An Ode To the Durability of Children

My cameras all ran out of batteries today and so I ended up using Elijah's phone to take some pictures. When I went to download my pictures this evening I found a whole bunch of pictures Elijah had taken over the span of our journey. It was fascinating to see the kids in all these different moments along the way. They have grown so much in the last month, and suffered their parents' whims so often. I wanted to post this series of pictures together as a reflection of the many moments throughout this journey in which our kids have shown strength and patience as well as humor.

Their last night in their room before we moved out. Sleeping on the floor in an otherwise empty bedroom.

We've had a lot of moments of waiting with the piles of luggage. This was in Sacramento at our second hotel.

Waiting for food in a weird little town in Nevada. The food took one and a half hours and when it finally came it was inedible. But the kids had fun with the anti-aircraft gun display near by. They had already been on the road for seven hours at this point.

Playing in the park in Santa Fe in the rain. Hannah's leggings are totally wet but the air is so warm she refused to wear her sweater.

They ran around in this park until after dark. Eli made friends with some kids in a nice family that were also there to hear the music.

Izzy was having a hard time that day. He kept getting really angry with Eli. But he and I were the members of the family the most interested in the music. He told me that the singer was very good.

One of the many hikes that started out with a lot of complaining and ended up with happy tired children. This one is in the hills above Santa Fe.

Izzy quietly reading to Hannah on the floor in Texas.

Hannah found a stage for her dramatic presence while waiting in the rain for our table to be ready. The kids have gotten really good at waiting for a table at restaurants.

Everywhere we go our friends and family are doing interesting things the kids get to learn about. This is Mary on her donkey Brownie.

Many of the places we go Eli introduces himself to children around us and strikes up friendships.

Here he is making friends with some kids who just moved to Texas from Louisiana.

There's been a lot of waiting, and a lot of telling the kids to behave and be quiet. This was a precious moment when they all followed that instruction. Waiting in the rain for the trailer to get hitched onto the minivan so that we can get ready to drive to New Orleans.

Some days we took too long to get to dinner.

Even the silly displays in hotels are interesting when they have guns or authentic costumes. This was a Civil War canon in the lobby of a Hilton just north of Atlanta. The kids have learned a lot about history in the last month.

Swimming pools have been one of the greatest treats of our road trip. The kids love to get to a place and find there is a pool. Hannah is already starting to swim as a result of all the practice.

No matter where we go Hannah likes to charm the people around her. Those feet belong to a guy who was sitting next to us in a coffee house. She went right up to him and started to ask him about his work. We are starting to work on boundaries a bit more.

It's a good thing the boys like each other so much. They have spent so much time together lately they sometimes forget anyone else is there. The imagination game is in constant full swing. Here I believe they were developing plans for piracy.

The best stuff is not always the stuff we expect. It's been amazing to look at the country with children as our companions. Everything looks different when you have to take them into consideration.

The boys got to talk on the phone with their friends during this meal. They were in high spirits. It's been a long haul and they have had to spend most of the time with just their family. These kids are social and not used to being trapped with just us. An interesting side effect to the road trip is that they are mostly in the adult world much of the time.

Hannah gets pretty tired during our adventures, and we have had some struggles with tantrums, but when it really counts she's a hardy little girl and a real sport about it all.

Carlsbad Caverns

Going to Carlsbad Caverns wasn't an obvious choice. It was the only thing between Santa Fe and Austin, TX that we really wanted to see, and was surrounded on both sides by pretty much nothing. Elijah had an intense memory of having been to the caverns as a boy. It was this potent memory that was the only factor in choosing that direction on our way to Austin. Not that long outside of Santa Fe we lost internet and cell coverage and we pretty much didn't regain it-- apart from the hotspot at the KOA-- until we were within forty miles of San Antonio. The one highlight of the journey there was driving through Roswell, NM and spotting all the green alien signs all over the place. It was already too late in the evening to visit, but we passed by the International UFO Museum and Research Center on the main drag in Roswell. The front looked like an old movie theater, but the girl at the Starbuck's said it was worth going to the first time, if nothing else because they recently used all of the props in the museum for a movie about Roswell.

Approaching Carlsbad after hours and hours of flat barren desert is a pleasant surprise. The canyon one drives through to get to the caverns is beautiful.

Even the walk from the gift shop and cafeteria to the entrance of the cave is beautiful.

As we began our descent into the ground the last thing you see are these rock walls and little birds that look a lot like the bats that come out later at sunset, swooshing back and forth from the eves of the opening.

