Adam's Blog July 14th, Day 9!

Today we set out with the goal to make it most of the way across New Mexico so we start out early. We are welcomed with a lot of pretty canyon land as we cruise across the state towards Albuquerque. Some lone little sunflowers along the side of the road are pretty little sights. Shortly out of town a combination of a bird and a jack rabbit with a suicide pact attempt to have me run them over. I manage to avoid it narrowly and watch them flipping me off in the rear view. I break in to another one of my sodas, a sarsaparilla. I really like this one and it's gone way too fast. As we cruise we find that the road is increasingly winding to get around some of these rock formations but the views are great and some of the symbols for the road are actually painted on these rocks. We also happen across another dead skunk which causes Gideon to start asking who made the car smell and say that it is making his nose hurt.

We pick up lunch in the city and head out to the Ice Cave and Bandera Volcano. This is a pretty cool place. As we pull up there is a small trading post, nothing to write home about, but there are hummingbird feeders here and they are very active. As we walk by them to get to the trails you can hear the humming of the hummingbirds. The first stop is up at the volcano caldera. It's a pretty hike up the hill with lots of views and old lava flows. Every tenth step Gideon complains that there's another rock in his shoe so after the fifth time stopping, I just pick him up and put him on my shoulders so we can get to the top some time today. It really is impressive. At the observation point I put Gideon down to take some pictures finally and he starts throwing rocks. We ask him to pose with his sister and take some pictures himself but he informs us that he's too busy "Bamming rocks". We head down to the ice cave which is actually an old lava tube that has collapsed. It is really refreshing to head down there after hiking up the caldera previously. At the bottom is a small frozen lake and ice heading up the cave walls.

Before completely leaving we decide to go potty. This is Abigail's first experience with a pit toilet. After she comes out the first thing she says to me is "You shouldn't look down before you sit on one of those". I ask her why, expecting to get the answer that it's gross looking or something. Nope, Abby responds "It makes you afraid that you're going to fall all the way down there the whole time". Gideon doesn't seem to be phased in the least by it. We head out to the next stop.

We end the day stopping at Church Rock outside of Gallup, NM. It's a very pretty park with some gorgeous rock formations but the more amusing thing here for the trip is the prairie dogs. This park is infested with them but we managed to miss the fact on the way in since we were so focused on the rock formations. On the way out we are looking at some of them in the picnic area when Courtney nearly hits one running across the street. Roadkill number two of the day avoided. Off to dinner and the hotel and bed.

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