After a fairly stressful week, I decided I wanted to get away. Years ago, when Donna and I lived in Alabama, we would pack up and drive a few hours, stay at a motel, and just explore the area in which we found ourselves. It’s a little more difficult to do that around here, since you really need to drive a lot further in order to get anywhere interesting! So we haven’t done that in a long time. Well, this past weekend was the one. I just had to decide where to go…. It was going to be a warm, but really windy weekend. I figured east would be the way to go, since I could get to the woods, right? But then, at the last minute, I decided to go west to Carlsbad Caverns. The wind wouldn’t bother us underground!
We left on Friday after work and drove to Lubbock where we stayed the night at a nice Holiday Inn Express. The next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel. They had the greatest breakfast ever! Freshly made pancakes, biscuits and gravy, oatmeal, eggs, bagels, sausage, cereal, yogurt, several different kinds of coffees, and juice. Yum! We left from there and drove the rest of the way to the cave.
We decided to go down through the natural entrance. The cave was absolutely stunning! The trail was very steep, winding for about 1.25 miles down 750 feet, or, as the park ranger said, the equivalent of a 75 story building! I had to carry Todd most of the way. He walked some, and Donna gave me a (very) short break. Preston and Russell were troopers, and made it down all by themselves! By the time we made it down to the bottom, where the restrooms were, my arm and legs were killing me! We didn’t make the tour of the Big Room, which was a little disappointing, but I suppose that gives us an excuse to go back!
We drove all the way home that evening, hitting a skunk in the process. We all piled out of our stinky van and went to bed at 12:30 am Sunday morning. And yes, we did make it to church later that day!
Once I get my pictures off the camera, I’ll add a few to this post.
