Travel Statistics
Our week-long trip covered 2,457 miles and took us from California through Arizona, New Mexico, briefly into Texas, and back. Our 2021 Toyota RAV4 Prime used 64.5 gallons of gas and had 3 EV charges from solar for roughly 90 miles of EV driving. The average MPG was around 38, with the cheapest gas being $3.70/gal in Roswell, NM and the most expensive $4.89/gal in Coachella, CA.
8/4 – Whittier, CA to Tucson, AZ (475 Miles)
We left around 6am, stopped for coffee and juices around 9:45am, and got to our hotel around 4pm. We went for a swim and had a yummy dinner at North Italia.
8/5 – Tucson, AZ to Carlsbad, NM (516 Miles)
We started our trip around 6:30am, and noticed that the street lights in Tucson look like brontosaurus necks sticking out over the street.
This journey should have been rather direct, but I-10 E had major construction that took us on a 49 mile detour north to Safford, AZ and then through Lordsburg, NM. In Lordsburg, traffic slowed to a crawl as semi trucks needed to be checked individually if they could fit through a low bridge.
We then drove through El Paso, Texas, very close to the Mexico border, and a final 130 service-free miles stretch down US-62 E to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Due to potential cloudy weather on 8/6, we decided to do the Bat Flight Program tonight instead. As a result of the earlier detour, driving to the hotel and back wasn’t an option so we had a picnic and played some games at nearby Rattlesnake Springs park.
We finished the evening with the Bat Flight program. Basically you sit quietly and wait for the sun to set and the estimated 400,000 bats to exit a natural cave. No cameras are allowed because flashes can disturb the bats. The park rangers talked about the caverns, the bats, and answered questions. We saw small groups of 20-40 bats leave the cave at a time, and some owls and hawks waiting for a bat snack. It wasn’t the massive amount of bats all at once like we had imagined, but nature never performs perfectly on demand.
8/6 – Carlsbad, NM (~75 Miles)
Andrew’s birthday! We first went to the Living Desert Zoo in Carlsbad, which was small but the right amount considering the hot weather.
We arrived at 1:15pm for our appointment to go into the Carlsbad Caverns themselves!
The caverns are amazing and large! To get down the 750 feet, there are switchbacks to walk it or an elevator that takes one minute. I was hoping for the walk but was vetoed and we used the elevator. The “Big Room Trail” is 1.25 miles of relatively flat path through the biggest open section of the cave. The audio tour provided useful info at each stop. It was worth the trip! Being so dark, pictures were sometimes a bit blurry.
8/7 – Carlsbad, NM to Roswell, NM to Albuquerque, NM (276 Miles)
We stopped by the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, NM. The kiddos were interested in the audio of first hand accounts of the incident, but otherwise found the museum a bit silly.
We ate lunch at a cute diner called Penny’s Diner in Vaughn, NM and arrived in Albuquerque, NM around 3pm. Once checked into our hotel, Justin and the kiddos went to the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque. The outside had mockups of the trinity nuclear test setup, many airplanes with as B-29, B-52, F-105, F-16, and various missiles used throughout for defense and space.
Once back inside, we saw other exhibits about nuclear power plants, the radioactive products made for “health” or kids, nuclear storage and some other sciency things.
Michael could have spent hours talking to the volunteer in the above picture. He demonstrated testing alpha, beta and gamma radiation with a Geiger counter, and afterwards they spent a while longer talking about nuclear fusion and other elements. Here was a shaky clip of testing uranium glass and fiestaware (not shown was an americium-241 sample from a smoke detector).
To finish up the day, we visited a Barnes and Noble bookstore because the kiddos needed more reading material.
8/8 – Albuquerque, NM to Rimrock, AZ (380 Miles)
We arrived to see Grandpa Gins and Grandma Cheryl in Rimrock in the afternoon, and immediately made good use of the pool (and no one looked at the camera in any of my pictures, sorry!). Later in the distance we could see the monsoon season dumping rain and some lightning.
Some games of chess and quarto were had, a lovely dinner and then we were all tired and got into bed.
8/9 – Rimrock, AZ
We found that there is a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Sedona and decided to attend service. The group was welcoming and we enjoyed it. Their minister was on vacation so the speaker was SD Nelson, an illustrator and author of children’s books related to American Indian stories. His experiences and ancestry as a Standing Rock Sioux tribe member from the Dakotas influences his themes. The topic was “The Circle of Life: The Lakota Way”.
After service and lunch, we returned to visit with Grandpa Gins. He showed us a place special to him, the Sedona Mago Wellness Retreat. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that has built a very beautiful retreat deep in the Sedona country, with a very pretty lake, nice facilities and a connection to nature. I managed to only get a couple pictures of the lake.
Afterwards, we cruised through Cottonwood and neighboring towns, and came to the rescue to help Grandpa Gins with a flat tire. We celebrated his birthday with a dinner at a nearby Mexican food restaurant.
8/10 – Rimrock, AZ
After breakfast, we went to the Crane Petroglyph Heritage Site. It was a very warm but short walk to see these carvings of medicine men, animals, and possible farming calendars and celebration of events.
After that, we had some pizza for lunch and headed to the Crescent Moon Picnic Site in Sedona. People were enjoying swimming in the streams, and we hiked around a bit so the kiddos could get some energy out climbing on the rocks.
We returned to visit some more with Grandpa Gins and Grandma Cheryl, do some more swimming and start to pack up for the early return back home.
8/11 – Rimrock, AZ to Whittier, CA (447 Miles)
We left around 4:30am and drove home with the minimum of stops, picked up our Winnie dog, and got home around noon to unpack and clean up before starting school the following day.
It was a great trip filled with neat things to see and do.