Been a long time...
Well, time for exciting events in my life update:
1) My oldest sister is going to have a baby! It's due the beginning of February and I'm going to go down there for spring break to see him/her (my sister's not finding out the sex). It's going to be multi-racial, too, (half-white, half-black) making it the cutest baby in the history of babies (because we all know black babies are just cuter than white babies :-). I'm SOOOO freaking excited! I get to be an aunt!
2) Hurricane's that cause people to evacuate and close school rock my face off. Best trip ever. Here's the highlights:
Thursday: Leave Rice at 2:30am with Eric and his roommate, Max. Arrive Rosenberg Texas at 10:30am. Rosenburg is 30 miles from my house and it took us 8 hours. Started to run low on gas, but all gas gone. Noticed a gas station that no one could get to because the feeder was closed. Circle back and HALLELUJAH! there's gas. Decide that we are outta there and take the back-roads all the way to San Antonio (it took 14 hours when it should have only taken 2 1/2 to 3 hours). I get attacked by a biting cricket (yes laugh all you want, but they only exist in West Texas and New Mexico) and Eric gets a ridiculous call from his mom telling us to stay in San Antonio (where there are no hotels left of course) or to turn around and go back, and can't figure out why everyone who's fleeing the hurricane won't be in west Texas. Regardless, we drive on to Balmorhea State Park and arrive at 10:00pm. Our room is really nice: two bedrooms, three beds, porch, cute mexican adornments. We watch hurricane footage and bask in our genius route through the back-country. Then, after driving for basically 20 straight hours with no sleep, we crash by 11:00.
Friday: Awake at 8:30 to check-in/out and swim in their natural springs. It's beautiful outside, even CHILLY! The mountains in the background and the flowers and plants surrounding the spring (it circles the park like a moat) with catfish and mexican tetra and crayfish swimming in it with you. They have a big pool area to swim in too with a diving board. It is so fun and relaxing! They also have these amazing like miniature prairie dogs that are just too cute for words. Then we check out and head to the Guadalupe Monntains on the Texas/New Mexico border. Stop in Van Horn for gas and the car won't start BUT guess what's connected to this gas station?! That's right, a service station. We were going to stop for lunch anyway so we leave the car, go eat, come back and head on to the mountains. Set up camp in Guadalupe Mountains National Park and drive on to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. On the way, we see a roadrunner! He actually ran across the road right in front of my car. It was great. Explore the caverns for about an hour and a half and then come up to see the event Carlsbad is famous for. Every night at dusk between 300-500,000 Mexican Free-tailed Bats spiral up out of the cave to go out hunting. A huge centipede gave everyone quite a scare during the pre-show (the emcee got a little angry at this attention stealing arthropod, but we really enjoyed it). After the bats, we head back to camp and crash at 9:30.
Saturday: Awake 6:30am. Deer and I scare the shit out of each other (about 6 feet away). Prepare to climb the highest point in Texas: Guadalupe Peak. It's a 3000 ft. climb (over 8700 ft. above sea level). Just about to climb and notice it's National Park Free Fee day! Usually it would cost $3.00 a person to hike, but not September 24th! I takes about 2 hours and 40 minutes, but the view is entirely worth it. You can see for miles. It's so beautiful. It takes less than two hours to get down. We pack up and leave for White Sands, New Mexico. We get there around 6:00pm and guess what! Park Free Fee day again! WOOOOO! In White Sands, there are just these huge dunes of sand that cover an immense area and you can slide down them and play and watch the sunset. It's gorgeous. When it's a full moon, the reflections off the sand are just amazing. On those days, you can stay as late as you want because you can still see from the light from the moon. We got back to our hotel by 8:30 and were asleep shortly after 9:00.
Sunday: Rise 7:45am. Go to the local hot air balloon festival, then drive into El Paso, Texas. At 10:45am we crossed the border into Juarez, Mexico. We wandered around and then crossed back over to head on toward San Antonio. On our way we spotted a dust devil which was pretty great and nearly hit those prairie dog things because two were chasing each other across the road. We arrived in Garner State Park a little before 8 with nothing to do, so we went hunting for ice and smores. There weren't any marshmallows, so no smores, but we got ice for Max's and Eric's beer and sat on the hood of my car watching shooting stars and drinking beer until 1:15am. During that time we had two exciting animal spottings. The first was an armadillo, scuttling his way through the woods in front of our tents and the second was a skunk high-tailing it (literally) away from us as we walked to the bath house. Eric and Max also proceeded to chase imaginary animals through the bushes. Eventually we got tired and went to bed.
Monday: Awake 8:00am. Check-in/out and pack up to go tubing. Unfortunately there wasn't enough water in that river so we headed on through San Antonio to the Guadalupe. We stopped there and went tubing for around 4 hours. We saw a water mocassin, too, just gliding his way through the water. This was Max's and my first time and it was a blast. After getting significantly more sun-burned, we headed back to town with no traffic hold-ups anywhere and were home by 7:45.
So that's the exciting events of my life recently. School is going well. This year is going to be a blast. Also, I have an entire camera devoted to this trip and as soon as I get it developed, I will post the pictures that document our hurricane-avoiding trek.
