Channel Mike

Friday, June 1st, 2007

Today we didn't take any pictures. We mostly just drove. Other than that, we ate lunch, which did not merit pictures; and we went to watch the bats, where cameras weren't allowed. Apologies. Perhaps I'll take a picture of my bag of sunflower seeds just to splash some color on the page.

Things started out fine. We got up, dressed, even ate breakfast in the hotel and we were still out of the parking lot by 8:10am. Pretty good. But after traversing from a freeway to a parkway to another freeway then to a loop then to the wrong highway then to a surface street to the right interstate, I was tired of driving and hadn't even left Dallas / Ft Worth yet. On the bright side, Jak really liked it when there were three overpasses all at different heights crisscrossing one another. Once we finally left Ft Worth, we were on our way.

I found it interesting that east of Dallas, everything was pretty similar to Mississippi and Louisiana with thick trees and lots of green. West of Dallas, it was all much more barren, similar to New Mexico and Arizona. I knew it would get that way as we crossed the state, but the change was more abrupt than I'd expected.

A few cool things about Texas: Their freeway rest areas have clean bathrooms and free wi-fi. For looking up directions and such on the road, the free wi-fi is a genius idea. Clean bathrooms hardly takes genius, but does take some determination and resolve, I'm sure. I also found dill pickle sunflower seeds. They were the bright spot of my trip across Texas. I'd say our trip, but nobody else wanted any so it's just the bright spot of my trip. The rest of them can pick their own bright spots. The 80mph speed limits across most of the state were pretty welcome, too.

I absolutely did not care for the wind, though. I don't know if this is normal or if it was just a windy day, but the hundreds of windmills along the bluff for miles and miles along the southern side of the freeway make me think this is normal. For what my own anecdotal experience is worth, the wind never let up across hundreds of miles and the entire day.

We stopped in Big Spring to take a break and eat lunch. We got some food and went to a park to sit and eat and let the kids run. About a third of our food blew away; and not just the papers either. And even with the wind, there were flies everywhere. I was surprised because it didn't stink and there was no sign of a landfill or anything, but the flies were at least five strong for each of us while we tried to eat in the wind. Yuck. Emma wanted to stay; she had managed to get her shoes and socks off and was running through the mulch barefoot. Audrey wanted to stay, too. Jak was ready to go and I was chomping at the bit to get out of there. We rounded them up and into the car and headed off again.

The trip was fairly uneventful and we drove up into New Mexico and over to Carlsbad Caverns. Not knowing quite when they expected all of the bats to leave the cave and fly out for dinner, we made sure to go straight to the park and get right over to the mouth of the cave. Unfortunately, we were plenty early. Even though we weren't the first ones there, we ended up waiting for two hours before the first bat came out. The kids were difficult, but the bugs were impossible. Mosquitos, biting flies, gnats, and who knows what else were everywhere. I admit that it was kinda cool to see the hundreds of thousands of bats just keep streaming out of the cave like clowns from a small car in the circus, but it was nowhere near being worth the wait. If you ever go to do that, call ahead and show up right on time, or even a little late.

We got back down the mountain to White's City, which was a collection of about a dozen buildings all in an old-west saloon motif. We stayed in the Best Western, where Audrey and Emma screeched and jumped on the beds and chased each other in spite of my requests, pleas, stern warnings, threats, and everything else I could think of. They eventually settled down and went to sleep. Aaaaah.