hey guys!

i have been having a totally awesome trip!

right now, we're in new mexico. we've decided to spend more time here than initially planned so we bought a new mexico state park camping pass that lets you camp free ($4/night if you want electric hookups). but, we still plan on being in arizona in about a week or so....

so... here's a recounting of our travels so far (with the promised pictures!)...

we spent the first week in florida... the fl caverns are nice but we were all ready to get out of florida.... they had a nice swimming hole and we ended up doing a bit of hiking and biking while there. we also canoed to this absolutely beautiful spring.

yep... we had to duck under fallen trees.

after leaving fl, we drove straight through alabama and mississippi. our initial goal was to make it to arizona in 6 days, i think, which included a 3 day stay at carlsbad caverns in new mexico, well, here it is a month later.....

while in louisiana, a semi driver honked and motioned us off the interstate where we discovered the bike rack the rv dealership had put on broke and had dragged our bikes along at 70 mph. needless to say, all 3 were destroyed. but, the bike rack company agreed to buy us new ones and my new one is way super cute. later that day, my mom ran over a large rock and blew out one of the tires on the rv. this was the only day i really thought i should be back in gainesville where i wouldn’t have to worry about stuff like that. but, the next day this is what we saw in our campground.....

5 deer came right into the site across from ours. that never happened while i was in gainesville.

this was also the day we decided to slow down... we have 6-7 months.... so we ended up staying in louisiana at the sam houston jones state park for several days.

We spent the next 3 nights in various state parks throughout Texas. I was surprised by how nice they were! We had some nice weather for hiking.

we spent the next night at monahan sandhills state park (still in texas). this place was so neat - we could’ve stayed here much longer, but we had reservations in carlsbad starting the next night and we’d already changed them once.... but, these sandhills were awesome! especially after driving by nothing but oil drills for hours..... oh yeah, we drove through the hometown of George W. there is a large sign announcing the fact when you’re entering the city limits.

but back to the sandhills...... stuck in the middle of all that are these really large white sand dunes. we hiked around on them (as well as one can hike up a huge pile of sand). so, of course, marc and i had to race up one. and, of course, we had to pick the one that was seriously a 75-80° angle to the ground. plus, did i mention how very HOT it was there?

the next day we (finally) arrived in new mexico. we stayed at brantley lake state park, about an hour away from carlsbad caverns.

brantley lake was absolutely beautiful.

the caverns were amazing. the main tour goes down about 650 ft. marc and i went back for a special tour where they gave you candle lanterns and took you through a more natural, completely unlighted cave. we wanted to do one of the tours where you get to wear a headlamp, knee pads, and elbow pads and have to crawl around through small spaces but they were all booked. apparently, they only allow a few people each tour and fill up months in advance so we’re planning to go back around november-ish.

every night, right around sundown, approx. 200,000+ mexican free-tailed bats come flying out of the main cave entrance. completely breath-taking.

after leaving lake brantley, we stayed for a few days at the bottomless lakes state park right outside of roswell. on a ranger-guided tour, i held a scorpion and tarantula and pet a snake. yep. we spent an afternoon in roswell at the international ufo museum and research center. i guess i forgot to take pictures here.

that brings us to the manzano mountains state park. we’ve been here all week and are leaving tomorrow for red rock state park in nw new mexico. we’re camping at around 7,400 ft which mean the nights are pretty cold. it’s been down in the low to mid 50’s every night. so we’ve been having lots of large campfires to keep us warm outside where our fires at the other parks were primarily used for cooking. the park area has around 200 different species of birds, including lots of hummingbirds that fly around everywhere. yesterday, we went on a nice long hike up a mountainside in the cibola national forest. we went up around 500+ ft in elevation to around 8,400 ft. the forest here is a lot of ponderosa pine and alligator juniper. although it’s very pretty, it’ll be nice to get to the mountains that are more rock and less trees.

so that’s it for now.....

i miss you guys!

sarah

ps. i hope those of you at the copy center are having a lovely rush!