San Antonio...deep in the heart of Texas

San Antonio, Texas

We have spent the last few days in San Antonio at an RV park that is very close to downtown.  It has been a great location to explore the city.   And I am sure we are the youngest people here by at least 25 years.:)

We took such an interesting tour of the Mission of San Jose, which was one of the original Spanish missions in the San Antonio area.  The missions recruited Indians to live in their villages in order to help claim the area for New Spain and teach them about Jesus.  The mission was fairly successful for many years.  The National Park Service now protects and runs the San Antonio missions.

These were the "homes" for the Indian families.  An entire family would live in a very small room.  Kind of like living in the trailer. 

 This San Jose Mission was a huge compound...such impressive stonework.

 They even figured out a way to channel water that would turn a grinder to turn wheat into flour ...AMAZING!

We also visited the Whitte musuem.  It focused on the history and animals in Southwest Texas.  

There are so many new things to learn from every musuem.

 COWBOY BENJAMIN

Today we biked 5 miles down to the San Antonio Riverwalk.  It was such a nice bike ride and a beautiful place to walk around and eat lunch.

 We walked from the Riverwalk to the Alamo.  We watched a short film on the history of this place.  

We were inspired by the bravery of the soldiers!

 After the 3 mile Riverwalk walk and the 5 mile bike ride home...we were ready for some time in the pool.

Tomorrow morning we will head to Galveston, on the Gulf of Mexico.  Our first order of business will be to figure out a place to watch the Super Bowl...GO SEAHAWKS!!

Balmoreah, Texas and the warm springs pool!

Balmoreah, Texas(small town in SW Texas)

We have spent the past 3 days at Balmoreah State Park.  They have the most interesting HUGE spring fed pool/lake that is always 78 degrees and has tons of interesting fish.  It is the size of a small lake, but is surrounded by pool decking and cement.   They say that it cycles through 15 million of water each day that magically comes from underground.  CRAZY..I know.  

 This was the morning temperature...14 degrees when we woke up in Southern New Mexico.  We were not able to dump our tanks because the latch was frozen...thankfully our pipes did not burst.  We were thankful that the next day the temperature soared to 70 degrees.

 I had to include a picture of our sweet girl, Abby.  She has been the best traveler.

 Benjamin is ready to snorkel.  The boys spent several hours snorkeling each day.  

 Bradley gave his wet suit a try and liked it!! He is ready for the ocean.

 I guess Texas still believes in high dives...the boys loved it.

 Here are a couple of pictures of the pool.  I think that the locals thought we were crazy swimming in 70 degree weather.  It felt like a heat wave to us.  We had the pool to ourselves, besides the scuba divers.

 This park has great views of the rolling hills of Texas...other than that...Texas has been pretty flat with lots and lots of oil drilling.  Our fact book said that Texas produces 100 million barrels of oil everyday!  WOW!

 Big news of the 2nd day was that I(Rachelle) actually got in the water and snorkeled for exactly as long as it took me to swim from one side to the other.  As many of you know, I am very scared of fish and so it took me a LONG time to work up the courage to jump in.  I am trying to be more adventurous.

 Tomorrow we head to San Antonio, Texas.  We are looking forward to exploring the city.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park!

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico

 We spent the day exploring this truly one of a kind National Park.  It is hard to impossible to describe this place and the pictures do not do it justice.  Carlsbad Caverns is a series of 32 miles of underground caves, some as big as 14 football fields and hundreds of feet high.  I felt like I was in some kind of crazy science fiction movie set...but it was real!  

 After arriving we hiked down over a mile into the caves...descending over 850 feet.  It was very surreal.  I was a little nervous at first, but quickly got used to being underground and away from all natural light.

 Every summer they have a natural bat flight program each night where hundreds of bats come out of this hole and hunt in mass.  They have flown south to Mexico at this time of year.  It would have been neat and SCARY to see!

 The rest of the pictures just show a small sample of what it is like underground.  So many different types, shapes and kinds of rock formations.  We went on a ranger guided tour to a huge area called the Kings Palace.  It was unbelievable.  For a couple of minutes they turned off all the lights and we were in pure, pitch blackness and silence.  WOW...that was so weird.  

