Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

Thursday—May 22nd We listened to the weather report, high wind warnings. Yep, why don’t they tell me something I don’t already know? When we returned to camp last night we found our tent blown over but thankfully nothing was torn or destroyed. The night was cooler than the previous but the highway noise distrubed our sleep quite a bit. The boys packed up the campsite and off we headed, west again.

The wind howled at our car, pushed it sideways as we moved through the NM desert. Our first treat was driving through the Lincoln National Forest and watched the temperature drop and drop and drop and drop down through the 60’s, through the 50’s and then into the 40’s. The 40’s! SK remarked how in a mere 100 miles we had seen such amazing changes in the weather and terrain. Instead of looking out over rolling plains we were driving through hills, mountains, pine trees lined but dryness abounding everywhere.

Our first stop was White Sands NM and although SK wanted to hike through the whiteness I fought off his requests, too reluctant to risk being in a dangerous situation again. We took a safe boardwalk trail, and enjoyed the boys shocking each other from the static electricity built up from the boardwalk material. Oh, they also noticed the dune flowers, the movement of the dunes from the wind which pounded us at 40mph, and the plants being covered by the sand. Suddenly the rain began and we drove away from WSNM.

Close by is White Sands Missile Range Museum which not surprisingly was on MK’s list to see. We stopped in for an hour before heading further west and into Gila National Forest. Our path took us up and up and up, all the way to 8200′ before heading to lower ground. All through this drive the wind pounded us and then the rain came. Our destination was Gila National Monument but somewhere on this route SK and I chickened out, changing our route to Silver City, NM, and a hotel room. ahhh, the comforts of modern life. Personally I’ve had enough of hot, dry, windy deserts and so have the boys. SK has changed our route too, we are headed west to the coast, then north to cooler sites. We’ll still stop at the Grand Canyon, Bryce, and Zion but many of our plans will be just that, plans. Stay tuned to see where we really end up.

Oh, and DH sent me the most beautiful email. A photo of one of his roses, the ones he planted for us while I was on my last west trip. Isn’t it beautiful! Just like he is.

He knows that this is important too so he let me know that he’s working away on my kitchen, and I’m missing him too.