So after my hellacious trip back to Orlando, I had 3 days to unpack, do laundry, and re-pack before heading out on my month-long road trip. So this past Friday, 6/29, I left with Eden for Texas in his car, and my dad went in his car. We wound up somewhere in Louisiana the first night at a Holiday Inn Express and slept for a few hours before heading on to Austin. We traveled for about 7 1/2 hours before we got to Eden's house, where my dad promptly dropped off my suitcase and proceeded to go do who know's what somewhere near Dallas. So for the rest of the day, Eden showed me around his property and one of his best friends Casey came over and also spent the night there. Sunday morning, (before my dad picked me up to take me to Carlsbad, NM) Eden, Casey and I went to a place in Austin called Barton Springs. Beautiful place, and we went hiking and found this place a little ways off the main trail:
Super pretty, right? I thought so too. We walked and splashed around in there for a while. There was also a little mini pond-spring thing that we splashed around in and we found a place where a spring was actually bubbling up. We spent a couple hours wandering around that area before we went back to where my dad was picking me up.
After he picked me up (and after all the good-byes), my dad an I continued on a very scenic route through hills and forests that gave way to desert-rock hills and low bushes and many cactus plants....and very little civilization.....for 8 hours, until we ended up in the little town of Carlsbad, NM, where the only real attraction is their caverns. So today, my dad got me up at 7am Mountain time to get breakfast and all that and then go explore the Carlsbad caverns, which were really awesome and really cool and totally interesting. On our way to the caverns we stopped a took a detour of climbing up a desert mountain because we finally found one that didn't have a fence around it...which definitely means we can climb it, right? That, and the caves, was totally awesome. I really wanted to go explore the other caves, but the guardrails along the pathways were preventing me from doing so :( I could take pictures though!! Which I did a lot of...here's a few of them:
The mountain opposite of the one we climbed.
Apparently my dad took a picture of me on the top of the desert mountain =)
See the car way down there? Yeah we actually went farther up than that. You just couldn't see the car from way up there.
Mouth of the main cave....ooo scary
Me in front of one of the first good photo-ops
We couldn't decide if it looked like broccoli or elongated sea-shells
Isn't it cool?!
100 years ago, that wasn't touching :)
It's a big hunk-a rock
Oh look! I'm in front of another part of a cave!
Tonight, we're going back to the caverns to watch the bat flight. I can't get any pictures of that, but I'm sure it will be awesome nonetheless.
Until next time,
-Panda:)
No comments:
Post a Comment