Taos Summer 2013 Day 1

We just got home from an amazing summer vacation. It was so fun and we did so much that I feel like I'll never get it all written out. I think I will break it into bite sized bits.
On Thursday afternoon, I had the luggage packed, the house clean, the garbage taken out. I was cutting up veggies for dinner when my wrist "popped" and then went limp. I ran to the pharmacy to get a brace and some medication and decided to deal with hit when we got home from our trip. So that happened.
We woke up at 5:45AM on Friday morning and were in the car on our way by 6:20AM. We drove all day. The kids were great. I had downloaded tons of audio books on their kindle fires including twelve hours of Henry Huggins books narrated by Neil Patrick Harris. They loved them. We stopped for a picnic in Rooney Park in Fort Stockton. I had packed sushi for our picnic and the kids scarfed it down and then played on the playground. We continued our drive and thanks to the time change, arrived in Carlsbad, NM around 2:30PM.
We checked into our hotel, the Fairfield Inn, which was expensive, but clean and nice. We dropped off our luggage, changed into tennis shoes and drove on to the caverns. We were so excited we forgot to stop and fill up the tank with gas, and came perilously close to running out.
The caverns were amazing! We walked in, a nice gentle walk, not too hard. It was dark and sometimes steep, and very cold, but I'm so glad we did it. I wish we had done more research and known to bring a jacket, but it was manageable. We paid for the audio tour and we were so glad that we did. They had kid audio tours for Davis and Sam and they really enriched our tour. We learned so much. The caverns were enormous and each turn brought awe inspiring sights. I can't really describe it and the pictures don't really capture, but you must go if you can. It is truly an amazing sight.
We drove back to the town and had a great dinner at a restaurant we found on Yelp. We all went to bed relatively early as we were very excited about arriving in Taos the next day.