White Sands/Carlsbad Caverns

I really have a lot more to write about than just our most recent adventure. For the purposes of time, space, and (let's be honest) memory, I'll try and summarize what we've done recently. It has been an incredibly eventful Spring season. First, we had the joy of having Cari's cousin Becky come to Albuquerque and visit for Easter. She was in San Francisco this semester for school, so it was a quick flight over. We hung out for the weekend, involving Good Friday and Sunday Morning services at our church, a Real Matt Jones concert, a little shopping, and some Hinkle Family Fun Center putt-putt/arcade games! It was great to have some family come in for Easter. Cari then went out of town the next weekend to visit her family. It was a great time for her to take a break from school (since her spring break was cancelled due to the winter weather we got here). The NEXT weekend, we went up to Denver for a concert from one of my favorite bands, Alter Bridge. It was a short trip, driving up Saturday morning, going to the concert Saturday night, and coming back Sunday. We stopped on the way up in Co. Springs at a great diner for some lunch, before arriving in Denver and getting sketched out by some of the inner-city "regulars." The concert was amazing though, and well worth the 6 hour trip, even with driving half the way home in the snow (during the last weekend in April!). We stopped in Santa Fe and ate at a Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives-reviewed location called Backroad Pizza (incredible) on the way home.

The following weekend (told you we've been busy), I had the opportunity to go home and visit MY family! It was a great trip: ate some incredible BBQ and drank amazing sweet tea (compliments of Alan Bros.), went to the movies twice, went to Concord to spend time with my sister and her friends and my beautiful niece, hung out around UNC, including a baseball game, was with my Mom on Mother's Day, etc. It was a great and very fulfilling time considering it had been almost 5 months since I saw my family. Finally, Cari went back for a bridal shower/bachelorette party in mid-May for her best friend, Amanda, who is getting married in a couple weeks.

To wrap ALL of that exciting travel up, Cari and I decided to take a long Memorial Day weekend and explore some more of New Mexico. Neither of have been south of the city, so driving almost all the way to Mexico promised to be an adventure. We started on Saturday by driving to Las Cruces where we stopped for lunch. We ate a hole-in-the-wall New Mexican restaurant (randomly selected while driving around) and were not disappointed. The food was great! We then drove from Cruces towards White Sands National Park, which was our first destination. I won't bore everyone with the details of how it's formed, but White Sands is a huge area (100 + sq miles?) of large white sand dunes. Being in the middle of New Mexico accentuates the beauty of this place. We watched an orientation video and then headed out. Unfortunately, it was extremely windy, which wasn't great for visibility, but we were able to drive around the dunes and get out for a good 2 mile hike. After thoroughly wearing ourselves out, we drove the short drive to Alamogordo, NM, where we stayed the night. Before turning in, we ate some amazing BBQ at a local joint. It was not as good as NC BBQ, but it was pretty close!

The next day, we got up and drove southeast to Carlsbad Caverns. The first half of the drive was through Lincoln National Forest, and it was beautiful (i.e. NOT typical New Mexico). The second half of the drive was through nothingness, which was more what we expected. We arrived at the caverns, scarfed down our lunch, and headed into the cave. We opted for the Natural Entrance trail instead of the elevator and were not disappointed. The hike down was over a mile and tough on the knees, but the sites were phenomenal. We made it down in time for our previously-registered King's Palace tour, which was a ranger-led tour through some of the less-frequently seen caverns. Again, words cannot describe the beauty of this place. Pictures don't do it justice either. It's one of the few sites I've seen that I would recommend for everyone to see before they die (excuse the morbidity). Finally, we hiked the Big Room (another mile +) before standing in line for over an hour for the elevator back up. After eating a less-than-ideal cafeteria dinner, we stayed for the nightly bat flight. Unfortunately, Carlsbad hasn't gotten rain since last September, so no rain = no insects which = less bats. We probably saw about 200-300 fly out over a 20 minute period, which is nothing compared to the 300,000 - 700,000 that usually come out after there's been some rain! Oh well. We headed back to Carlsbad and stayed at the Trinity Hotel (very nice, very cool boutique hotel downtown) for the night. The drive home was pretty tortuous, with 50+ mph winds the whole time and extreeeemely straight roads (awful). However, driving through Roswell was a plus, and we got to see all of the stores downtown decorated with alien getup.

Overall, we've been busy, but things should settle down in July. Cari is finished with school now and has time during the day to get things done around here (I love it!!). We'll be going back home for about a week and a half for Amanda's wedding, and then splitting the next week between Cari's family and my family. Between that, a Yellowcard concert, my birthday, a Train/Maroon 5 concert, playing indoor/outdoor soccer, and spending lots of time with friends, it should be an extremely fun summer! We'll keep everyone posted (well, everyone who actually reads this, which is probably just us) if we do anything else new and fun! God bless!