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6 May 2024 – Trip Day 36 – by Alan

Today we went to White Sands National Park, but first let’s catch up on a few things!

The RV we are staying at has a number of these type of shelters. They seem to becoming very popular in the southwest.

This morning the kitchen sink backed up as we were cleaning up after breakfast and getting ready to go. I checked the tank valves – usually my trick is to forget to open one of them and then we spaz out about having a clogged drain somewhere. Well, the valves were open but there was a small trickle of water coming out.

I closed the other valves to the other gray tank and hooked up my flush hose to the back flush valve on my sewer adapter. I opened the valves and back flushed the gray tank for about 30 seconds and then opened the drain gate. I saw a lot of chunks and debris come out of the drain, followed by the rest of the water in the gray tank. After that, it drained normally. Except that I forgot to reopen the rear gray tank valve, which backed up during the kid’s showers. Easy enough to fix, but irritating. After our plumbing adventures, we headed out to the Park.

We got the kids Junior Ranger vests, so now they are fully kitted out.

We picked up the Junior Ranger books and headed out to do a hike on the Dune Nature Trail. It was a windy day and a lot of the sand was being kicked up.

The road into the park was closed past the Nature trail parking lot due to a F-16 crash that happened previously.

All of the visitors were packed into this small parking lot. It was fairly packed when we arrived.

 Kitted out, we started out on the trail.

 The trail had various signs describing the wildlife and they were tied into the Junior Ranger program. However, a decent number of the signs were sun faded to the point of being unreadable.

 Posing on a crest for a photo with the blowing dust in the background, the kids did well in the soft gypsum sand of the dunes. The dunes can move as much as 30 feet or more in a year.

 We came across this Cottonwood tree, which from the looks of it, had been buried at one point.

 We came across this little guy crawling on the sands. Upon further investigation, we found that he must have been blown off the Cottonwood tree.

 A nice gentleman passing by took our family photo; he mentioned that he came from a family of 6.

 Despite the harsh environment, desert flowers were blooming.

 After our hike, we drove back to the Visitor Center and turned in their Junior Ranger workbooks. The kids happily added another badge to their collection.

Afterward, we drove back to the campground but we stopped at the https://pistachioland.com/worlds-largest-pistachio/. 

 In keeping of the tradition of roadside attractions, we sampled their ice cream.

 Evan and Arya were not fans of the pistachio ice cream, but Garrett and Jarek didn’t mind.

Tomorrow we are back on the road, headed to Arizona.

 257 miles tomorrow with a mountain range to get over, then an over night and a shorter drive to Tucson to get Big Country’s slide out fixed.

5 May 2024 – Trip day 35 – by Alan

We drove from Carlsbad, New Mexico to Alamogordo, NM for the next stop on our journey, White Sands National Park.

As we prepared to depart, I noticed that one of the rear jacks had a small puddle of hydraulic fluid. The fix for this is to replace the jack, so that will be fun. We’ll address that in Tucson. The annoying part is that the replacement jacks are just under $700 each.

We took US 285 north to Roswell, then turned left on US 385, which turned into US 70. This took us over Apache Pass at over 7,500 feet in elevation.

We stopped at a little rest area before Roswell which was the site of the Blackdom Townsite.

 One of the annoying things about the drive was the GoPro recording the drive lost its mind. It started randomly rotating the video and locking on sideways. Of course, it was mounted perfectly fine and stable the whole ride, so I’m not sure what happened with that.

 I’m making a trip video where I cut out the sideways parts. It is rather unfortunate that this happened, as it was a nice drive through the mountains.

It was a bit windy and gusty, and as we came through the mountain pass, we could see the white sands ahead of us were being blown into a large white hazy cloud.

There were a few good gusts that tried to push the trailer around on the highway. One in particular was a good hit as we came around a bend and lost the shielding of the mountain side.

 The driving video will be available here later today.

One of the other fix it things I had to take care of was our griddle.

 In Florida, everything worked fine. When we got on the road, in San Antonio we went to cook dinner on it, but it barely worked. And by barely worked I could get one burner to work at about half power. If I turned the other burner on, both would go out.

I suspected that the regulator had gotten some sand or other dust in it when I packed it up. I took apart the regulator and blew it out, and put it back together. There was a little improvement, but not much.

I ordered a new regulator and it arrived while we were in Carlsbad. I put it on, and the problem persisted. Somewhat at a loss, I tried a different propane tank from the RV, and that did not fix it. At this point, the only thing left was to try a different hose. I ran down to the local Walmart and picked up a new hose, and like magic, we were back in business! I don’t think I’ve ever had a hose fail like that before on me.

