White Sands June 6, 2008

We pulled into the visitor center first. There wasn’t much going on inside the visitor center, although it was really cool looking. It was an adobe style building with flowering cacti outside. We proceeded to drive back towards the trails. We paid our small entrance fee of $3 each, which would last six days. We arrived at the first trail, a nature trail, which covered 1 mile. As we started walking, Ed spotted a camouflaged lizard, but Jeanette did not. We hiked up the sand dune and followed the markers for our one mile loop. Along the way, there were several bugs, lizards, and cacti. We took several pictures. We had a hard time following the path at the beginning because we couldn’t easily locate the markers. As we finished the nature trail, Ed got the bright idea to go sledding down the hill as that’s what many people do here. Since we didn’t have sleds, he attempted using the lid of the cooler, which did not work at all!

We then headed back towards Akali Flat trail, which is a 4.6 mile hike in the dunes or as Ed calls it the “idiot trail”…more about that in a minute. Along the way, we stopped at one of the restrooms. Ed gagged in there as it was a glorified port-a-potty that stunk!

Anyway, we arrived at the trail at 12:20 and started our hike. It is affectionately called the “idiot trail” by Ed because we always seem to start our activity in the hottest part of the day. We began our hike with two bottles of water in hand (we both drank one bottle of water before starting the hike). We followed the trail markers out…although we lost sight of some of them. There was a sign telling us that if a windstorm should occur, do not move from the nearest trail marker. Instead, you should wait until the storm is over, and then try to locate the next trail marker. Luckily, we did not have this problem. The only things we saw out in the dunes were a few reddish colored ants, lizards, and grasshoppers. The dunes seemed to go on for a long time. Some of the low areas consisted of hard, dried up gypsum that was easy to walk on. However, some of the higher parts of the dune were made up of softer sand that was harder to walk on and got in your shoes as you hiked up and down the dunes. We drank a little bit of water every 10 minutes, even if we weren’t thirsty, to enjoy we were staying fairly hydrated. We made it to the half way point in the flats and looked around for a little bit before moving on. Truthfully, it didn’t look that different than anything else. Apparently, the flats mean the area in which the white sand is produced. It is a disappearing lake basin that produces the white sand. The wind carries the white sand from this basin to other parts of the park to give the whole area white sand. We continued on to the second half of the hike. It was a bit hotter at this point and we were definitely thirstier. It felt like there was a lot of going up and down the dunes on this portion of the hike…it may have been because we were tired…but we had to empty our shoes of sand more frequently. We got back to the car, drank some cold water, and Ed ate a quick snack…a granola bar with peanut butter. We then drove to the one last trail in the park. It was only .3 miles, so we quickly finished it. We stopped at the gift shop on the way out. We bought some post cards and then headed out. We started our drive towards Tucson. We noticed that there were two new fires in the mountains closer to Las Cruces that hadn’t been there, or at least not as big, in the morning. We drove to Las Cruces and stopped at a local, hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant. We don’t remember the name of it, but it was super cheap and pretty good. It cost $7 for a huge plate of food consisting of refried beans, rice, enchiladas, deep fried cheese stuffed pepper, a taco, and some flautas. Jeanette ate refried beans, rice, and a chicken burrito. After eating, we drove to Tucson, Arizona.

While driving, there were some small hills along the way, but overall, it was pretty flat. The land was pretty open, with a few farms here and there. Before entering Arizona, we went through a border patrol station that was not on the border at all. It claimed that it was responsible for finding 20,000 pounds of drugs in people’s cars. Just to make sure that we weren’t going into Mexico, Ed asked the border patrolman, who laughed at us, and sent us on our way.

We arrived in Tucson, checked in to the Quality Inn motel. The time changed again as Arizona does not recognize daylight savings time. The hotel was really nice and was built in adobe style architecture. There were many large cacti outside and a covered wagon. The motel had wireless internet, a decent breakfast, and laundry. We did some laundry and headed out to Dairy Queen for some ice cream between loads of laundry. We came back and fell fast asleep.

More Facts

FACT: Rivers do not need to include water.

