Santa Fe Day 1 | One Day at a Time

Continued From Carlsbad, NM.

Naturally, our kids never sleep in and they wake up early at around 6:30am Today is no exception. We plan on going to the Carlsbad Caverns today, but it’s still too early to go there. We have a reservation for 9:30am to see the caves.

Someone had rubbed their bumper on my car. At least it’s just a scuff that can be buffed out, no dent.

Since we’ve got some time to kill before the caverns, it’s a trip to the local park in Carlsbad.

Cool floating bridge across the river/lake.

And at the other side of the floating bridge is this super awesome playscape that is CLOSED. NOOOO, why would it open so late in the morning?

Such a shame, looks to be such a cool playscape too.

Leaving the park disappointed since the playscape was closed.

Found another playscape on the way back to our hotel. A consolation prize, and not a very good one at that. What’s not shown in the picture is another playscape just around the corner from this one, so at least the kids got to play on two mediocre playscapes instead of one badass one.

PL did manage to get a photo of this cute ground squirrel at the park here.

After the play scape is back to our hotel to pack up all of our belongs and head to Carlsbad Caverns.

So much shit.

The caves are 30 minutes away by car from Carlsbad city.

Here we go. It’s located inside some mountains, so we started climbing in elevation.

Kids really enjoyed this part of the car ride.

Still behaving well so far. They’ve mostly behaved better than expected so far, let’s see if it’ll last as the trip goes on and we get more tired and homesick(I’m typing this blog post out about a week after this, the answer is they didn’t behave as well towards the end of the trip as they did during the beginning.)

Visitor’s center for the caves, it’s located at the mountain top.

Woah, quite the view.

Look out for miles and miles and miles.

We could either take the elevator down and then up, or hike down and then ride back up. Of course, we chose to ride it down and up with the kids.

Middle finger.

It was quite the long ride down underground.

Hard to get great photos here with the correct white balance, but here’s the cave.

Pretty cool, but I remember it being even more cool when I came here as a kid. The temperature down here is also kind of chilly, the kids were all complaining that they are cold.

Please don’t fall down on our heads

So many phallic symbols down here.

My personal favorite.

Kids were really excited to see this little bit of green crystal.

Well, that was fun, kind of. They kids got a little tired of it after a while, so we are glad that the self guided tour is done.

I assume that’s in feet and we are 750 feet below.

Back on top, a model of what the cave looks like. My favorite part is the elevator shaft.

Alright, let’s get back on the road, got some hours of driving ahead of us.

We saw many dirt devils out here. I don’t remember ever seeing so many of them in the past.

Taco Bell for in car lunch. We’ve got 4 to 5 hours of driving ahead of us to get to Santa Fe.

Finally, some quite time for me and RL from the kids.

Not much happening on this part of the drive.

Quesadilla cooling station.

RL didn’t believe I could fit the last big bite of burrito in my mouth.

Easy peasy.

More dirt devils.

Coffee makes this whole trip going.

It’s been super dry landscape here, except randomly we’d come across groves of trees, we are getting pecans. They must irrigate the crap out of these trees in the middle of no where to get them to grow.

A truck with pellets of overturned grass on the other side. Good thing it’s not affecting our side of the traffic.

No aliens were sighted.

More groves. We saw giant irrigation pipes at the base of the trees. They’d just turn on the spigot and flood the entire ground all along the rows of trees. Not very water efficient.

Such a long straight boring road.

I miss my 93 octane gas in TX.

Out of the blue, I get an alert from my car that the adaptive cruise control has stopped working. Doh. Hope this isn’t a sign of more problems to come…fortunately, the issue resolved itself after an hour or so. I wonder if the front facing camera got too much glare from the sun or too much heat.

We are slowly climbing in altitude.

Scenery is starting to change a little. A little more vegetation.

We’ve reached Santa Fe. First stop is the grocery store to stock up on some food and snacks.

While I was paying, RL took the kids out to the car first to load them up. By the time I was out with the cart full of food, it’s pouring rain sideways. How am I going to get to my car without getting completely soaked. There was one small break in the rain where it lessened and I made a run for it. Still got wet, but could have been much worse.

It’s been a long hot dry summer in Austin this year. I don’t remember the last time I encountered much rain in Austin. The rain storm is welcoming.

Reached our vacation rental condo here in Santa Fe. This is what $388 a night gets you in downtown Santa Fe walking distance to the plaza. 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, quite nice.