Carlsbad Caverns Pictures

Above you can see the natural entrance to Carlsbad Caverns. The night before we watched hundreds of thousands of bats swirl out of this opening in the desert like a tornado!

In a series of S turns and steep ramps you descend 750 feet below the surface to see some of the most breathtaking geological formations imaginable lit with disney-quality lighting. You are permitted to take as many pictures as you want, but I found it nearly impossible to get a good shot underground, but no biggie since the bookstore has very affordable photos, postcards, and books.

You can see some examples of the pictures I wanted to take but couldn't get to come out Here.


Here's my (freshly 6 year-old) Scote. The blue folder behind his back is his junior ranger booklet. If you've never been to a National Park, the junior ranger program is a small workbook that you buy for a dollar, the kids do activities in the park and have rangers sign off on the different tours and programs they attend. Once they are complete you return them to be checked and the kids are fussed over, sworn in, and given iron-on badges and an announcement over the loudspeaker.


Here they are with their badges. They were so proud of being junior rangers they wanted to donate the rest of their spending money to help the park. I told them that any money we spend in the park helps the park, so it was okay to buy something they liked instead. They still put their loose change in a collection box, though.

It was a great trip!

~EH

Field Trip

Well, the field trip today was supposed to be to the planetarium, only they are closed until September 1st, so last minute we went to the zoo instead. It didn't fit in with our prehistory plans, but it was fun anyhow.

We did manage to sneak some prehistory in there, though.

At one point they saw a faux rock wall inside the sea lion exhibit that had shells embedded and they started hopping around excitedly saying they found a giant piece of fossiliferous limestone, and later the kids spent their own money to buy some polished rocks from the machine.

It's funny how sometimes even without planning things that you are learning have a way of coming up no matter where you are. Not only did the geology manage to creep up on us, but Dodo had fun reading some of the scientific names in Latin. The ones with colors in their names she was able to understand, so that was really cool too.

Sorry the picture quality on these is so poor, I had to set it way low since like a big retard I forgot my memory card in the van!

NOTE: If you look at the picture above you can see how much Scote is growing to look like his father, the likeness is just astounding! You can see a picture of Ssgt Eccentric here for comparison. Please disregard his ridiculous hair...his unit is known as the "mohawks" so they all walk around looking like freaks over there. Maybe it is some sort of psychological warfare to psyche out the afghanis or something. It certainly scares the bejeezus out of me!

By far the coolest thing we saw all day was in the South American aviary... A mother bird laid about 8 eggs in the grass not even a foot in front of us! We could have reached out and touched her if we wanted, but more than likely she would have attacked us, or possibly freaked out and hurt her eggs in panic.

She hissed and reared up like an angry snake as it was.

It was really interesting watching her go through the process of laying, she bounced her rear end up and down in the exact same way as our (dearly departed) evil rabbit Veela did when she was birthing kittens. I might try this trick next time I spawn another Eccentric!

Quick Quiz

Which one is Scote the Goat, and which is the real goat? I'll give you a hint, the real one stinks. Or does the fake one? Oh well, I know one of them did, anyway.

It's Ugha's dream to ride a real "efellent", but this is as close as she's come so far.

FUN FACT

Did you know an elephant can fit on a blue whale's tongue?!

Just look at that sky, it looks painted on! And underneath is El Paso's favorite sea lion, Sunny.

The end of a long, hot day. I can't wait for fall when it goes down to 70 again!

"The Science Museum from Hell"-- no, excuse my characteristic hyperbole, ..."The Science Museum from a Third-World Country"

I am not sure I have the heart to complete this post, so full of woe am I.

We finally went to the local Science museum, Insights. I had been bugging my husband to go with us since last year.

I refused to go without him because I pictured some big, modern museum with a days worth of fun science stuff to see and do.

BIG dissapointment.

Very Bad.

It was one room, think HS gym. VB. About 12 broken exhibits, some not plugged in, dirty, non-functioning,. I am so upset by this I can not even speak in coherent sentences but must ramble on without punctuation and interject Bridget-Jonesish abbreviations (VB.VVB.)

Apparantly they were working with a budget somewhere in the negative numbers, so I won't be too harsh on the poor state of their displays, the disorganization, the broken exhibits, missing puzzle peices, peeling paint, or piles of wood and other random debris. But maybe they could *try* to hire someone who knows more about science than my 7 year old? That would have been nice.

(sigh)

It is rare for me to long for my childhood home in PA, but this really did it. I wanted to hop directly on a plane and take my kids to the Franklin Institute.

(double sigh)

They had some fun, though. Just like they have fun playing with a bucket of mud or a unrolling a roll of toilet paper.

Thosethings have more science to them, though.

Oh yeah and they don't cost twenty bucks plus gas.

(sigh)