FACT: Jeanette was a member of Atlantic Starr (why else would she be able to sign their terrible songs)

FACT: Arizona is the stupidest state (because they do not celebrate daylight savings time)

Carlsbad Caverns June 5

We went to Carlsbad Caverns on June 5th. We drove through West Texas, which was quite unpopulated. We saw lots of cows and oil drills on the sides of the road, but that was about it. It definitely became more desert like as we entered into New Mexico. We went on a tour of Carlsbad Caverns and we really enjoyed it! We also watched the bats fly out of the caves for their evening feeding at about 8:00 pm. It was pretty cool to see that many caves exit the cave that we had just explored. Apparently, 400-500 bats cramp into the space of the inside of a baseball hat. There are about 400,000 or so bats that fly out of the caves during the summer. During the winter, they migrate south to Mexico, Central America, and even Brazil (according to the Park Ranger). We attempted camping in Carlsbad, but by the time we left the bat show, it was hard to find the place that the Park Ranger had told us to go as it was dark (she said to pull off on a dirt road). Oh well...hopefully soon we will get to use our borrowed tent.

San Antonio Pictures

Sorry guys. We would have posted more pictures, but we're short on time and the internet is being fussy. If you want to see a lot of pictures, check out the link on the side of the page.

Random Facts by Ed

Fact: Fish are the goats of the sea (after Robert told us that the fish in Lake Travis eat sausage, cheese whiz, etc)

Fact: Cowboys dance the night away

San Antonio June 4

Hi guys. I first wanted to thank everyone for their birthday wishes. I really appreciate it. We had a great day in San Antonio. It was such a charming city...we were definitely impressed. In fact, we've liked the Texan cities the best thus far. We arrived in San Antonio around 10:30, visited the Alamo, and then walked around the downtown Riverwalk area. It was great. The pictures don't do this city justice. We saw Indiana Jones when it became really hot outside (around 3:30) and then walked around outside again. Then, we had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory...I know, not very authentic, but I love that place.

Austin June 1-4

We got to Austin in time for a late dinner in the downtown area. We went down to 6th Street to look for a restaurant upon recommendation of Jason’s friend who lives in Austin. We parked in the middle of the long downtown strip of bars and restaurants because we weren’t entirely sure where to go. We walked around until we found Z Tejas, which was a really cool looking restaurant…it was actually in 2 sections connected by a bridge. We got some good chips and salsa (guacamole based), salad with grilled chicken (for Jeanette), and pork tenderloin stuffed with chorizo (for Ed). We walked around downtown some more and saw the strip of bars for “young folks”. It was really nice. As we were walking, we heard lots of live music coming from the bars. There was also a really good band playing on one of the rooftops. We continued walking and eventually walked up to the state capitol, which was really nice. While walking, it was pretty windy, and Jeanette pulled a Marilyn Monroe with her skirt going flying up. Luckily, she caught it quick and wasn’t too embarrassed. We then headed back to the hotel.

The next morning we woke up and ate crappy hotel breakfast. This hotel offered the worst breakfast so far, especially since there wasn’t southern gravy anymore. We drove to Scubaland to pick up our scuba equipment for the day. We’re surprised that they thought that we would show up as we called only a week in advance and scheduled our open water dives in mid week. However, a really nice worker, Kerry, set everything up for us and sent us on our way with our scuba instructor, Robert. We had four tanks, wet suits, BCDs, regulators, weights, and, overall, lots of equipment. Our first three open water dives were completed at Texas State University – San Marcos Aquarena Center, which consists of springs. We had a lovely picnic in the parking lot consisting of pretzel, cheetos, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and bananas. We took a walk through the wetlands while waiting for our class to begin. We saw gars (which Ed correctly identified, thank you The Great New York State Fair), which are extremely hard to see, turtles, bass, and a bunch of fish. Jeanette got completely freaked out because it was a very swampy area and was scared to go diving in the swamp. Luckily, we saw the spring area before diving. It was crystal clear, about 20 feet deep, and very clean. Although we were a bit apprehensive of diving and scared our instructor would think we were horrible as we completed the pool portion in an extremely condensed one day, we met Robert and were immediately put at ease. He is definitely one of the nicest and most patient people we have ever met. We got a tour of the Aquarena center, including looking at the aquarium and seeing the bottom glass boats. This center used to privately owned and super cheesy. There was a mermaid show complete with swimming pigs. The area we were diving in had some remnants from the show including an underwater viewing station that we swam around. We then suited up for the dives. We re-learned how to put the gear together, put our wet suits on, baked in the sun for a little bit, and then dove in. We could barely walk to the platform because it was so hot and sunny. We don’t have the fins with booties, so it was burning our feet like crazy! The water was 72 degrees because it was from a spring…people even dive here in the winter….and it was wicked refreshing. While we were swimming around, there were different types of fish between 12-24 inches, crawheads, prawns, turtles, fountain darters (which are pretty tiny), etc. The fish were not scared of us at all and swam right up to us. We practiced some skills on the other dives including clearing a flooded mask, regulator recovery, buddy breathing, controlled emergency swimming ascent, maintaining neutral buoyancy, cramp removal, tired diver tow, etc. Robert was nice enough to take pictures of us underwater with his underwater camera. It was really cool. Around 7 pm. we started to wrap us and filled out our log books. We got out around 8, were starving, and went to dinner at a place called Threadgills, known for its home-style cooking. There was a live band there (we think it was called Jeff and Friends) consisting of three guitarists, a fiddler, a keyboardist, and a lady singer. Almost everyone in the band sang a song or two. They were good…a country jamboree. We were real creative in our menu selection…chicken fingers for Jeanette and buffalo chicken fingers for Ed. Ed noticed everything in Austin was spicier than in other places…everything from salsa to the “regular” buffalo chicken sauce. Ed watched the hockey game through multiple overtimes as Jeanette fell asleep.




