Land of Enchantment!

Yesterday we got back from a family vacation to New Mexico! The biggest reason we went there was because it was Mom's favorite place (or at least, on the short list) and we wanted to scatter her ashes there. Like we did with Dad at the Grand Canyon a few years ago. We left Warsaw a week ago Friday, headed to Indy for a Park-Sleep-Fly deal and stayed overnight in a motel near the airport where we could leave the van. I realized too late I forgot my hat and sunglasses. We had a late morning flight and connection in Dallas on the way to Albuquerque, which meant that we didn't have time to get lunch so the bag of snack mix had to do until we got there. We got lunch and the rental car (Hyundai Santa Fe - nice) and headed to the AirBnB that Thomas found. It was a modern cabin located inside Santa Fe National Forest, accessible only by a few miles of bumpy dirt road. But what a place! Right by a stream, with a hot tub, deck, 3 BR, secondary cabin with bedroom and bathroom (Alex took that), fully stocked kitchen, everything. What an amazing place. Sunday Alex and I went on a bike tour of the town of Santa Fe with Lauran and Thomas, while Beth and Missy hit the shopping downtown. The bike tour was a lot of fun, although we hit too many art galleries. I didn't really want to stop and look around most of them. Except maybe the wind sculpture ones. Anyway, afterwards we all hit the Railyard district to relax a bit, got some green chili cheeseburgers, and then Alex and I went to a big.... I don't know what to call it.... art installation? Weird escape room? called Meow Wolf, which Alex was super excited about ever since he found out about it. Apparently all his online friends know about Meow Wolf and are super jealous that he got to go. It's sort of an artsy setup of ~70 rooms built into an old bowling alley building, with each one by a different artist and with a different out there theme, but with maybe a third of the rooms built as a mock-up of a family house and connecting in with some overarching story about weird experiments and crossing dimensions. Cool, but more Alex's thing. We grilled dinner back at the cabin. Monday, we all headed about an hour up the road into the desert to New Mexico Whitewater Adventures to go rafting. At first we thought it was a full half day trip, but by the time it was over we'd only been in the river for around 2 hours, maybe. But it was a great 2 hours. We rafted the Rio Grande, through maybe 6 or 8 good rapids, and floated/paddled the rest. What a fun time. In the evening we went to a restaurant that Mom had really liked called Tomacita's, which we thought was ok. Tuesday was a chill day, mostly, we relaxed at the house, did a bit of hiking in the forest, and in the afternoon we scattered Mom's ashes in the national forest, by a flowering cactus and a desert juniper tree. In the evening we all went into Santa Fe to catch the new Indiana Jones movie, which we all really liked. Wednesday we hit the road, on the way to Carlsbad. The drive from Santa Fe to Carlsbad is full of nothing at all. Empty land. Desolate. Nowhere to stop for a bathroom break.... we stopped in Roswell to see the UFO museum and get lunch, but it was kinda disappointing. A lot of reading to do in the museum there, not much really interesting. And the visitor's center was closed. We got a few pictures in front of a UFO mural and that was about it... and drove the rest of the way to Carlsbad another couple hours away. Once we checked in (to a very janky hotel room...with a very non-level floor so all the drawers and doors wouldn't stay shut) we went to the National Park for the evening bat flight program. There is a stone amphitheater at the cave entrance, and every evening at dusk somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 bats fly out of the cave for the night. Not all in one huge group, but a constant stream of bats that is really cool. Thursday was cave day: we all did the cave tour. Missy and I walked down the natural entrance with Thomas and Laura, Beth and Alex took the elevator. But walking took longer than we thought it would so I was pretty sure that Beth and Alex must have already been and gone by the time we got there. We went on for a while, then Missy needed a restroom (which they have down there) and as we walked back to the central area, there were Beth and Alex! They had been waiting for us to show up for a while. Good thing Missy and I showed up when we did because they were about to go on without us. And Missy had been ready to exit. But I'm glad we found each other because the rest of the cavern was incredible! Like Mammoth Cave x10. We walked the whole length and breadth of the big room, over a mile, before coming back out. Amazing. Then we hit the road back to Albuquerque and overnighted at a casino resort. We had thought we were staying at the same one Laura and Thomas did but were mistaken, so we said goodbyes over the phone since they had an early flight Friday. Our flight was early afternoon, so we had time to hit the restaurant from "Breaking Bad" which is Los Pollos Hermanos in the show, but Twister's in real life. The kids thought that was cool. The food was ok. I forgot to gas up the car before pulling into the rental return so we had to go back out again but we still made it with plenty of time. The layover in Kansas City got longer and longer as the layover progressed, so ultimately we were there for around 5 hours. By the time we got back to Indy it was 12:30 am Saturday, and YAY our checked bags were not on the plane with us. Apparently they never got off the plane in KC and went on to St. Louis. At least it wasn't too far....it was 2:00 before we had things taken care of at the airport, the hotel shuttle stopped at 11:30 so we called an Uber to get us to the hotel and just got a room there again for the night. They had our bags at IND by 10 in the morning, so we picked them up and headed home. Oh yeah, I also left my Kindle on the plane and have no hope of ever getting it back.