So Caz woke up with pink eye. Not the way to start the first full day of vacation. Somehow we found a walk-in clinic in this ski mountain town. It looked like we might have to wait a while and it would certainly throw off our road trip plans. But Demi had the good senses to call our primary care physician back home. The nurse called in a prescription to a pharmacy here in Ruidoso. Score! We were able to leave town only slightly behind schedule.
First stop? Carlsbad Caverns. It was a 3 hr trek from Ruidoso. This was the only time I got nervous about gas. Just after Roswell - which we planned to hit on the way back - I saw we were close to 1/4 tank of gas left and not a gas station in sight. We knew that gas stations could be scarce on this trip. Not knowing the capacity of a rental car increase today's anxiety. The GPS kept wanting to take us back to Roswell. Alien Conspiracy? Governmental spying? Who knows? But Siri found us a town 25 miles away that had a gas station. We made it with plenty of fuel to spare.
We made the Caverns around noon time. A lunch stop to Subway set up back. The place was packed. I ate my salad in the direct sunlight, experiencing our first taste of hot weather, while Demi and boys hiked up a top a cliff just inside the park entrance. We proceeded to the visitor center, picked up our passes, filled up our Camelbaks and headed for the Devil's Gate. The opening to our descent. 700 feet down into the network of caverns that stretch one for miles. Filled with stalactites and stalagmites, pits and pools, bats and guano. We stayed in the caverns, out of the daylight, for about 4 hours. We saw the Lily Pad Pond, the Devil's Gate, Devil's Tail (sense a trend?), Crystal Cavern, Big Room, Bottomless Pit, and all kinds of rock formations, cavern formations, grottoes, pools, etc. We took the self guided tour, so were given a night stick with a speaker. You hit button corresponding the a number on sign post and a narrator would provide information about that point. It was well worth the $5. I liked that we could go on our own pace. A nice couple from Texas took our picture for us. We took about 400 pictures in the Caverns. This national park is truly a national treasure. The boys really appreciate it. Caz particularly got a charge out of making a squeaking noise with his Camelbak that was a perfect bat sound. Scared the hell out of Demi.
We stopped by Roswell on the way back. It turned out to be a total Griswald stop. The UFO museum was closed. So were the other UFO/Alien themed sites. The trinket stores were open of course, but not worth the time. We packed it in and headed back to Ruidoso. Oddly enough it did not bother anyone to eat dinner at 8 PM. Demi and Coco crashed early. I took a quick soak in the hot tub. I gave Caz and early bed time, to which I got no argument. I intended to crash at 9:30. But as I flipped channels, I game across an ESPN Sports Century piece on Pat Tillman. Timing is everything. I watched it all, then called it a night.
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