Texas Trip Part III: National Parks and the Woeful Road that Led Us There
After our strawberry picking in Texas we drove about 10 hours through a long and boring desert, to Carlsbad New Mexico. The drive was uneventful, extremely so, with hardly any towns or anything but desert the entire way.
We booked an overpriced RV park in Carlsbad because there were no campgrounds nearby. This RV park was one of the worst of the trip, we were packed into a gravel lot like sardines, but it did have hookups which was necessary so we could run the AC at night in the RV.
On our last trip to Texas I had desperately wanted to go to Carlsbad Caverns but it was 2021 and they had just set up the reservation system and we didn't get a reservation. This time I was on top of things and I got our reservation the day it became available (I think one month in advance). I got it for bright and early in the morning so that we could tour the caves and then drive to our next destination the rest of the day.
Even though we had reservations we still had to wait in a huge line for over an hour. We used Esther's 4th Grade Free National Parks Pass to get us into all the national parks on this trip. The kids also did their junior ranger booklet while we were waiting in line so that helped pass the time.
It was only while at National Parks that we ever got comments on our family size on this trip. While in line here we had a nice older couple comment that our kids must be homeschooled because they were so good and well behaved and liked the junior ranger books so much. She told us that she had homeschooled her two boys and that they were both at Ivy League colleges, so that was good to hear haha. She was really nice and complementary about our family and it was really sweet of her to go out of her way to tell us that!
I was really excited to go here, like I said we had been planning it for 3 years! But I had no idea how amazing it would be! Please indulge me while I wax long about the wonders of this amazing national park.
They had this diagram of the caverns in the visitors center. It is HUGE! You can only tour one very small section of it and we were walking through it for almost two hours. To think it goes on and on, you could probably explore it for days without reaching the end!
There are two ways to get into the caverns, walking down or taking the elevator down. We opted to walk down, since our kids our pretty experienced hikers and it's all downhill. I think it was about 1.5 miles down to the bottom where the elevator stops to let you out.
The entrance into the caverns is pretty small. At the time I was starting to get a little worried that this cave was going to be about the same as caves we've been to in Utah (Minnetonka and Timpanogos), which are fine and fun to tour, but we drove so far out of our way to go to these Caverns, I was hoping they'd be much cooler that that (and they did not disappoint!).
Looking back it's amazing to think that the HUGE VASTNESS of caverns is all underground, right under this normal looking desert.
The switchbacks to enter the caverns. There were a couple drop offs in these switchbacks but they always had a wall or a fence blocking it. Leland and I each had a baby on our backs and held the hands of the other four kids during the scary parts.
Cave pictures never do the real thing justice, but I'm going to post some anyways.
We saw all the things we had seen in other caves: stalactites and stalagmites, cave bacon, cave popcorn, etc. but there were so many more! and it was just SO much bigger than any of the other caves we'd ever been to.
I really loved this whale mouth.
The whole thing was self guided which I liked. It also didn't feel very crowded on the way down despite the long line of people in the entrance to the national park.
As you get down to the floor of the caverns, the ceiling is SO tall! It felt like being in a cathedral.
As we went through the caverns it started to feel vaguely familiar and reminded me of the book The Host. Later I looked it up and the book is about these exact caverns (and a group of people who live in them to hide from the aliens taking over the planet), but I digress.
This is a ladder that has been in the caverns since the 1920s left there by some of the original explorers of the caverns. I can't imagine! There were several of these deep pits everywhere that went down SO far.
This was the coolest part to me! There were little streams and pools of water all around! There was algae (I think) growing in the water making them vibrant blue or green. Some of the pools were like a small pond, very much giving Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince vibes.
Ok, maybe the strangest/coolest part of all the caverns was at the end when we went past the elevators to the bathrooms. They had bathrooms just carved right into the cave walls with tunnels leading there. They had a gift shop and it looked so crazy! Right out of star wars! The only thing I could compare it to was Star Wars land at Disneyland but we were actually 100s of feet underground here!
I don't usually do videos on my posts so hopefully this works.
The kids after they got their junior ranger badges when we got out.
If you can't tell from this post I 100% recommend visiting Carlsbad Caverns National Park. I don't consider myself someone who loves caves but I LOVED it. It is definitely at the top of my list for favorite National Parks I've been to.
After that we packed up the car and drove through the rest of NM. Here we are passing through Rosewell.
We had planned to drive several hours into the night to get to the Grand Canyon.
BUT! Just before dusk I was taking a turn driving, only the second time I had done so this trip, when one of the tires blew out!
It was pretty scary to be driving this huge rig anyways, and having a tire blow on the freeway is a fear of mine! Well it happened and I freaked out a bit but I was still able to get to the side of the freeway safely. We had to wait there for several hours for roadside assistance to come, (we were about an hour away from two cities) because we didn't have a jack big enough to change the spare tire.
Luckily we had the TV in the RV working by this point in the trip. So the kids could watch a couple movies while I made them dinner and put them in their pjs and prayed that no one would hit us there on the shoulder of an 80mph freeway.
