Family of Four Traveling the World, Exploring New Countries and Learning a Lot Along the Way
With our mirror fixed, it was a short drive of about an hour from Carlsbad Caverns to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. This particular park is small but incredibly beautiful.
The obligatory pose for the national parks…
Guadalupe Mountains is a relatively small park. We went for a small hike, saw the ruins of the 1830s Butterfield Station, and the kids completed the book for the junior ranger badge.
It was a quick stop, but worth the visit. And we headed off toward Las Cruces, New Mexico.
When we finally left Houston a few weeks and then a couple of days longer than our target, we didn’t make it very far. Our first night we literally spent one hour outside of Houston in Columbus. But at least we were on our way. Baby steps.
The next day we drove onward to Kerrville. Our intent was to spend only one night at the Buckhorn Lake & RV Resort. However, while there, we decided that it might be good to go ahead and get new tires for the RV. The stock ones were rumored to be really bad. After several hours on the phone with the local tire dealers and more internet research, we learned that our G-rated Westlake tires were likely as good as any we could buy. We opted for a tire pressure monitoring system instead.
Since we made the decision late, we decided to spend the second night at the RV park which allowed for some R&R time. We all needed to kill the afternoon in a fun way after the hectic moving and packing.
Fishing at the RV resort.
We left the next day to head towards Carlsbad. About two hours down the road, our truck met up with a huge vulture while we were traveling at about 70 mph. It took out the passenger side mirror, but fortunately didn’t break off the entire mirror complex.
Towing a 43’ fifth wheel without a passenger side mirror is nearly impossible to do safely.
We called the Ford dealer in Ft Stockton, but they indicated they wouldn’t be able to repair it for 5-6 weeks. (“Weeks”. That’s not a typo.) In lieu of stopping there, Scott picked up a concave mirror at a truck stop. Every time he needed to change lanes, I held the mirror outside the window. It was comical but mostly effective. It allowed us to drive on towards Carlsbad Caverns. We found an online parts store that could overnight the glass-only-mirrors for the mirror complex, and we parked in White’s City, NM to wait for the parts and to see Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
In White’s City, we parked at the RV park. It turned out to be a caliche parking lot with hookups on the side of the highway going into Carlsbad. It wasn’t very nice, but it was an excellent location for Carlsbad. Scott managed to secure the mirror well enough to drive until the replacement glass came in. (It’s clear we were just coming off of the move since we had shrink wrap in the car.)
Carlsbad was amazing.
The elevator was out, so our visit included walking down into the caverns and climbing back out of the 750 foot deep cave system.
The initial decent outside of the caverns was a good indicator of what was in store for us.
The caverns (the largest in North America) are absolutely stunning.
Even having been to caves throughout the USA, Europe, and even New Zealand, everyone was impressed with what we saw during our visit. Pictures just don’t do it justice.
The kids were able to both get their junior ranger badges, while I gained more and more respect for the amount of information they were learning with the ranger books.
At this point we all felt we had really officially started our whirl wind tour of the national parks.
The last few weeks in Houston were an absolute whirlwind. We were busy with homeschooling, packing, and having fun.
Keali and I were able to sneak out to a Dean Lewis concert. He wasn’t disappointing at all. If you don’t listen to his music, you should.
There was a primary election, so we tried to do our part in addition to voting. We hosted a meet and greet for a Congressional candidate and also hit the street to pass our flyers for our (hopefully) new state Congressional representative.
We finally made it to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo one day as well. The kids had only attended once before but didn’t have any memory of it.
The petting zoo was a fave.
Caden and Keali both took some specialized classes. Keali started seventh grade math. Caden’s genetics class was pretty awesome, because he was able to learn genetics by studying Harry Potter. Winner.
We sold off loads of our furniture and managed to drink through most of our wine.
We hit the March for Our Lives march in downtown Houston.
And then the reality of selling and moving hit us.
The last week and a half before Leave Day was ridiculous. Scott’s work blew up, so he ended up working 12-14 hour days. The kids and I packed and moved stuff to storage for almost as long every day. By the day we closed, 95% of the move was done. Of course the next day (which was meant to be our last day), we were all exhausted and running on fumes. I lost the (only) key to the truck somehow. It took eight hours and three different locksmiths to finally get it going. I was in tears, and we were too late to leave that day. Scott rescued us by putting us all up in the Westin down the street. It was so nice to have everything over with (both physically and emotionally) that we ended up extending the stay by one more day. The bonus was that we were able to hang out with some good friends before hitting the road.
Maja wrangled the kids one last time, while Scott and I went out for a little R&R.
The day after this picture was taken, April 2, we left for our newest and biggest adventure yet. This trip would be taken without the comfort of knowing we had a home to come back to. We were all eager and thrilled to hit the road.
Adventure awaits.
We had some time before the house would be sold and moved out of, so we decided to do a two week trip in the RV to get a little more experience under our belts. We hit the road to Big Bend.
