11 Day Road Trip...

 

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 Craig learned a few weeks ago he had to be in Tucson for work over Spring Break...my wheels started turning and I quickly discovered we could all tag along at very little cost to us and have a super fun road trip! The plans were put in motion and the kids are over the moon that we are off to White Sands, NM, Ruidoso, NM Flagstaff, AZ, The Grand Canyon, Tucson, AZ and Phoenix AZ!

Stop #1 was White Sands, NM...oh what a fun "dumpy town" this is!!! Not much to look at but we hit the jackpot on activities! We left last (Wednesday) night around 8pm and drove through the night in order to be able to have as much time here as possible. I was literally at breakfast at 10am with two friends on Wednesday when Melissa informed me that there is an additional awesome activity only 40 miles from our hotel...you will see it in stop #2! (They are doing just the NM part of our trip  a few days after us so she did a much better job researching the area!) I literally packed a family of 5 in less than 4 hours to be able to leave at night rather than this morning!!!

We arrived at 4:30 am (the kids actually slept most of the drive which was great!), threw everyone into beds and our rested children woke us before 8...we were off for a LONG day of fun! Let's not forget Craig's 35'th Birthday is also today!!! Poor guy...drive through the night, get no sleep and now put on a Birthday smile to enjoy the day of fun! Our first destination was the New Mexico Museum of Space (nerd fest if you ask me!) The boys and Craig all really enjoyed seeing the rockets, missiles, pods, etc and it ended up being a very fun hour poking through the museum!

Next stop...White Sands Sledding Park! Oh what a hidden gem this is!!! 300 square miles of white sand dunes plunked right in the middle of this mountain desert area...it literally looks like someone just dropped sand from the sky! Being that it is the middle of the week and Spring Break isn't actually until next week...it was empty! We literally saw less than 25 cars on the 16 mile path through the place!!! Armed with our sleds from the Lichts (who were here last year and got "robbed" on the sleds and graciously let us borrow!) we found our own private "cul-de-sac" to spend three hours sledding! It is literally white sand hills that looks like fresh snow for as far as you can see. Climbing the hills over and over again is the hardest part!!! Towards the end, an older couple stopped to watch the boys sledding and the lady actually ended up borrowing a sled to give it a try as well!

After quick showers for our sand filled kids, we were surprised with a bday cake delivered to the hotel by my parents and had a fun dinner celebrating Craig's big day! Dinner was followed by swimming to clean all the nooks and crannies filled with sand that the boys didn't get out in the shower!

It is now 8pm and we are all in bed, exhausted, a little burnt and anxiously waiting for tomorrow's adventure...snow tube sledding!!!!