The finer things in life

Today we are treating ourselves to some of the finer things in life - relaxation, gourmet food, and quality entertainment. Normally that would mean something much more extravagant, but over the past week our interpretation of the word "extravagant" has loosened. We are sitting in a super classy motel right now on a rock hard bed, surrounded by an empty Domino's pizza box, our laundry, and "The Waterboy" (yes, the terrible Adam Sandler movie) on FX. We actually couldn't be happier.

Today is our "regrouping" day, where we are trying to fix our broken stuff and broken selves from yesterday. Remember how we said all of our stuff was dry last night? We got ready for bed an fell asleep only to awaken to our tent wall flapping into our heads. It took a few seconds for our sleep-stupored brains to realize that the weird noise we were hearing was rain. Ok, no big deal. We zipped up the tent windows and tried to get back to sleep. If you recall the picture of where our tent was situated, you will remember that there are no trees, no hills, and no buildings around. Basically, that means there is nothing to stop the wind. If you think about it, a tent is really like a gigantic kite that is bolted to the ground. You can sort of sense that it WANTS to fly away, regardless of whether you or your stuff are inside. For some reason, I couldn't stop picturing a giant gust of wind picking us up and blowing us directly into Brantley Lake. It began to rain even harder, and we saw some lightning so we moved to the car. Sleeping in a moving car is cool, especially if it's for 30 minutes or so. Sleeping through the night in your car (especially your Honda Civic, and especially when there is so much stuff in the back seat that you can't recline) is NOT cool. This was around 1:45 am. We tossed/turned/got really uncomfortable for a few hours, and then we eventually moved back to the tent at 6:30 because the lightning subsided and we knew we needed at least SOME sleep. We were sitting there, haggard, wet, and with weird disheveled hair, and we vowed to stay in a hotel tonight. So here we are.

We drove up to Roswell and stopped at a Honda dealer to fix the car power adapter. We stopped at Target for some caulk to try to fix our cooler, which is our crafty project for the night. We stopped at the UFO museum in Roswell, which was cheesy and awesome.

Alien-themed store in Roswell:

The UFO museum:

Street lamps with alien eyes:

Arby's does not discriminate:

Our food situation has been absolutely terrible over the past few days, so we decided to splurge on some pizza. Yesterday, we ate a tiny cereal box apiece for breakfast with some milk. On the way to Guadalupe, we each had a trail mix and some fruit snacks. We then hiked, eating a small sandwich and more trail mix. We didn't eat dinner because the bats didn't fly out until around 8:15, and we didn't get back to our campsite until 9:30. So, basically yesterday's entire daily food intake was one box of tiny cereal, milk, one sandwich, and lots of trail mix. We have these little Sunkist fruit chews that are supposed to provide 100% of your daily vitamin C, and we keep joking that we should eat at least one per day so we don't get scurvy. Scurvy: common in pirates several hundred years ago, and in modern-day couples taking part in cross-country road trips.

We're going to plan our our route for tomorrow. I'm pretty sure we're still going to go by White Sands National Monument, then make our way toward the Grand Canyon.

Anyway, here are some pictures from yesterday:

Driving up to Guadalupe Mountains National Park:

Posing in front of the sign:

View of Guadalupe Mountains on our hike:

Jenny pausing on the hike:

Robbie pausing on the hike:

One more view from our hike:

Pausing in front of Carlsbad Caverns' sign:

Some pictures from inside the caverns. They were much more magnificent in person. Some of the pictures turned out grainy because there was not very much light:














We were some of the last people in the caverns, and the park rangers were turning off the lights as we passed through. All of the areas behind us were pitch black, which was a little scary. There was a lot of info about the original "cave explorers," who must have been completely out of their minds.

Anyway, Back to our evening of leisure!

Today's journey:

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