Baby, You Can Drive My Car

We got a late start yesterday morning. The boys were enjoying our extra nice accommodations. It's funny, several people had told us that El Paso wasn't a very nice city, but so far that hotel was the nicest one we stayed at. We are currently in Big Spring, Texas which I accidentally called Big Toe at some point during our drive yesterday. In actuality, it is more like the lint you find between your toes. But I digress.

We left El Paso, Texas and drove north on some state highways until we reached Carlsbad Caverns. We arrived around 1:30. Remembering my promise to my doctor, we chose to hike down into the caverns. It was over a mile hike as we descended 800 feet. It was a fairly steep and wet trail, but the cool air was a welcome relief. As we went deeper and deeper into the caverns, we saw stalactites, stalagmites, straws, popcorn, and draperies. We tried to take some photos, but the lighting is dim and our camera low quality.

Once down at the bottom, we took another hike around The Big Room and saw mirror lake, the bottomless pit, and more rock formations on the 1.5 mile jaunt. It was beautiful and amazing that all of this was hidden down there for so many years. By the end of that hike, we'd seen enough, so we took the elevator up to the top (no we didn't hike out). We knew we had another long drive to our final destination of the day, Big Toe, I mean Big Spring, Texas.


We plugged the motel address into our GPS system to see if there was a better way to get back to the interstate. When we looked at the atlas, it seemed like we were going to do a lot of back tracking. The GPS came through and plotted a route that took us on state highways and county roads through oil fields. We drove for 4 hours on flat, straight roads and passed hundreds of oil wells rhythmically moving up and down.

As a birthday present, Joe was the first son to drive my car. I'll admit I was nervous. The one thing that made it easier was that we were driving in Nowheresville, and the only real worries were the gusts of wind that would come through on occasion. At some point, we noticed we were running low on gas, so we searched for gas stations on the GPS, and found we needed to go 15 miles in the opposite direction to find some gas. Can you imagine the irony of running out of gas while you are surrounded by oil fields for miles and miles? Fortunately, we found a gas station, filled up and got back on track. But before we did, our GPS tried to take us on dirt and gravel county roads that looked like private roads into the oil fields. I'm sure it was trying to find the quickest way back to a state highway, but seriously, we were not going to off road it to save ten minutes!


Although it was a lot of driving with minimal scenery, we had plenty to keep us occupied. We've been listening to an audio recording of The Hunger Games. It's quite good and it's the first in a trilogy, so we have more to look forward to. Also, Zach created a playlist with 16 hours of music. The majority of the songs have something to do with traveling, driving, or cars. We listened to the Beach Boys, Boston, The Cars, AC/DC, and a variety of other bands. Joe and Zach had planned to play a particular song when one of them was finally allowed the honor of driving my car. So while we drove through the oil fields, we enjoyed the sounds of Florence and the Machine belting out "Dog Days are Over." They picked this song, because they knew it would remind me of the You Tube video I had seen recently, and they were trying to loosen my white knuckled grip on the seat.


You can view the video here: Calming the Baby Beast If you haven't seen it, you should. This baby is adorable and his joy infectious.


We ended the day at a Cracker Barrel celebrating Joe's birthday in Midland, Texas, and then headed the final 30 miles to our motel which is really a dump. I'm sitting here in the lobby typing up this post and I've witnessed:

1. The night manager complain to another employee that a worker did not arrive this morning to make breakfast, and that she didn't think the worker should have ever been given a second chance.
2. A homeless man be told that coffee and milk are for the guests of the motel, but he could keep what he had already taken.
3. The housekeeping staff sit around a table and whine about how they almost quit yesterday.

I'm ready to move on. I'm sure Big Spring has some positive points, but I'd rather not wait around to discover them.