Day 22: Under Ground

Ezekiel: “Cool.” 

Isaac: “It was scary.” 

Jane: “I was bored.” 

Hannah: “I kind of deserve that for every time I complained at a national park on family vacation when I was little.” 

My favorite part was the kids whispering the entire time we were 750 feet underground. Flash flooding in the area caused the park to delay opening and it was not crowded at all, so there were times we had huge sections of the massive caverns to ourselves: slick walkways, echoing baby noise, hushed kid whispers. 

“Is it still going to be dark when we get out?” Isaac shined his flashlight around the path. 

“Is this real?” 

“Yes! We’re really far underground in a huge cave! Isn’t this cool?” 

“But is this REAL? Is it REAL?” 

Once we assured him it was real, he became afraid of cave monsters. 

Overlooking the bottomless pit, Eloise started growling. GROWLING. Then she cackled with laughter. I think we had the only cave monster in our possession. 

Chris was obsessed with finding bats. 

After lunch back above ground, it was time to say goodbye. From here to the coast, it’s just us four again. 

I have this idea that we used to get blizzards (you know, the frozen DQ treats) on summer road trip vacations. That means we probably did it once or twice and it was fun to pass the car hours shoveling ice cream in my face, so memory gives it a much larger prominence then it ever actually had. 

Anyway, Chris and I have enjoyed blizzards on a couple of our road trips, and that was something I wanted to do once on this adventure, too. Today was the day. On Main Street in Roswell, New Mexico—not too far from the UFO Museum and Research Center—we found our DQ. Unsurprisingly, it was out of this world…awful. It took forever. They were melty and dripping everywhere when we got them (dripping out of their cups! Gross!), we stopped to eat them outside in a lovely park but there was an unending smell of manure on the breeze, the mix-ins were grainy, and the ice cream tasted bad. For the first time ever, I threw away a blizzard. Did it change, or did I? Well even Eloise didn’t want hers. It must have been the blizzard. Sometimes a new tradition is born on a family road trip. Here in Roswell, one died. RIP, blizzard. Bleck. Next time I’ll just go to Starbucks, even if it means a chorus of “can we get a CAKE POP?” “Pop! POP! POP!” 

Today was our prettiest driving yet! We needed the diversion. I think we’re all getting a liiiiiiiiittle tired of each other at times.