I’m not sure if I have mentioned before in my posts, that in our travels thus far, we have not yet found a place we love so much that we want to give up our ramblin’. That said, we have found a few places that we are pretty darn sure we never want to live…namely, Oklahoma. On our journey west back in March, a rock hit my windshield, cracking it. On our journey back home in October, again in OK, another cracked windshield. Coincidence? Maybe. A sign to stay away from this cursed land plagued with tornados, earthquakes, and who knows what type of toxins leached into the water from all the drilling for black gold. Heed taken. The point of this ramble is that I decided to find a route back west from Memphis that did not involve driving through Oklahoma. I started my research and found that if we drove through Texas, we could see 3 more national parks on our way back; Carlsbad Caverns, Guadalupe Mountains, and Saguaro. This route would obviously add miles and time to the trip back, but we had time and were under budget for the trip, so why not? Sold!

While we avoided Oklahoma, the drive through Dallas/ Fortworth (where one ends and the other begins, I could not tell) was awful. Another place I never want to live. We made it through and stayed the night in Abilene to get some rest and head out early to Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks. We stayed in Whites City, a tiny town just at the entrance of Carlsbad Caverns and about 30 min from Guadalupe Mountains NP. We made it to the caverns by late morning and hiked in and out of the cave through the natural entrance. After the hike we rested and waited for the bats to leave the cave for the evening. They do not allow any electronic devices to be used during the bat flight, so there are no photos of that. It was an awesome experience watching them fly away into the setting sun.