We chose to take the long walk down into the cavern instead of the elevator. It adds an extra mile to the walk, but the intensity of slowly winding around a path down deep into the earth is well worth the extra walking.

The first thing we did when we got to the bottom was go to the bathroom because there wasn't another one during the whole hour long walk through the cavern. One thing about bathrooms in a cave 800 feet underground, the stink has nowhere to go, even though they are flush toilets. The snack bar and gift shop underground was strangely space age and odd after the hour of climbing down through vast cave chambers.

Izzy is not very fond of dark closed spaces. He kept talking about how he missed the sunlight. He was very nervous and sensitive to all the sounds in the cave, so I gave him the kid camera for much of the journey, to keep him entertained and keep his mind off the darkness. It was very hard to take pictures of the rock formations in the dark. I tried all three of our cameras before I found a way to get some of the images I wanted. Izzy had less luck, but he did a great job of documenting us on our journey along the trail.

Eli: We went to the Carlsbad Caverns. We went on a long winding trail. Finally we came to a rest stop. After the rest stop then we went to a place called the big room.

Eli asked this ranger if the rock above us was a stalactite or a sheet. She answered that she thought it was a stalac-sheet. That sometimes the words we give things are only there to help us understand and communicate, but are not totally accurate. I'm not sure he bought it. We tried to reassure him that this was the reason he wasn't sure which classification to give it.

This image Izzy took of himself is very Blair Witch, in truth he was very nervous inside the caves. Dark and echoey places are not his favorite thing. He kept asking when we thought he would see sunlight again, like it might not happen.

The caverns themselves are just amazing. There is not really a way to describe the intensity. I kept imagining what it might have been like to stumble across caves like that thousands of years ago. Or even when they were first discovered in the early part of the twentieth century. The heaviness, the darkness, in contrast to the vast rooms of limestone rock formations is absolutely a unique experience. I could not open my eyes wide enough to take it all in. It's a shame that there are so many people in there, because the silence and isolation of it are also impressive. But it only matters a little bit that other people pass by you on the trail. Everyone seemed changed, more reflective, or in some cases anxious and disturbed by the cave.

In the cavern we saw these little lights perched everywhere that weren't turned on. We started joking that they were alien robots.

 
Izzy: At the Carlsbad Caverns there were robot aliens. They kept us safe.

Eli: Four types of rock formations in the caverns are stalactites, stalagmites, columns, and popcorn.

Hannah: I liked inside it, because I liked the doll theater, the crystals, and the little lake.

Goodbye Hike Above Santa Fe

Our last night in Santa Fe we drove up into the mountains just east of town and found a beautiful little campground at Hyde Memorial State Park. We had to set up the tent in the rain and we all snuggled in for the night. In the morning the sky was clear and glorious, the kids made friends with the children in the campsite next to us while Elijah and I broke camp.

We drove back towards town until we found the trail head for the Dale Ball Trail that had been marked on the map as a short 1.8 mile hike. It was at the top of a small hill that overlooked the whole city of Santa Fe. When we started the hike it was already quite hot and the terrain between the short drive from the campground to the trail head had shifted drastically from pine forest to desert.

Hiking Up The Hill

The Boys Were Not Totally Into It

Izzy Was A Little Mad At Me For Taking Him On a Hike

We Were Pretty Happy When We Got To the Top

Izzy Had A Lot More Fun Once He Had the Camera In His Hands

Hannah Got Over Heated

The whole first part of the hike was up and the kids weren't too sure about it. The view at the top was spectacular and well worth it to Elijah and I, but the kids really only started enjoying themselves once I handed them a camera to take pictures, and then the usual afternoon storm moved towards us and sprinkled us with a light rain. Gotta love monsoon season. I will always look forward to traveling in the Southwest in August. It's highly recommended.

Here are some pictures Izzy took on our hike:

At the end of our hike we piled in the car, grabbed some Starbuck's coffee and said goodbye to Santa Fe. We drove south headed to our next destination, Carlsbad Caverns. The drive was long and rather than try to find uncertain camping near the caverns we stopped at a KOA just before Carlsbad proper. As far as KOAs go it was a nice tidy one with all the necessary services, but it was incredibly hot, the mosquitoes were really big--we could tell we were nearing Texas--and even the best KOA is really just a glorified RV park. During the night the heat finally subsided, but within minutes it went from cool summer night to intense violent wind and electric storm. I was really glad that I had insisted we use the safety braces on the tent poles. At times it felt like the wind was going to pick up the trailer roof and tear it right away. The next morning you wouldn't have known there had been a storm at all, it was already so hot and clear by 9 am that we were all sweaty and ready to pack up and go.