantly.  He's probably still starting all his conversations with "what if" but I just don't realize it.

2.  Bree is partial to female singers.  Only female singers.  And she does a mean Christina Agulerra impression of "I Just Want to Feel This Moment."

3.  Darcy is an excellent traveler.  Until she decides not to be.  All of a sudden she turns "flopsy mopsy" and won't move another inch.  She is done!  Fortunately it hasn't happened too often but when it does, watch out!

4.  As I said before, Paul is the man.  I would trust him driving anything anywhere.  He's a stud.

5.  Shampoo that works in the northwest doesn't work in the southwest.  Our hair is just dried out rats nests.  We will all be due for a cut when we get home.

6.  I should have taken college courses on geology, history, sociology, geography, religion, and just about every subject under the sun before we left.  It seems the role of walking encyclopedia has fallen on me.  Sometimes I just spout stuff and I have no idea what I'm talking about.  The kids don't even realize it.  That's because I'm mom and I am smart.  And now I'm off to bed so I am well rested for our next adventure.

All About Mason

Mason turned 7 in May.  That meant his first friend birthday party and he decided to invite all his friends from his class at church.  I was hoping for a warm, sunny day so they could play outside the whole time, but instead it was cold and wet.  I didn't have any games planned and I was worried if we could find enough to do for 1.5 hours but the kids took care of it themselves.  They played here, there, and everywhere the whole time without any interference from me, except to direct them to the decorate-yourself cupcakes and the pinata.  It was a very different party than Drew's 7th, which was 4 QUIET little girls who were more than happy to have me tell them what to do the entire time.  That was a much more stressful party than the 5 exuberant kids at Mason's.  He had a great time playing with friends and collecting lots of candy from the Angry Birds pinata.  He had a great day and was thankful for all the friends and fun gifts he received.

Since we had lots of cupcakes at his birthday party, two days later on his real birthday we celebrated with ice cream sundaes.  I never buy the whipped cream in a can so he was probably as excited about that as he was for his gifts.  He got a Lego helicopter, a game to play on our trip, and walkie talkies which Paul and I need to communicate when he is backing up the trailer but we gave them to Mason for a gift and we will just "borrow" them.  Its hard to believe my little guy isn't so little anymore.  He is a quarter of an inch shorter than Drew now and I bet will soon pass her up.  He is full of energy, developed into a really good reader over the past year, starts most conversations with "what if" (at which point its hard not to tune him out), wakes up every morning before 6 am (ugh!) and just goes, goes, goes till we force him to bed at night.  He is my sweetheart and I love this guy more than I can express.  He is a challenge and a blessing all rolled into one.  I'm a lucky mom !

 Mase played Farm baseball this season, which is player/coach pitch.  He only played one year of T-Ball but he was way too big to play this year and I didn't think he'd get much out of it so we convinced the powers that be to let him play Farm.  It was a struggle in the beginning of the season but by the end he was holding his own.  He was pretty good on defense, not many balls rolled past him, and he worked hard on improving his hitting.  He actually ended the season for the team with a base hit.  Nice way to go out Mason!  We sat through a few freezing, wet games, but it was mostly a good time as observers.  I think Bree and Darcy deserve gold medals for having to sit through a million basketball and baseball practices and games this year.  Those girls sure were troopers.  I was secretly hoping before the season started that he would hate baseball and this would be our last year of it, but he loves it and wants to play again next year, and Drew also caught the bug and would like to try softball.  I'll just enjoy the five minutes of down time I can catch whenever I can I guess.  Probably no turning back from busy, busy, busy now.  At least it isn't soccer and cheerleading!