on monday, after working on their junior ranger workbooks, the big kids and i went back over to white sands, so they could finish them up and get their badges. while they wandered around and identified plants and their uses to early inhabitants of the area, i snapped a pic of the visitor center sign, […]
anna
white sands national monument.part one.
saturday morning, before we were even to our campsite, we decided to head to white sands national monument. basically, its a giant area of sand dunes, made from fine white gypsum sand. we picked up some sleds at walmart and we were good to go. white sand. blue sky. hazel wasn’t a huge fan of […]
carlsbad-ish camping miscellany.
this is the post about our two weeks in carlsbad, when we weren’t exploring nearby national parks. but, before that, our trip from big bend to where we were staying near carlsbad was over 5 hours, so we broke it up with a layover at the fort stockton, texas walmart. decidedly less cool than big […]
guadalupe mountains national park.
on sunday, we woke up bright and early, ready for our second adventure of the weekend. this time, we drove past carlsbad caverns into texas, where guadalupe mountains national park is another 30 minutes down the road. (technically carlsbad caverns national park is in the guadalupe mountain range). guadalupe mountains is home to the highest […]
carlsbad caverns national park.
after our last adventure in big bend, we made our way north to new mexico, where we are staying just north of carlsbad. a stomach bug made its way through our family, so we had a very low key week, but this weekend, fully recovered, we were ready for some adventures. on saturday, we hit […]
big bend. hot springs canyon.
warning. this post is at least 50% pictures of anna posing with beautiful landscapes… so, in my last post, i said that the kids wanted to go back to the hot springs. i managed to convince anna to hike there with me this time, instead of drive to the quick little path. she could earn […]
big bend. hot springs.
on friday, derek had to actually work for his actual employer, so i had to find an activity i could handle on my own with the lidkids. we decided that i would leave hazel (to watch movies, play ipad, and generally continue to recover a bit from being sick) and take the older lidkids to […]
big bend. santa elena canyon.
due to slow internet, travel days, and an untimely round of the stomach bug (is there ever really a timely round?), i’ve fallen behind on my big bend posts. allow me to take you back to last thursday. after a day off from exciting expeditions, mostly due to hazel being sick, we were back at […]
del rio, texas. (belated).
as i was going through pics for big bend, i realized that i never posted about our time in del rio, other than our visit to seminole canyon state park. we didn’t do a ton, partly because there wasn’t much to do but mostly because we all rotated through a terrible stupid cold. ok, without […]
big bend. balanced rock.
on tuesday (day four at big bend), we planned a desert hike. we attempted to get moving super early to avoid the afternoon high temps, which have been around 100° for most of our stay. we filled up with a bunch of water and drove over to grapevine hills trail. the drive itself was an […]