Road Trip!

Now that's what I call a holiday weekend! We picked up our friends Matt, Brady and Anna and went on a whirlwind tour of southern New Mexico, making the following stops:

1. The Trinity Site. Actually the Trinity site is only open to the public like two days a year, but we still stopped at the sign, cause, you know, why not? Someone in the group may or may not have broken part of the sign. Oh, and it wasn't me. Or David. Or Matt. Or Anna.

2. Smokey The Bear's Gravesite. Yes, Smokey was a real live bear once. Now he is a dead bear, and you can go to his grave to pay your respects for all his hard work preventing forest fires.

3. The Lincoln County Courthouse, where however many years ago Billy The Kid broke out of jail there once. Hey, everybody has their own claim to fame. This was the courthouse that famous people could escape from! Or did he become famous for breaking out? Unfortunately I can't tell you because the matron running the museum scared us with her withering glare, so we didn't stay to look around. Perhaps she had filled her quota of being nice to tourists for the day already. Or maybe we looked like trouble-making musical-theatre-singing hooligans, I suppose that is possible.

4. Roswell. The only reason to go to Roswell is for the aliens. Perhaps it was a bad wind day, but the whole town smelled like cow poopy. We saw our inflatable alien and took off before we could get abducted.

5. Carlsbad. We went to the batflight, but the bats had apparently eaten a lot the night before and were in no hurry to go hunting. They didn't start leaving the cave until about 8:20, so we had very little sunlight left to appreciate them. So instead we just made fun of the poor ranger who started answering crowd questions in an effort to keep us occupied. One little girl asked "How can you tell the boy bats from the girl bats?" He blushed and said "My professional answer to that is...ask your parents. But the boy bats are pretty...obvious." Indeed. We were trying to think of the worst questions we could ask him, like "How long have you been so sad?" or "How old were you when your mother stopped loving you?" Hey, it kept us entertained. He did say one thing that was interesting, that when baby bats fall off the ceiling onto the floor, there are beetles down there that can skeletonize the baby in less than a minute. That would suck.

6. We spent the night in a motel. Oh, before that we had dinner at Chile's, the only non-scary restaurant we could find, and ate dinner next to a cute bald baby, who, even though was too young for hair, was not, the grandparents thought, too young to eat a baby-back rib. I was all ready to do baby-Heimlich.

7. After our free continental breakfast, we went back out to the caverns. I can't really express how much I love caves, and this cave is like the mother of caves. Well, at least in America. The American Mother Cave. Sort of like the Grand Canyon with a roof.

8. Then we drove to White Sands, through the gorgeous Sacramento Mountains. Oh, and when we ate dinner the waiter with the killer smile totally had the hots for someone at our table, and sadly it wasn't me. That person knows who they are though, and did not, I think, fully appreciate the situation, even though we all rubbed it in to excess. Reader poll: If a waiter calls you "Captain", is he A) flirting or B) not flirting with you? I think flirting. heh White Sands was awesome. It was cool and cloudy, so we weren't blinded by the glare like I was last time I was there. But there was plenty of photo-taking and throwing down the hills going on. Guess who was doing the most egging on of the throwing down the hills game, but then was all "No, you can't throw *me* down the hill, I have the camera!" That's right. Then out of nowhere a gust of wind picked up and we were caught in a sand/rain storm. That sand hurts when it is flying through the air at your legs! We figured that was the dunes telling us it was time to go, because the wind and rain both stopped right when we got back to the car. I bet I never get all of that sand out of the car. However my feet were nicely exfoliated, so that was a plus.

9. We found a Dairy Queen in Las Cruces thanks to a well-timed phone call to Susannah! Oh Susannah, you totally rock, I'm just saying. I actually don't like the DQ any more than I like any other fast food place (which is not very much), but for whatever reason that Peanut Buster Parfait was exactly what I needed at that specific moment in time. Matt ate something that was practically pure solid chocolate, I'm surprised he didn't go into acute ketoacidosis right there on the spot.

10. We finally got home at 11pm. Pooped! I'm sorry to call out my friends as nerds, but one of my favorite parts of the trips was singing in the car. Someone would see a sign or say something silly and we'd all start singing canons. I believe there is video of at least one of them. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but singing and dancing are simply good for the soul. Way too much fun. Also, Brady wins the Best Dancer award for his jetés, though Matt competed well with some very fierce shimmies. Anna just made me laugh the entire time. Oops, and I totally forgot about the Valley of Fire! We took about 100 photos in a half hour being dorky. It's good to have friends you can be a dork with.