Got Opinions?

It has taken me a little while to get this recap written up, but I can backdate the blog so it doesn't appear to be quite as late - haha! Here are the family's thoughts on our most recent Saiki-delic road trip...

What are some of your favorite things that we saw or did on this trip (top 3)?

M / R: Sledding at White Sands, going to Carlsbad Caverns, and the Pima Air & Space Museum

J: White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns, and the Cubs game

Me: Carlsbad Caverns, getting passport stamps from a new region, and seeing parts of the country we've never been to before

Physics Is Fun

Hurry up and wait. That's what we did this chilly (below-freezing!) morning to get in line for the Trinity Site Open House. I had been told that the queue to get through the Stallion Gate Entrance of the White Sands Missile Range could get quite long, so we arrived around 7:15AM for the 8:00AM opening.

 

Guesstimating there were ~25-30 cars ahead of us

On a Mission

When I was mapping out our itinerary for this trip, the schedule for today was flexible. We could either:

• Visit the remnants of two frontier-era Army outposts, Fort Selden and Fort Craig, as well as a site along the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail, the Royal Road of the Interior Lands, which stretched from Santa Fe, NM down to Mexico City. 

Or...

• Visit one more NPS unit, Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument

Because my family humors me (and they have my completist tendencies, too!), we chose the latter.

Flying Saucers

Carlsbad, NM is only about an hour or so away from Roswell. Being a nerdy geek (is that redundant?!), of course I had to visit! So, our very first stop this morning was the International UFO Museum and Research Center.

To the Bat Cave

Months ago, I asked our cave tour planner to decide which one we should do during our visit to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. No surprise that every tour in which M was interested had "strenuous" in the description or involved crawling and/or climbing! Unfortunately, none were available during the time that we would be here. So I made reservations online for the 11:00AM King's Palace Tour, the only one we could do.

☑ National Park #29 (of 59)

Texas Two-Step

M and J have been keeping track of how many states they've ever visited and were debating whether or not to count Nebraska (slept through it overnight on the Amtrak California Zephyr) and Texas (layover at DFW). Even though we only spent a little time here today in West Texas, I think they should definitely be able to count it now.

From Las Cruces, it took us less than an hour to reach El Paso - gotta love 75 mph speed limits! We headed straight for the border and Chamizal National Memorial.