Back to LBB, and off to Carlsbad!

Monday morning dawned dark and early for us--we needed to get Glo back to the airport in Lubbock (a good 4.5 hour drive). Thankfully we got there early enough to make another stop at Cast Iron Grill, and lucky me, their special of the day was chicken and dumplings (or as they say in Michigan "chicken fricassee"). Seriously, being back in Michigan now, the thing I miss most about Texas is the food. The restaurants make made-from-scratch food, my belly never got sick, and we didn't eat anything that wasn't delicious.

After we dropped off Glo, Hannah and I drove the three hours straight to Carlsbad. We needed to do laundry, and bless the hotel worker's heart because she gave us the room straight across from the laundry room. I passed out from lack of sleep (and possibly the huge amount of hiking we had done over the last few days), Hannah did laundry, we ordered some food for dinner (the food in New Mexico wasn't anything stellar), and watched El Bachelor ;-)

Tuesday morning, we were up early to spend the day in Carlsbad Caverns. I love Carlsbad. It's one of the few memories I have from my childhood where life seemed pretty good. One of the best things about the park? The visitor center was OPEN! Like, every exhibit was open, and we spent a good hour learning more about the park, and filling in Hannah's Junior Ranger packet ;-) There was a ranger who stopped to talk to us, and he could hardly believe both our Lubbock and Traverse City connections (both places he's lived in and worked). Hannah ended up asking him about getting a job as a ranger, something she's wanted to do basically her entire life, and he told us what we've picked up from other sources--it basically takes years, you need connections, you'll never make any money, and it's really difficult to even get a foot in the door. Yep, Hannah thinks that after she's visited every park in the nation, she'll collect all her junior ranger pins, take a picture of them, send them into the national park service, and they'll send her a ranger hat. Yep, because let's face it, Hannah just wants to wear the hat ;-)

Hannah came so prepared for our trip--it's obviously not her first hiking adventure. She even brought her headlamp! I can't tell you the number of times I asked her to take it out to shine it in some dark corner of the caverns....and while waiting for me to come out of the bathroom, she used it to work on her Junior Ranger packet ;-)

The caverns were amazing, because we were the only people in them. I mean, there might have been some people several hundred feet below us, but we couldn't hear or see them. It felt like hallowed ground. We walked past a ranger at one point, and I commented how no one was there. He said, "I find the silence is rewarding." Amen. We ended up hiking every trail possible in the cave, and what a different experience from previous visits. It was eerily quiet, and unlike when we've gone during the summer and we breathe a sigh of relief when we enter the cool cave, it was warmer in the cave than outside. The cavern though was very dry because of the drought above ground, so there weren't as many *drips* heard around.