After several hours and a nice man from roadside assistances' help we finally got the spare on but we didn't dare to drive far on it. The Grand Canyon was still something like 5 or 6 hours away and it was already 9pm, so we drove the nearest city and boondocked in the Walmart parking lot. This was our first time boondocking, and I was a little nervous, but it all went fine. The weather was a little cold but not too bad, and there were several other RVs and 18 wheelers there doing the same thing. In the morning the kids and I went into Walmart for a couple hours while Leland worked on getting the two front tires replaced. They told us the rest of the tires were fine. I repeat they told us the rest of the tires were fine...They also told us that this stretch of highway was known for it's potholes and generally being really bad on tires...
So after that it was around lunch time by the time we got on the road again. Because we had lost so much time and were tired and worn by this point in the trip, we decided to scrap the Grand Canyon portion of our trip, and just drive to Moab instead, saving us several hours of driving and making up for the night we had spent here. I felt bad because Leland really wanted to do the Grand Canyon, but it just didn't make sense to try and go there still. Later Leland told me that visiting the Grand Canyon is at the top of his bucket list which made me feel even worse about the situation. (Sorry Leland, we will get there someday!)
So back on the road we were again, driving near the Four Corners area. We had been on the road only a couple of hours when IT HAPPENED AGAIN! One of the rear tires (of which there are 6) blew out! Luckily we were on a less busy highway this time, and relatively close to a gas station. We parked there for a while while we figured out what to do. We still didn't have a jack the right size. After discussing our options (there was no roadside assistance that would come to us and getting the huge RV towed was going to be a couple thousand dollars) we decided to just very very slowly to the next town which had a tire store, about 20 miles away. So we prayed and drove on the shoulder going 20mph and what seemed like an eternity later we made it to the tire store! It was a big blessing that we had the right tires in stock. We had them replace all 6 rear tires while we waited another few hours in the parking lot like this. It was sunny and I was worried about Sorrel's little head. This newborn hat was all I had for her haha.
Leland and I took turns in the lobby and in the parking lot. In the lobby they had a Liahona surprisingly. Which was a nice little God-wink.
After that we got back on the road, with 8 new tires! And headed to Moab, our final destination of our trip, and the one that most of the kids were looking forward to the most!
I was so worried about parking and reservations here. The kids were so hyped to see Delicate Arch and I was quite worried that something was going to ruin it. I had not been on top of these reservations so I our only chance to get into the park was to get the day-before reservations and hope we could get a time slot. It was a Saturday too! The Saturday of Spring Break in Utah. Well I needn't have worried so much. I got on my phone right as they released the tickets the night before and got one easily. That night the kids and Leland swam in the RV park pool while I cleaned the RV and made dinner. Then we put the kids to bed and got up the next day to go to Arches. There was plenty of RV parking at the Delicate Arch trailhead, and after all our mishaps the two days prior, everything went well here.
A nice stranger offered to take our picture and I loved it! (Like I said, we got lots of comments about our family size at the national parks, but all of it was just shocked or kind haha, none of it rude. We didn't have the heart to tell anyone about our 3 more foster kids back home!)
There is a little pioneer cabin at the start of the Delicate Arch trail.
I researched and researched about this trail. There were so many warnings about the heat and the drop offs! I was pretty scared to do it with kids! But in the end I'm so glad we did it!
Most of the trail was perfectly kid friendly. It was hot but not excruciating or anything. We did the hike about 9am in April.
Another stranger offering to take pictures for us! She was from Hawaii and the kids were chatting with her about hikes in Hawaii compared to Utah.
The first arch we saw! (Up close at least) This is donut arch and I think I heard about Donut Arch every single day for about a month after this trip.
This was the scariest part of the hike! I am pretty afraid of heights when I'm alone, but when the kids are around I'm terrified! (Hence why we have never been to the Grand Canyon). But this wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It's only about 100 yards that you are along this drop off, and the edge is kind of a rounded slope down, so you can't really see how far down it is.
After the scary drop off part you come around the bend and there it is! Utah's Famous Arch!
We did not dare to go around the bowl to get right under the arch (the bowl is another scary slippery part). So we just stopped and took our picture here. It was really pretty and I felt like we had really accomplished something hard getting all of us to this point safely! This was definitely a highlight of the trip for all of us!
On the way back down we let the kids climb up to Donut Arch.
Being early April, this was our first hike of the year and the kids were all about it! "Look at me! I'm so strong. I'm so good at hiking, take my picture!"
At the end of the hike we went and did the loop to see the petroglyphs.
And the cabin again.
By then it was really hot so we went to the visitors center. The kids wanted to do the Junior Ranger packet again, but they had run out of booklets.
So we filled up our waters, had lunch in the RV and then started our 5 hour drive HOME!
This was our trip in all! SOOOOOO much driving! The RV made it easier in a lot of ways. I'm glad that we only had those two days of trouble and nothing worse happened. We saw and did so much. I'm really grateful we got to go, but it is always SO nice to get back home.
Nothing like the beauty of our little farm town to come home to.
We came back after 11 days away and spring had sprung at our house! The plum tree was looking majestic.
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