One week of canyons, caves, and the road!

The road trip has been going great! Adam and I first headed out to the Grand Canyon. We did a stayover in Kingman and ran lots of errands on our first few days- filled up our propane tank, got our tires rotated, bought a few extra supplies, and then we were set.

It was my first time going to the Grand Canyon, and it was definitely grand! It was also incredibly cold, which I don't think we were quite expecting. We're glad we brought our heavy coats after all- good call on the u-turn back to Ridgecrest. We camped at the Mather Campground and cooked as much food as we could...needing to clear out the car because we overpacked in that area. (6 chicken breasts + 6 tilapia filets, + 6 turkey burger patties)/2 people = way too much food!

Wooden bears! Just for Drew and Jennifer!

The view of the road...we'll be seeing a lot of this... =)

My first views of the Grand Canyon! It's grand! And canyon-ey!

It was really cold there...around 40 degrees in the daytime!

After Grand Canyon, we made our way towards Albuquerque. We had a great time with Adam's family (his Uncle Mike, Aunt Dorothy, cousin Cody and Uncle Roger). Aunt Dorothy made delicious green chile enchiladas for dinner. The next day we went to Padillas for stuffed sopapillas, and we got to see the new house that Adam's parents just bought. I'm sure we'll be seeing more of Albuquerque in the future!!!

On our way towards Albuquerque, we decided to stop and see the Petrified Forest in Arizona

Sadly, after talking with the park ranger, we found out that we should've gone to the Petrified Forest through their other entrance in Holbrook...so we didn't see it after all! Next road trip!

Entering New Mexico!!

Adam's parents' new house in Albuquerque

It's official!

Cody, Aunt Dorothy, Adam, Shocky and Mr. Mario =)

After Albuquerque, Adam and I headed out to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. We stopped in Roswell, NM for a quick Dairy Queen stop so that Adam could eat his cherry dipped ice cream. He said it wasn't as good as he remembered when he used to visit his grandma.

The caves were really neat. We got to Carlsbad in the evening, so we left for the caves the following morning. We got to the caves around 10am and did the 1.5 mile hike down into the caves followed by the self guided tour of the Big Room. Then we did a little picnic in the car to avoid the gusty winds, and then we went on a guided ranger tour of the King's Palace. The caves were really neat, and definitely a new and different experience. Took tons of pix...they came out so-so because of the lighting. =) Plus I haven't uploaded any of my pictures from my dSLR so maybe I'll have more to add later.

Adam and his cherry dipped cone...which turned out to be gross and not at all what Adam thought it would taste like. Most of the coating ended up in the trash.

Roswell had a lot of alien-themed motifs around town, including alien streetlamps and this UFO shaped McDonalds. We didn't see anything, but we did see something green shoot through the sky. Not sure what that was though. Hmmmm...?

We walked through miles of cave formations like the one above. They have lights installed so that you can see some of the more spectacular cave formations, but without the arfiticial lights, it would be pictch black. On our ranger led tour, we got to experience the total darkness if there were no lights, which was neat.

Sadly, we missed the bats this time. I guess every year in the summer, thousands of bats fly out of the mouth of the cave at dusk, but we were too early. Next time!