We are staying at Brantley Lake for an extra night as this area is expecting high winds and possible rain or snow today.   Not good weather for pulling a 10,000 pound fifth wheel.  So we will head to Texas tomorrow after a relaxing day here for school and catching up on projects (hopefully some reading too!).

Tuscon and White Sands National Monument

Tuscon/White Sands National Monument

Our first stop in Tuscon was the Reid Park Zoo.  We went right at feeding time, so lots of the animals were out and active.  It was a fairly small zoo, but we saw tons of animals...it was really cool.  A must see if you are in the Tuscon area.  

 A few miles from the zoo was the University of Arizona.  They have a really cool grassy area running down the middle of the campus.  A perfect spot for a quick game of football.  

 Of course we had to see the football stadium...Jordan is keeping a spreadsheet of all the colleges we visit and ranking them in all kinds of categories.  SO CUTE!  We also visited a science museum on the campus which has an extensive minerals collection and a planetarium.  Bradley is really into rocks and has collected many different kinds as we have traveled through the Southwest.

 We traveled about 200 miles from Tuscon to Rock Hound State Park, outside of Deming, New Mexico.  This was just a stop over to break up the driving.  It was the perfect spot to watch the Seahawks game and enjoy the beautiful sunset and stars.

 From Deming we headed SE to White Sands National Monument.  It is such a unusual and stunning place.  There are 25 square miles of white gypsum sand, the largest in the world.  There are huge sand dunes everywhere, perfect for sledding, jumping and football.(of course)  We had a blast!!

 Truly the whitest, finest and most beautiful sand of any beach I have ever been to.  I couldn't resist a flip flops in the sand picture.  From White Sands we headed to a state park outside of Carlsbad Cavern National Park.  We will visit there tomorrow.  We are excited to see the miles and miles of underground caves.  I will post pictures when I get a change.  Love you all!!

Saguaro National Park...January 16, 2014

Saguaro National Park...Tuscon, AZ area

 We didn't realize how close we were to Saguaro National Park when we decided to camp at Catalina State Park.  We drove for about an hour to get there on Thursday.  We thought we had "seen" saguaro cacti at Lost Dutchman State Park...but now we have really "SEEN" saguaro cacti and many other types of desert vegetation.  When we arrived we were just in time to hear a ranger led talk on lizards.  It was VERY interesting and it as so cool how God designed lizards with the perfect adaptations to survive in the desert.  One of our favorite facts was how one type of baby lizards have a blue tail as a child, it if is bitten by a predator it will come right off and flop around, catching the attention of the predator and allowing the baby to escape.  After the presentation we went on 3 different walks.  We learned a lot about different type of cacti, and were amazed at the desert's beauty. 

 This is my favorite...I call it the lollipop cactus.

 We were also able to visit the site of some ancient petroglyphs.  

This last week has really opened our eyes of the beauty and diversity of the desert.  

Today we are going to explore the city of Tuscon.  We hope to visit a small zoo, tour the University of Arizona campus and visit the science museum and planetarium on the campus.  Tomorrow we will head towards Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico with a stop over in Deming.

Phoenix Science Center and Lost Dutchman State Park

Phoenix, AZ... The Arizona Science Center and

Lost Dutchman State Park

 As we were walking to the Science Center we saw the Arizona Diamondbacks Stadium.

 The Arizona Science Center was amazing.  They had 4 floors of exhibits and hands-on activities.  

The boys especially liked the exhibit on the brain and water room.

 This was a bed of nails that we all took a turn laying on...it was crazy!

 This is the view from our trailer...it is called Superstition Mountain.  We took a moonlight hike around it with a ranger and learned all about cacti, Native American legends and why it is called Lost Dutchman.

 The boys and Curt took a very long and hard hike to the top of the mountain.  They hiked for 6 hours and climbed 3,000 feet.  After taking a wrong turn, Curt said that for a while they were the "lost dutchmen."  They came home exhausted, a little bloodied but very accomplished.  

 THEY MADE IT!!

 The park has excellent mountain biking trails, we only had a few falls.  

The mountain is so beautiful at sunset...this desert climate is truly amazing...we have loved every minute our our stay.  The weather has been in the 70's and sunny...we couldn't ask for better.  We head to Tuscon on Friday to stay at Catalina State Park.  Thanks for reading about our desert adventures.