May 22 - “Easy???”

We had a bit of a drive toward our next destination, so I paid attention to the surroundings once again. First item of note: 

I saw another flag: Don’t Tread on Me. Well, ok. 

We drove through the Baylor Mountains. I texted Josh to let him know. He mused that Baylor people always say they have a far reach. He didn’t know that included a whole mountain range. 

Speaking of mountains, we entered the mountain time zone on this trip. We also passed entrance to the Blue Origin research facility. Didn’t see Jeff Bezos or a rocket ship, though. So disappointing. 

We almost had another pet. Chris hit some kind of prairie mountain chicken thing. Or maybe it was a tiny little bunny rabbit. She was duly devastated, but Freddy, you are safe. No new sibling survived this time. 

Guadeloupe Mountains National Park … First actual goal achieved. We even did one of the “easy” hikes. Of course we forgot to take into account the drastic difference in elevation. We were huffing and puffing our way through to the end. Our smart watch even recognized something weird was going on. It asked if we were doing a workout and if we wanted to record it. Thanks, Smartpants. 

And that wasn’t even the hardest one. We forgot our earlier lesson and decided to hike another “easy little nature trail” (their words). Lots of nature, to be sure. Never did locate the “easy” though. It was a true, unpaved, not easy, long hike. But we made it. 

And strangely enough, not long afterwards, Chris was texting with Nathan. Of course he asked how she was doing with the hikes. Silence. I think she came up with something like, “We’re not talking about that.” She told me I would probably be hearing from him. She no sooner said that than the text came through asking me how she was really doing. Answer: No mention of chest pains, but there were occasions she was having breathing difficulties. Not much to be done there, other than stop and rest occasionally. 

All those hikes went so fast (actually we gained an hour with the time zone change), that we had time to drive the 20 minutes over to  Carlsbad Caverns. In all our years of traveling, neither of us had ever been in that one. We had to stop on the road to the visitor center. No problem. We just saw a whole herd of sheep chilling  on a nearby mountainside near a cave-like overhang. Very cool. 

The Cavern itself was magnanimous. We made the looooong walk down into the cave, taking what pictures we could along the way, and praying that the elevator would be working when we reached the bottom. They had been having issues with it overheating. To our great surprise and relief, it actually arrived shortly after we did. Phew. The views were amazing, of course. But we were tahrd (extreme spelling for “tired”). Let’s just say we had over 16,000 steps recorded on our health app. 

But that wasn’t all. We had enough time in the afternoon to drive up to the hotel we reserved and get our stuff all unloaded. After a rest, we found a McAlister’s Deli and had some dinner. We got some gas and headed back to the Caverns for the world famous exit of the bats. 

They did a Ranger-led program in conjunction with it. And while waiting for all the bats to exit, we spotted three deer on a nearby ridge. Critters! Pretty amazing to see the hundreds and hundreds of bats take flight in swirls of perfect formations. And as it got darker, we watched the swirls of bats fly across the full moon. I never thought I’d see formations as pretty as pelicans over the Gulf. But … well, maybe on the same page. I’m Beautiful. 

Oh! That reminds me. We adopted one of them. Beauregard Bottomley Bat.  Very cute dude. 

John‬ ‭8‬:‭12‬ ‭ says, Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”

Father, thanks for one more day of experiences we have never had before. Amen.