Day 3

It was very restful to wake up this morning at Jim and Loretta's. Mostly because I could tell the kids had been up for a while and I got to sleep in.

We hung around for a while and then the phone rang... Ryan had won (like won-won-won) his case for the firefighters in the Supreme Court! So exciting!

I watched tv for a while watching for footage of Ryan and coverage of the case.

In the late morning we headed out to Sadie's for lunch and then to the Natural History Museum to see the IMAX of the Grand Canyon. We had a great time and then headed back to the house to hang out.

I ended the day by catching sight of my husband on the national news (surreal) and then reading some "World War Z", only more surreal when I got to the chapter where they were fleeing north to escape the zombies.

Good day!

Day 2

We woke up in Carlsbad, NM and after fighting off requests to swim in the morning, we headed to the caverns.

I had purchased tickets to the earliest, shortest guided tour available last week, so we had to be there by 9:30 or so to make our 10am tour.

The drive into the park is really beautiful with lots of hills and scrub. The day was much cooler (70's) and overcast, so it felt like another planet after the 100+ days we had been having in Austin.

We arrived at the cavern entrance and headed in with our fleeces (everyone else had one!). We killed a little time in the gift shop were Pete purchased an Indian bead necklace (which was broken before the tour even started). We headed to the elevator and went down the 750 feet to the underground entrance.

At the bottom we were told to meet the tour at a spot near the elevators. Having half an hour to kill, we decided to explore the "big room" self guided tour. Despite the fact that the ranger had said we didn't have time before our tour, off we went.

We started walking and it was really amazing. Lots of beautiful formations and cool paths. We got to the first turn around spot and decided to keep going. Luckily I had learned from my parents that speed walking through museums and points of interest is ok, so we started walking... fast. We saw a lot of the interesting formations with names I can't remember (one drawback to this type of sightseeing), but I did keep reminding the kids to "look up".

We made it back to the meeting place with 10 minutes to spare... apparently just enough time to impulse buy miner's hats for the kids, which they instantly dropped during the ranger's introductory speech. The ranger then implored us to not turn on the headlights during the tour as there is light on the path and the formations are easier seen without them. Sigh. Another example of the dichotomy of making money to preserve the park vs. people ruining the park just by being there (which was kind of the theme of his 1.5 hr tour).

We made it through the tour even though the kids were ready to be done about half way through. Pete got a little freaked out along the way, but they were real troopers. Joe made a friend of a teenage girl who had a dinosaur figure she kept putting on rocks and taking pictures. He managed a few shots too.

We finished the tour, headed to the top, one more trip through the gift shop for a geode for Joe and then into the car.

The rest of the day consisted of lots of dvd's for the kids, cokes and China Mieville's "The City and The City" on ipod for me, rain showers (only showers thankfully) and driving.

We did stop in "the Valley of Fire" outside Carizozo and walked the trails. It's a really cool lava flow in a valley which apparently did not come from a volcano, but holes in the valley. The kids liked it and wanted to take some lava (we didn').

On the road one more time and made it to Albuquerque to Ryan's Dad and Step-mom's house.

Day 1 recap

This morning we find ourselves watching the Fairy Odd Parents in a hotel room in Carlsbad, NM.

Yesterday was a pretty successful 8 hours-in-the-car day.

We started with a sad goodbye to Ryan. He's sad he doesn't get to come with us and that he's going to be alone for 3 weeks without us.
He helped me write on the car windows... we are crossing the country telling fellow travelers "CANADA! Fleeing Heat + Zombies".

We got out and walked around in Fredricksburg. The kids spotted a candy store, so we stopped for some morning ring pops and blow pops.

After some Pokemon movies and a quick McDonald's for lunch we made good time on I-10. The landscape was quite pretty with the mesas and scrub. I was quite excited to see the wind turbines on the mesas. They are really impressive!

In the afternoon we drove into Fort Stockton and detoured into town to see Paisano Pete, the giant Roadrunner statue. Joe and Pete's elementary school's mascot is the Roadrunner, so I took lots of pics of them in front of it.

The last part of the trip was on state highway 285 north towards New Mexico. The landscape there was much more boring and flat. Pete decided to watch Mamma Mia and listened to it without the headphones so I could enjoy the show!

We got here around 5pm (mountain) and went for a quick swim at the motel's pool. It's an indoor pool that was hotter in the building than the outdoors (and it's over 100 degrees!), so I didn't feel like staying long.

Today we have a tour of the Caverns then we are driving to Albuquerque.

Day 1

Saturday, June 27th, 6:40am

Today we leave for the big 3 week road trip through the mountain west and up into Canada. I am very excited and scared at the same time as it will just be me and the kids (no daddy to dilute the crazy)!

Yesterday I spend the day panic buying at Target for snacks and games and packing said snacks and games. I am worried that we will all get bored and restless and then we'll have a bad time... or more importantly, the kids will start bickering and I will yell at them and then it'll FEEL like a bad time. But, thinking back to some of our road trips when I was a kid, I think that's par for the course.

While I was packing I finished watching "Into the Wild". It was quite good and I can see how people liked it, despite it's depressing premise. As Emile Hirsch whittled down to nothing at the end and died due to some mixed up edible plant eating, I had to laugh at my freaking out about having enough snacks. We have plenty of yogurt-covered-raisins and apples (ok, some oreos too) to make the 5000 mile trip, not to mention we can stop on the way.

So now all that is left is to put it all in the car, take a shower, have some breakfast with an already sad Ryan (the house being packed up for the move makes our being gone for 3 weeks even more lonely feeling), and get going.

More later!

Exhausted in an anticipation

The boys and I are going on a 3 week road trip to see grandparents, the mountain west, cross the border into Canada in a car, friends in Denver, do a switcher-oo of drivers and then back home again!

I am planning on documenting my trip as we go here on the 'ole blog. Hopefully it will be interesting as we go.