Texas is big. Really big. Most people know this but don’t fully appreciate it until they try to drive from one side to the other, or the top to the bottom. Since Houston is on the east side of south Texas, to get to Big Bend, we had to travel to a far portion of the west side of south Texas. It took almost five hours on the road to get to Kerrville on our first day. We overnighted at Buckhorn Lake RV Resort just outside of town. (It was fantastic!) The next day, we drove about three hours to arrive Ft Stockton. Ft Stockton RV park was considerably different. The memory of that place will always include Keali falling off of her bike into a sticker plant. We pulled no fewer than thirty stickers out of her hands. And finally, the third day, we drove to Big Bend. Because our RV is too big to take into the camping portions of the park, we ended up spending the week in Lajitas just southwest of the park entrance. Lajitas Golf Resort and RV Park is amazing.
The resort had a grocery store, a cantina, and a restaurant.
The campground was perfect for us. The laundry facility was clean and big and hardly utilized by others. There were loads of mountain biking all around the campsite. We also were able to go hiking in the areas outside of the campgrounds with Gracie. We learned that no matter how much Gracie seems like she is content with hanging out with us, if a jackrabbit goes running across the desert pasture, she will absolutely go chasing it even through the cacti. Oops. No more hikes without a leash irrespective of how far away from civilization we are.
An arch out in the desert a mile or two from our campgrounds.
Another highlight of the actual RV park was that one of our neighbors was a stained glass expert. The kids were lucky enough to get to design and make a stained glass art piece. Learning on the road for the win.
Gil wouldn’t accept cash for the two day lessons, so we paid him in beer.
The national park itself was amazing. Big Bend is unique in that it consists of desert, mountains, and river, all in one.
We did several hikes, the scenic drive, and the kids got junior ranger certified.
The hike up to balanced rock was only about a mile round trip.
Balanced rock is far more impressive in person than it is viewing through some really bad photography:
The finger in the viewfinder is yet one more example of a failing in my life. (-;
Once we had our fill of Big Bend (which was lacking only in that we really wanted to boat across the river into Mexico but forgot our passports), we decided to head to the next door park: Big Bend State Park.
Without question, the state park was even more beautiful than the national park. We did a few hikes that had stunning scenery of the river or of the hoodoos.
There were also loads less people. In fact, we boondocked in the park and had the whole place to ourselves.
Our campsite was amazing. That view is over the top of the Rio Grande and into Mexico.
I’m sure Scott would argue that the highlight of this portion of the trip was trying out the solar gear he put together. Knowing that we wanted to option of boondocking (dry camping without any water or electric hookups), he set out to learn everything he could about a solar set up. Rather than spend $10,000 to have someone else do it for him, he put it together and installed it for a couple of thousand. We were all very excited to see it worked like a champ (after a little problem solving).
It doesn’t look that impressive, but it can keep us up and running in the RV without a generator for most days.
The overall camping and national/state park was a success. We hit the road back towards Houston. We took advantage of the opportunity of hitting McDonald Observatory just outside of Ft Davis.
The experience was more than worthwhile. There was one other family and about fifteen winter Texans on the tour with us. Proud homeschooling moment alert: Several of the other folks kept commenting on how we “must be homeschoolers” and how amazed they were that the kids knew the answers to most of the questions the docent asked. One man laughed and said he was happy our kids understood what the docent astronomer was talking about, because he understood none of it. Maybe we aren’t completely screwing them up after all.
Both kids were selected to turn various parts of the telescope inside the dome.
Our other pit stop on the way home was in Fredericksburg. I hadn’t been there since college, and none of us had ever been to Enchanted Rock. We stayed at our first Jellystone while there and were impressed with all of the activities they offered. We’ll definitely try to hit that particular brand of campsite going forward just for the entertainment purpose. I doubt the ones in the future will include a winery directly across the street that Scott and I can sneak off to again, but beggars can’t be choosers.
Enchanted Rock
All in all, the trip was an overwhelming success. It gave us a good idea of what we needed in the RV (a space heater), what we didn’t need, and what the experience was going to look like. Even the cat handled everything with ease and grace. We returned to Houston both excited and anxious to leave for the next big family adventure.
Finally! We were able to give the new fifth wheel a trial run!
Lake Somerville is beautiful at night.
Because it coincided with Keali’s birthday, the kids each invited a friend to go with us, and we hit the road. Destination: Lake Somerville. For those who didn’t know, we used to have a ranch that overlooked Somerville. We also still have a dear friend who has a ranch with loads of animals right around the corner. Picking Somerville was an easy choice because of the close proximity to Houston, but also because it was easy in terms of activities, places to go, etc, and allowed us to focus on the actual RV part of the trip.
The views were amazing! We basically had the whole park to ourselves. (I’m still surprised there weren’t more winter-Texans anywhere to be found.)
We spent a couple of days hanging out at JP’s ranch, while the kids ran around all day and drove the ATV. The evenings were filled with bonfires, running around, and hiking along the lake’s beach.
Everyone had a great time. We were also pleasantly surprised at how much space there was in the RV. I guess living out of a suitcase for nine months provides some decent preparation in that department.
Gracie was a big fan of the new lifestyle.
Once we made it back home, we had a little birthday cake celebration for Keali’s 11th birthday. The maiden voyage was written off as successful.
Keali turned 11!