for our spontaneous one day stay in albuquerque, i was faced with a pressing decision. free science museum OR petroglyph national monument. since we had already seen a bunch of petroglyphs at three rivers and had just visited a national monument the day before, i figured the kids wouldn’t be super excited about petroglyph that […]
isaac
salinas pueblo missions national monument.
we took a slight detour on our drive from oliver lee to the walmart parking lot in albuquerque to visit the salinas pueblo missions national park. there are three mission ruins locations and a visitor center in the middle of them all. i had hoped to hit all three spots, but only two were on […]
oliver lee state park.week two.
our second week at oliver lee state park (alamogordo) was pretty low-key. we kicked it off with easter sunday. the kids had already had an egg hunt and eaten all of their candy, so all they had left by way of gifts and celebrations was a basket with a couple of toys. it’s pretty hard […]
three rivers petroglyhs (mostly).
yesterday (saturday), we took a family excursion to three rivers petroglyph site, about an hour north of our campsite. so, naturally, on the way, we stopped for a ginormous breakfast. and then we were off for adventures. three rivers petroglyphs is on BLM (bureau of land management) land. it contains over 21,000 petroglyphs (carved rock […]
oliver lee state park. week one.
we are halfway through our two week stay at oliver lee state park in alamogordo, new mexico. it’s one of the better locations we have found ourselves at, in terms of the view. it’s a state park, so we don’t have sewer hookups, which mean bath houses and trips to the dump station and extreme […]
cloud climbing rail trail.
somehow. last week. i convinced the two bigger lidkids to go on a three mile hike in lincoln national forest. i did a little research and found a loop that went down into a canyon a bit, then up to an old railroad trestle and then back down further, before back up to the top. […]
white sands national monument. part two.
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, […]
new mexico museum of space history.
today (sunday) we hit up the new mexico museum of space history. we had free admission, so we decided to spring for a trip to the planetarium. the museum was mostly a little over my kids heads, but still pretty cool. outside, there were rockets and planes and various space travel artifacts. this giant rocket […]
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 […]