Photos courtesy of Robert, our scuba instructor.

The next day, we woke up early for our next open water dive. Robert was nice enough to allow us to go out on his boat, a pontoon boat, called The Giant Stride. We learned how to set up our equipment again, this time on a boat. We went out to a place called Starnes Island at Lake Travis. We jumped into the water, at which point, Ed noticed he could barely see his feet. We descended down 50 feet and were freaking out a bit as we could hardly see around us. As we descended the water dropped from a warm 82 to a cool 68. It was scary being down there and not being able to see anything. It was okay once we settled at the bottom. We did a complete mask removal and clear and practiced hovering some more. Luckily, Robert held Jeanette’s hand for a lot of it so no one got lost. He also had a strobe light attached to the back of his BCD so we would be able to find him should we have gotten lost. We couldn’t find a sunken boat in the area, so we started to ascend. We stopped for a safety stop, which Jeanette didn’t know what we were doing. Ed signed the word safety to Jeanette and she wanted Ed to do the safety dance for the sign instead. Ed found an empty bottle of beer and pretended to drink it underwater. We brought it up with us to surface and recycled it. We then headed out to another spot, where a sunken boat was guaranteed. We descended another 45 feet, this time a little less scared, and saw the boat and a few fish (perch). It was cool to see, even though you couldn’t see that much with the poor visibility. We got back up on the boat, docked, and schlepped all the equipment to shore. We then loaded the equipment into golf carts and drove it to our car. After thanking Robert for all his help, we headed out to lunch. We got to a highly recommended BBQ placed, called County Line, at 2:30 only to find that they stopped serving lunch at 2:00. Ed was highly disappointed, so we headed out towards a park in the same area with the hopes of finding food on the way. We ended up eating at the Hula Hula on Lake Austin. Ed had a Hawaiian style hamburger with pineapple, bacon, Monterey Jack cheese, and peppers…it was okay. Jeanette had a grilled chicken sandwich with cheese…go figure. We decided to skip the park on the lake as we had just eaten on the lake, despite the promise of peacocks in the trees at the park, and opted to return our equipment instead. We returned our scuba stuff, got our temporary Scuba licenses, and went back to the hotel to shower. We headed back out and went to a place called Ziller Park and Lady Bird Johnson Lake. After a quick drive thru, we headed down to the South Congress shopping area…it was nice, but most stores were closed because we got such a late start (it was 6:30). We headed back downtown and got some pictures of the capitol while it was still light in downtown Austin. On the way to the capitol, Jeanette was interviewed by a local TV station, called KVUE, about the presidential election. She didn’t want to go on TV, but the reporter begged, and she somehow spurted out a logical answer. After visiting the capitol, we stopped at Jamba Juice as it was still 95 out at 7:30. It was quite windy, so it didn’t feel quite that hot. We walked around 4th Street, which is the bar section for the older people and heard some more live music. We walked around 6th Street again, checked out some movie times at a place that had beer, food, and movies, but it was sold out for the entire night. We walked down to a local music store and bought Ed the new Weezer CD. We walked back to the car and drove back to the hotel. We watched a little Office and Sex and the City reruns and went to sleep.





Overall, we really liked Austin. It seems like a really fun place to live…lots going on. It was really clean and the people were really friendly…they said “howdy” and “y’all” a lot.