1) My oldest sister is going to have a baby! It's due the beginning of February and I'm going to go down there for spring break to see him/her (my sister's not finding out the sex). It's going to be multi-racial, too, (half-white, half-black) making it the cutest baby in the history of babies (because we all know black babies are just cuter than white babies :-). I'm SOOOO freaking excited! I get to be an aunt!
2) Hurricane's that cause people to evacuate and close school rock my face off. Best trip ever. Here's the highlights:
Thursday: Leave Rice at 2:30am with Eric and his roommate, Max. Arrive Rosenberg Texas at 10:30am. Rosenburg is 30 miles from my house and it took us 8 hours. Started to run low on gas, but all gas gone. Noticed a gas station that no one could get to because the feeder was closed. Circle back and HALLELUJAH! there's gas. Decide that we are outta there and take the back-roads all the way to San Antonio (it took 14 hours when it should have only taken 2 1/2 to 3 hours). I get attacked by a biting cricket (yes laugh all you want, but they only exist in West Texas and New Mexico) and Eric gets a ridiculous call from his mom telling us to stay in San Antonio (where there are no hotels left of course) or to turn around and go back, and can't figure out why everyone who's fleeing the hurricane won't be in west Texas. Regardless, we drive on to Balmorhea State Park and arrive at 10:00pm. Our room is really nice: two bedrooms, three beds, porch, cute mexican adornments. We watch hurricane footage and bask in our genius route through the back-country. Then, after driving for basically 20 straight hours with no sleep, we crash by 11:00.
Friday: Awake at 8:30 to check-in/out and swim in their natural springs. It's beautiful outside, even CHILLY! The mountains in the background and the flowers and plants surrounding the spring (it circles the park like a moat) with catfish and mexican tetra and crayfish swimming in it with you. They have a big pool area to swim in too with a diving board. It is so fun and relaxing! They also have these amazing like miniature prairie dogs that are just too cute for words. Then we check out and head to the Guadalupe Monntains on the Texas/New Mexico border. Stop in Van Horn for gas and the car won't start BUT guess what's connected to this gas station?! That's right, a service station. We were going to stop for lunch anyway so we leave the car, go eat, come back and head on to the mountains. Set up camp in Guadalupe Mountains National Park and drive on to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. On the way, we see a roadrunner! He actually ran across the road right in front of my car. It was great. Explore the caverns for about an hour and a half and then come up to see the event Carlsbad is famous for. Every night at dusk between 300-500,000 Mexican Free-tailed Bats spiral up out of the cave to go out hunting. A huge centipede gave everyone quite a scare during the pre-show (the emcee got a little angry at this attention stealing arthropod, but we really enjoyed it). After the bats, we head back to camp and crash at 9:30.
Saturday: Awake 6:30am. Deer and I scare the shit out of each other (about 6 feet away). Prepare to climb the highest point in Texas: Guadalupe Peak. It's a 3000 ft. climb (over 8700 ft. above sea level). Just about to climb and notice it's National Park Free Fee day! Usually it would cost $3.00 a person to hike, but not September 24th! I takes about 2 hours and 40 minutes, but the view is entirely worth it. You can see for miles. It's so beautiful. It takes less than two hours to get down. We pack up and leave for White Sands, New Mexico. We get there around 6:00pm and guess what! Park Free Fee day again! WOOOOO! In White Sands, there are just these huge dunes of sand that cover an immense area and you can slide down them and play and watch the sunset. It's gorgeous. When it's a full moon, the reflections off the sand are just amazing. On those days, you can stay as late as you want because you can still see from the light from the moon. We got back to our hotel by 8:30 and were asleep shortly after 9:00.
Sunday: Rise 7:45am. Go to the local hot air balloon festival, then drive into El Paso, Texas. At 10:45am we crossed the border into Juarez, Mexico. We wandered around and then crossed back over to head on toward San Antonio. On our way we spotted a dust devil which was pretty great and nearly hit those prairie dog things because two were chasing each other across the road. We arrived in Garner State Park a little before 8 with nothing to do, so we went hunting for ice and smores. There weren't any marshmallows, so no smores, but we got ice for Max's and Eric's beer and sat on the hood of my car watching shooting stars and drinking beer until 1:15am. During that time we had two exciting animal spottings. The first was an armadillo, scuttling his way through the woods in front of our tents and the second was a skunk high-tailing it (literally) away from us as we walked to the bath house. Eric and Max also proceeded to chase imaginary animals through the bushes. Eventually we got tired and went to bed.
Monday: Awake 8:00am. Check-in/out and pack up to go tubing. Unfortunately there wasn't enough water in that river so we headed on through San Antonio to the Guadalupe. We stopped there and went tubing for around 4 hours. We saw a water mocassin, too, just gliding his way through the water. This was Max's and my first time and it was a blast. After getting significantly more sun-burned, we headed back to town with no traffic hold-ups anywhere and were home by 7:45.
So that's the exciting events of my life recently. School is going well. This year is going to be a blast. Also, I have an entire camera devoted to this trip and as soon as I get it developed, I will post the pictures that document our hurricane-avoiding trek.