The Ever So Eventful Trip to Carlsbad

Our long trip to the Carlsbad Caves National Park was full of unexpected surprises.  Instead of taking large interstate highways, Aleksey and I decided to take small, but fast traveling (70 mph), one lane highways.  Our first stop was a shallow section of a quick moving river where whole families were barbequing and swimming.  This was so refreshing after driving for 3 hours.

When we were about 100 miles outside of the national park, we hit some bad weather but we managed to avoid most of it.  In one of the pictures below you will notice snow on the side of the road.  This happened because it started hailing quarter sized pieces of ice for about 20 minutes.  We stopped underneath a bridge to wait it out.  Later on, we went into Walmart to do some produce shopping – we stop by Walmart A LOT now (we actually just left one).  We finally arrived at the campsite to a beautiful star-filled night sky.  The sleep was great.