9. Potted meat may have been yummy as a kid, but, YUCK, how do people eat that stuff?
10.Walking sticks were a GREAT invention!
Devon and I decided to hike Guadalupe Peak a few months ago (
see previous post). I said I was going to workout and stop eating pizza with Ashlee. I didn't (thanks for your help with that Ash!). So, no I wasn't really in mountain climbing shape, but we put it on the calendar so, we had to do it. This is the itinerary I sent to Karen, Devon's step mom when I first asked them to keep our girls:
Sat (May 24)- Drive to Midland
Sun (May 25)- Leave for mountains in afternoon and spend night at bottom of mountains
Mon (May26)- Hike up mountain, spend the night up top
Tue (May 27)- Hike down mountain, drive to Midland, drive back home
Well the trip went similar to the plans, but anyone who knows us knows things don't always go as planned. Devon came home on Friday night about 6:00 and I said, "Let's leave tonight. I'm ready to get out of here." Devon looked at me like I was crazy and said, "You want to?" Well of course I wanted to I wouldn't have brought it up if I didn't want to. He wasn't too keen on the idea because we still had to pack and get ready to go and he was exhausted from a very long week. I thought this was a great idea because the girls could sleep and we could make it to San Angelo and about half of our drive would be over.
We ate and packed and around 10:00 he said, "You think we should leave tonight?" I don't know if he has always been so wishy washy when it comes to making up his mind or if he is getting worse with age, but it drives me crazy! You know? Either you want to leave tonight or you want to wait until tomorrow; just make a decision it's not rocket science! He doesn't like me to drive (a little bit of a control issue-wink, wink), so I was leaving the decision up to him. So, he says we are leaving and he starts getting his keys and stuff and then he says, "Should we go?" I told you he was wishy washy. He then decides we aren't going to go and starts to put his stuff down. So, I said okay girls lets go to bed, well it was about two hours past their bed time, so Lyric totally lost it at that point. She started crying and freaking out and then Story started crying! So Devon said, "Okay, get in the van we're leaving!" I guess you could say the girls made that decision for him.
We left the house about 10:30 and headed to San Angelo. We got there around 1:30 and found a decent hotel.
We got in bed around 2:00 or so. The next morning we got up, had some McDonald's for breakfast and hit the road to Midland. I had put together these "Travel Bags" for the girls to keep them occupied on the way to Midland.
They had stickers, paper, snacks and stuff like that. Lyric loved her Ariel stickers
and they were so cute in their new shades!
We got to Midland and hung out the rest of Saturday. We left for the mountains around noon on Sunday. Our first stop was HEB. We had to buy our food for the trip. We had decided we were going to eat
quesadillas on Sunday night and breakfast tacos on Monday morning, but we didn't really know what we were going to eat on the mountain. We had to have something that didn't have to be cold or need to be cooked. We wondered around HEB for a while looking at different options. Devon decided he would get Spam for him.
Yuck, I don't think I like Spam, especially not cold! Ah, but I remember eating potted meat as a child and it was good with
Fritos, so I got a can of that.
We also got snacks, water and we splurged and paid extra for the homemade tortillas (they were still hot, yummy). After leaving HEB we headed for Guadalupe Mountains. It was about a three hour drive.
We got to the mountains and got our campsite for the night. We unloaded a few things to save our site and decided to drive around a while and do some exploring. We went back to the visitor's center and looked around a while. Devon bought a walking stick and we found a puzzle postcard for the girls. When we went up to pay the girl checking us out asked Devon if he wanted to purchase a medallion for his walking stick. We had never seen these before, but we both decided to get one. It is a little medal plate that says Guadalupe Mountain National Park and it comes with little nails to nail it to your walking stick. This is the first hike we have used our walking sticks on, but we plan to do many more, so we will have lots of medallions. Typing this now makes me think that is something old people would have, but we think it is cool, we are in our 30's, I guess we are getting pretty old!
We drove to the
Butterfield Stage Ruins just down the road. It was kind of neat. Then we drove over to
Frijole Ranch. This was really cool! You could see the ranch house, an old school house for the eight children that lived in the area and a spring house. The spring house was the coolest thing. It was a little building that was covering a natural spring. You could hear the water running out of it like a small water fall. We also read about how the ranch got its name, after the diet of the people of the time,
frijoles... for all you gringos out there that means beans. After visiting
Frijole Ranch we headed back to set up camp for the night.
Devon started getting the tent out of the van and I was just looking around our campsite. I spotted a lizard on a tree and commented on how I hope this was the only wildlife we would see at our campsite.
Last summer we camped at the Davis Mountains and were attacked by skunks.
I kept looking around exploring the campsite. I like snakes, so I was looking around to see if I might catch a glimpse of one. Let me explain a little, I like snakes when they are in the distance and preferably crawling away from me. I also like them to not have a rattle on the end of their tail.
So, I am standing in the spot where Devon is going to put the tent and I see a snake a few feet away. I get really excited and think, 'There's a snake!' I watch it slither over a rock and I see the rattle. I immediately freak out and start yelling for Devon to come over. I said, "I saw a snake and it was a rattlesnake!" He asks where and I start pointing to where I saw it, but it was gone. So we keep looking in the bushes and we see him curled up on a rock, catching some sun.
Well, I like snakes, but this guy could kill us. I said, "We can't camp here, we have to move. We have to pick another campsite!" Devon starts laughing and says, "Look around
Christy, do you think this is the only rattlesnake out here? You just happened to see this one." Well, that made sense, but still the snake just kept looking at me!
I finally got over the initial shock and came to my senses. I know snakes are as scared of me as I am of them and they don't want to hurt me, so I kept an eye on our little friend while Devon set the tent up. He eventually slithered off the rock and we got a look at him all stretched out. He was about four feet long. When the sun started going down he slithered away. It was actually a very cool experience. I have never seen a rattlesnake in real life.
1 comment:
How cool are you!!! Loved reading about your adventure. It sounds sort of like our trips too.
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