So far, things are going great for our first annual English trip 🙂 [scroll to the end for a few pics]
Yesterday we drove 640 miles from Houston all the way to Carlsbad, New Mexico. We made great time and even got to drive by the Alamo and take some quick pics!
Near Kerville, the speed limit goes up to 80 mph!! So made AWESOME time.
Everyone learned the phrase “in the middle of no where” since that described the majority of our drive… Including our current location.
The car ride was long, but everyone had a great attitude (except for me
when a truck would get in front of us going 40 in the 80 speed zone).
We have an ongoing scavenger hunt game along with ‘the license plate game’. I gave everyone a map to color in the states they find license plates from. We also played “I’m going on a Picnic and I’m bringing…” And had a pretty serious “favorites game” going on sporadically.
Giulia was in change of New Mexico and Carlsbad Caverns research (everyone has a few assignments and presentations for the trip), she she shared some interesting facts and information along the way.
We stopped in Fort Stockton, TX and everyone had their first Dairy Queen experience. When we walked up to the entrance, one girl goes, “Oh my gosh, I feel SO American!!!” 😉
We got to watch a beautiful sunset along the way a little past the town of Pecos…
Right after we entered New Mexico, traffic on our 2 lane highway came to a COMPLETE stop… FOR AN HOUR. And while we were stopped, a dust storm tarted blowing through. The girls in the backseat were hilarious and insisted that I should turn around because it was a tornado (it wasnt) ;P
This morning we got up early and headed to Carlsbad Caverns. We were hoping to make it in time for the lantern adventure tour, but we didn’t. And then I tried to convince everyone to take the super adventurous tour where you have to wear headlamps and descent the first 80 feet by ladders and ropes but most of us weren’t interested :-/ next year 🙂
So we took the “King’s Palace” tour instead. Which was still pretty cool.
During the tour, there turned off all the artificial lights in one room and we all got silent. It was really awesome. SOOOO DARK. You literally can’t see your hand in front of your face.
After the tour we took this scenic desert road that was completely gravel, and for 9 miles we were REALLY in the middle of no where.
There were landmarkers and explanations along the way, so everyone took turns reading about what kinds of things we were seeing and pronouncing them correctly… (we’re focusing on our ‘th’ pronunciations today).
After the drive, our car (her name is Lady Poderosa, or Lady Rosa for short) was COMPLETELY covered in desert
sand. Crazy.
We’ve been resting at the hotel for the afternoon and we’re about to have dinner and watch the bats fly out of the caverns for their dinner later. Cool!
I gave everyone a trip journal, and today we made a list of cool things we’ve learned or were impressed with today. Here’s one highlight:
– We were really impressed with the original explorer, Jim White, who found the cave when he was 16 years old. We were really impressed with the fact that he discovered 19 of the 30.1 miles of the cave using only a small coffee pot as a lantern. We were also impressed with his passion for exploring this cave and to share his love for it with the public.