Our Vacation...

The reason that we haven't posted in a while is because we have been on a mini vacation for the last 5 days. We were lucky enough to have our friends Edward and Melissa invite us to a fun-filled couple days in White's City. It will be a very memorable experience for many different reasons but the best part was Carlsbad Cavern.

On Wednesday night we got to see the mass flight of the bats coming out for their daily dinner. We saw hundreds of thousands of bats fly out of the natural entrance at the same time. When the majority of people left, we all went closer to the natural entrance to get a better view and we almost got hit by a couple bats that strayed from the group; we were that close. You can see the natural entrance in some of the pictures below.

We came back the next morning to see the Cavern and we decided to take the natural entrance route. We took an almost vertical path down the cave and were definitely tested on our leg endurance (Diana is still sore!). Here is the view looking up out through the natural entrance.

Here are some of my favorite pictures in the Cavern. Sorry about the quality but being 800 feet below the surface doesn't help with photography.

Do you see the man's face below?


Other than the Cavern, we will always remember our experience at the only local restaurant, the Velvet Garter. On Thursday night, we went to eat at 6 PM and didn't get out until almost 9 PM. It took us almost 45 minutes to be acknowledged and an hour to be seated (I had to ask if we could seat ourselves). Let's just say that the waitress/manager was not that friendly. But I guess it doesn't matter what they do, they are the only restaurant there. It's a good thing that the morning restaurant (in the same building) had excellent waitresses. Here is a picture at the Velvet Garter saloon. We were glad that the not-so-young waitresses didn't actually wear garters and the only velvet was on the walls.

The other part of our vacation was the Parker Reunion. On Friday we drove 3 1/2 hours back to Las Cruces to drop of Edward and Melissa and immediately drove 2 1/2 more hours to Montosa. There wasn't a great turnout but we had a lot of fun. As always there were cards played (I won't say who won), and a lot of food eaten. It was nice seeing a lot of familiar faces again.

With all the driving and running around, Diana was just a little bit tired. Here is a picture of the ride home.

It was a fun 5 days that we needed before we soon have to go to work. Thanks Ed and Mel for inviting us, thanks Mom and Dad for taking care of our poultry, and thanks Mel and Jon and Mark and Tammie for taking care of our dogs.