Johns Trippin'

We're slowing things down a bit for the winter. We're spending 5 weeks in Tucson, AZ and then another month in Palm Springs, CA. We're looking forward to staying in one place for a little bit! Before Tucson, our longest stay anywhere was 10 days. Our campground in Tucson is full of citrus trees, and they are ripe! After Palm Springs, we're going to be heading up through California, which has 9 National Parks. Some of those parks are in the mountains, so we need to time our trip such that we don't arrive too soon and get snowed out. We're planning that leg of the trip right now. We're also going to use the coming weeks in Tucson to catch up on our blogging. We've fallen a bit behind!

We arrived at Las Cruces KOA in Las Cruces, NM with no national park plans. I picked this place because it was on the way to Tucson, AZ. It had great reviews online and those people said that you had to get a "view site." We got one! Our view of Organ Mountains Here is a better view of them. We drove past a delightful roadrunner made of recycled material on the side of the road perched at a rest stop. The above picture shows what was behind our RV site. The kids enjoyed the playground that was just a skip and a hop over yonder.   While I did the laundry, the kids played with some other kids and Michael talked with their dad. We ended up having a campfire, s'mores and hot chocolate with them and their four children. The kids loved throwing a glow-in-the-dark ball back and forth to each other. I really enjoyed talking to other adults! They told us about some things in town such as the free Museum of Nature and Science that we went to after going to the library the next day....

The Ultimate Adventures of the Johns Family at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park Poem by Caleb (Story below)   Up the land to Oliver Lee Driving up in our RV Just desert in sight not one tree We set up at a Campsite quite hastily For it was getting dark and hard to see then we went to sleep nice and tight and slept slept slept to sleep out the night The next day we hiked to a spring It had a lot of bees (Asher got a sting) And I don't remember much else of that that date Other then we went to bed late We went to sleep nice and tight  And slept slept slept to sleep out the night Back at Carlsbad KOA  We met a kid named Max so today He came here and with him we played And for a few days he stayed  And when he came we went on a trail It was a perfect day no rain or hail We hiked to a creek then a grotto With cattail, ferns, and ocotillo Along with the stream were three waterfalls And the ferns were pretty and hanging off walls There in the stream we made a dam We ma...

More sand! Just a few weeks removed from Great Sand Dunes National Park is White Sands National Park. It's not breaking news to say that sand isn't the same everywhere, and this was no exception. The sand at this park was — wait for it — white. It was gypsum. The sand at Great Sand Dunes was more of a yellowish brown, which is what I think of when I hear the word "sand." Not only was the sand here white, but it was very fine. These dunes were also much smaller than the ones at Great Sand Dunes. In fact, they were more like hills. That may be why they don't use the word "dunes" in the park's name. One unique thing about this park is that it's completely surrounded by the White Sands Missile Testing Range. Completely. That means it closes during tests (none happened during our stay). I suppose it's bad press to blow up a group of national park visitors. Just north of the park is the site of the very first atomic bomb detonation, the Trinity Sit...