15 April 2024, Trip day 15 by Meagan

Garrett Quote of the Day:

I’m putting bacon on the mesh tray of the air fryer as Garrett saunters over.

Garrett: “Mama I want some bacon!”

Me: “I have to cook it first honey.”

Garrett: “Can I help? Is it meat bacon?”

Laughing, I reply: “Yes, it’s meat bacon, what other kind of bacon is there?”

Garrett: “Bad bacon.”

Exactly Garrett.

Hey, Meagan here. Today we toured the Alamo. The Alamo is the famous fort where in 1836, 187 men led by Davy Crockett, James Bowie and William Garret Travis held off over 1,000 Mexican soldiers before they were killed to the last man. The part of the Alamo that remains today is the restored church and the Long Barracks building. The buildings can be seen from the outside, but reserving a ticket allows you tour the inside of the church, the barracks and the courtyard. The tickets are free so the price was right. There are also have guided tours, but with two wee little ones, we decided that wasn’t the best bet.

Our plan was to pull up next the Alamo plaza and unload, but we found the street blocked off due to construction (Waze failed us again!) so we drove a few streets further before turning back to the plaza. This ended up working out better as we parked in a lot next to the Morgan hotel and across from the Courthouse and Post Office and had only to walk a short way. We read the descriptions on the bronze models on our way to the church. The models depict how the Alamo changed over the course of 300 years. As Alan went to reserve our tickets, we discovered the reason for the road closure: the construction of a new visitor center. The fabric overlay of the new building on the construction site was very detailed and impressive. I guess we’ll get to see it when we bring Garrett and Randal back in ten years!

After getting the tickets, Garrett decided he needed to drive the wagon containing Baby Randal. He made a grab for stroller bar and had a meltdown when I fended him off. He cleverly ran around to the front and grabbed the pull handle, and, accepting this compromise, I headed toward the church. Two Alamo Rangers in their tactical gear and cowboy hats watched with amusement as we crept forward, one teeny toddler step after another.

Walking through the wooden doors, we entered a small building with a vaulted ceiling. Flags, representing the countries or states of the men who had died at the Alamo, lined the walls. The church had air conditioning which felt great after strolling around in the muggy 85 degrees of San Antonio. We strolled around the edge of the room reading the exhibits while Garrett asked me to pick him up about 20 times and I told him no 20 times. My left heel still hurt a lot after all the walking on the disc golf course. As I walked, it grew increasingly painful. (I have an appointment tomorrow at 1:30 to see a podiatrist.)

We read the names of the men who died on bronze plaques in the back of the church. Their last shots were fired from this spot. As Jarek got into a discussion with a volunteer about artillery shells versus cannon shot, I took a few pictures then joined Alan in the line to the Sacristy exhibit.

Sacristy Exhibit projected the changes to the Sacristy over time on a screen placed over the back wall of the room. The projection is accompanied by peaceful chants that give way to the sounds of the battle as the families of the soldiers shelter in the Sacristy during the battle. It was very well done kept Garrett’s attention for the whole five minutes.

We were about an hour into our visit and Arya and Evan were dragging a bit. We left the church and wandered the into the shaded courtyard to the north. I got a nice picture at the well with Arya and Evan, then bribed a fussing Garrett with a lollipop and got him to sit in the stroller with Baby Randal.

Baby Randal rode in his stroller like a champ the entire day. He hadn’t fussed one bit the whole time as he happily snacked on his Gerber baby snacks from Nene Mel. Garrett helpfully shoved a snack into Baby Randal’s mouth and continued to enjoy his lollipop.

We finished our visit with a look at the displays in the Long Barracks and the bronze statues in the garden. A living history volunteer told us about daily life at the Mission, we bought some postcards in the gift shop with grand ambitions to send them in a timely manner, and headed back to the park.

Today we drove north to Roswell, New Mexico to take the kids to the International UFO Museum and Research Center.

The drive went smoothly. We had a nice picnic lunch at the benches outside the museum after our drive.

 We had to cut the picnic quickly, as Garrett said that he wanted to use the bathroom. This was a good thing, as he did have to go #2 and it was better on the toilet than in is pull-up.

 We started off with the Tomb lid of Palenque. The last time we were there several years ago, they had a three dimensional model of the supposed ship. This time, they had a video presentation on it, which the kids enjoyed watching.

 The decoding of the inscription on the tomb lid.

There was a painting of the reconstructed flying machine.

 The kids learned about the Magic 12 and the events surrounding the UFO Crash in Roswell.

 The kids also learned about various types of encounters and the cultural impact of the crash and the many resultant movies and other phenomenon surrounding UFOs.