New Mexico

During the last week of April we took a road trip to New Mexico!  The first major stop was Walnut Creek National Monument near Flagstaff, where we hiked down into a canyon full of 12th century cave dwellings.  Later that day, we also visited Petrified Forest National Park, where I was really surprised to see how many petrified logs were just strewn about in the open.  I guess I thought they'd be more buried and less like a lumber yard.
  

Walnut Creek National Monument

Petrified Forest National Park

On Sunday morning we went to church in Farmington, where I heard a bishop's wife give a great talk about having a joyful Sabbath with small children - it made me really want to figure out ways to make Sundays special.  After church, we backtracked a little and visited Four Corners Monument.  Evan was more excited for this than any other thing we saw on the trip.
  
The rest of the day we spent driving past Shiprock, finding more petrified wood out in the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, and getting to Santa Fe.
  

Monday morning we had an awesome bakery breakfast in Santa Fe, then spent the day in Los Alamos and Bandelier National Monument.
  

 

We visited more of Santa Fe on Tuesday, including the New Mexico History Museum, but didn't do much outside because it was raining most of the day.  We left Wednesday morning, and went to the top of Sandia Peak on the tramway, which was freezing and covered with snow!  We drove past the Walter White house in Albuquerque and ate some green chili burgers, then continued on to the Very Large Array, which was amazing.  They had a decent little visitor's center, with a short film about the radio telescope.
    

In Las Cruces, we drove out to White Sands National Monument for a little while, then visited the New Mexico Museum of Space History (it was okay, but the baby was bad the whole time.)  After that, we went back at sunset for more White Sands.  It was so windy, the kids could barely open their eyes, but they still loved it!  

After we got back to the house we were staying in, Ryan went to Walmart for groceries, and got such a kick out of the magazine selection he felt he had to send me some pictures.
      

Las Cruces Lending Library

Friday was our Carlsbad Caverns day, but it started with the kids' first viewing of PeeWee's Big Adventure.  I did them the traditional courtesy of rewinding Large Marge half a dozen times.

I didn't expect to be so impressed by the caverns, but they were breathtaking.  They don't have as many intricate formations as some of the other caves we've seen, but they are so HUGE!  It was like a movie set from Lord of the Rings.  It was my favorite day of the whole trip.
   

Going down in the elevator.

  
We were supposed to leave for home Saturday morning, but Evan pulled on Celeste's arm funny while we were packing up, and she wouldn't stop crying and wouldn't use it at all.  I was worried something was dislocated, so we took her to the emergency room.  She started feeling better while we were waiting there, and after a couple hours the doctors told us she probably had "nursemaid's elbow", which frequently resolves on its own.  Since she seemed fine at that point, we cancelled the x-ray and left.
  

Limp Noodle Arm

We finished our trip on Sunday with a visit to the Cabazon Dinosaurs in California.  The kids liked the connection to PeeWee's Big Adventure, by the way.