Carlsbad Caverns

We tried to get a early start this morning , but it never seems to work.  We did manage to head out at a decent time.  We drove straight to Carlsbad, New Mexico.  We only stopped to chat with a nice police officer who had pulled us over for speeding.  Luckily we did not get a ticket!  When we got to Carlsbad we headed straight to Walmart!  It had been a few days since we had been to a Walmart and we missed it dearly.  We bought a ton of grocery's and then made it to Carlsbad National Park.  We went in the Natural Entrance (if you don't want to walk you can go down the 75 floor, 774 ft elevator).  We are glad we walked, it was stunning!  First, you drop down into the cave entrance where the bats fly out at night.  You can smell the bat guano (poop).  The 86 degree temp quickly drops to 56 degrees as you descend into the cave.  You continue 1.5 miles down steep damp trails until you reach the Big Room (which is the size of 5 football fields).  The whole 750 ft decent is amazing.  Once in the Big Room you can see fascinating cave formations with names like Rock of Ages, Mirror Lake, Bottomless Pit and Painted Grotto.  The Carlsbad Cavern has over 114 miles of passages making it the 5th longest cave in the world.  

The kids once again got their Junior Ranger badges, making them a Junior Ranger 5 times over so far!  We ate a BBQ chicken dinner in the RV and walked back down to see the bats fly.  Right now their are

 a couple thousand bats. However, at the end of July they have counted 1.8 million!  The ranger said that so many bats fl

y out of the cave that you can't even see the the cave (It is just black with bats).  

Tip of the day: Don't forget sunscreen!  Yesterday my old age got to 

me and I really thought I had sun-screened Peyton (I started to but he had sand all over him so I told him to rinse off.  I sun-screened the other boys and Pey snuck off and somehow I got distracted and forgot him).  What a huge mistake!!!  He is in so much pain today and I feel horrible!  I definitely learned my lesson (so did Peyton who now doesn't hate sunscreen). Next time I will be sure that the boys are double sun screened.

New update:  Sterling was playing catch with Dave and we think he dislocated his pinkie.  It looked tweaked so Dave decided he would pull it back into place.  I used distraction and Dave Pulled.  Sterling went through the roof :(  He is soooo tough and I know that hurt sooo bad.  We splinted it and are praying it is ok.

Also we are so happy to get all your comments!  New people are signing on and commenting every day!  Thank you so much!  We miss you all so much and hearing from you 

all makes us feel great!  If you have any suggestions of where we should go next please let us know!  We are heading East from Carlsbad towards Dallas.