Focht Family Blog

We left St. Louis on Friday morning. Friday night we stayed at a Walmart in Oklahoma City. We actually stopped at a Walmart between Tulsa and Oklahoma City first but Nathan didn’t feel good about staying there so after we made dinner we continued on to a bigger area. We made good enough time that we were able to have short driving days the next two days. It was so nice to go outside on Saturday morning in a short sleeved shirt! :)

Saturday night we drove until Amarillo. There isn’t much available for overnight anywhere outside of Amarillo if you are traveling on I-40 so that is why there were 9 or so campers in the lot with us. :) Unfortunately a cold front came through so the short sleeves are back in the closet. Tonight we are at a KOA in Bernalilo, NM. This is the KOA we stayed at right after we purchased our Allstar. We were going to stay at the Cummins because they are going to fix an oil leak in the morning but it was a bad area so we decided to just pay for a campground so we could dump and fill up with water. If we need to be in NM tomorrow night we will probably just stay at a Walmart. Once we leave here we are headed to the Grand Canyon.

I was sick yesterday so I will use that as my excuse. I forgot to add that after we went to the caverns yesterday we drove to one of Nathan’s customers, Salsa Express. The company is situated on a 300 acre ranch that had an abundance of wild life that was varied. We saw deer and some kind of African antelope. It was very interesting. The kids were given a tour and they got to pick eggs out of the chicken nests. They also were able to pet a chicken. The kids had a lot of fun and Samantha was overjoyed by the experience.

Today has been spent on the road. We left the Walmart at Fort Stockton about 10:00 and stopped in El Paso to get the dogs groomed. I had to take a picture of Punch. Usually they put bandannas around their necks but apparently they felt Punch was a bit more froo-froo.

During our driving today the kids were getting a bit silly. Samantha put all of her doll’s knitted caps on Josh and he was just too funny.

The last picture I took today was of Mexico. We are on I-10 and there is a section close to El Paso where you can literally see the Mexico border. We have seen a lot of Border Patrol cars today.

I believe Nathan said that tomorrow we will be going to a ghost town on our way to Tombstone.

Natural Bridge Caverns IS definitely worth the money! It made us want to drive back to Cascade and ask for our money back. :) Wow is all I can say. We took the Northern Cave Tour. I thought it would be fitting to have a picture of the “natural bridge” so you can see where it gets its name.

The tour guide we had was VERY knowledgeable and explained the differences between all of the rock formations and how they are formed and even where the coloration comes from on some of them. Here is a picture of one of the stalagmites in the first large room we came to.

I honestly cannot remember what all the different types of formations were so I will let some of my favorite pictures speak for the beauty of the cavern.

I had a hard time paring it down to only 6 pictures from inside the cavern. It was absolutely beautiful. Next time we go through we will have to stop again and go on the Jeremy Room Tour. After we finished with our tour we bought the kids some bags of dirt that had rough gems in it. Then we went to their sluice and picked out boxes so they could slosh the dirt around and uncover their gems. They had a lot of fun finding the gems.

We are stopped in Fort Stockton for the night. I-10 is very desolate in this area. We drove for hours without seeing any signs of civilization. We were going to go to Carlsbad but we have decided to save that for next year’s trip west. I’m not sure what we will be doing tomorrow other than catching up with school. Our next planned stop will be for a few days in Tombstone, AZ.

Cascade Caverns is NOT worth the money. I suppose we should of guessed this when this is the sight we first looked at while waiting for the tour.

The kids found some things to entertain them while we were waiting for our tour guide.

Once we went into the cave it was beautiful but the tour guide we had was not well educated about the geological aspects of a cave. He pointed out things like this rock looks like a turtle, this one looks like Snoopy….

Here is a shot of one of the first areas of the cave.

You are not allowed to touch the walls or the water because it is a living cave. Here is one spot that you can touch since you walk on this section.

Here is a section of formations that they call soda straws. I actually managed to catch a picture with water dripping.

Here is a picture of a different section of the roof of the cave.

The last part of the tour the guide was talking about how they had found bones from a mastodon in the cave. I am hoping he misspoke but as he was showing us the remains of the tusk he stated that the bones had been there for 2500 years. I think he is either way off on his math or they aren’t bones from a mastodon. Here is a picture of the tusk remains.

Hopefully tomorrow’s tour at Natural Bridge Caverns will be better.

Today we drove the RV into downtown San Antonio. We found a parking lot off of Bowie Street that was $20 a day for RVs and buses. It was only about a block from the Alamo so that was our first stop. Unfortunately they didn’t want photographs of the insides of the buildings so I have a picture of us in front of 4 of the 6 flags that have flown over Texas.

Next is a picture of an unusual tree that was in the middle of the courtyard that mom loved. Its branches grew towards the ground on all the sides.

After we walked around the Alamo and looked at all of the artifacts we took the kids to the Children’s Museum of San Antonio. This is the second time that I have been able to use my membership that I bought to Boonshoft Museum in Dayton, OH. They have a $100 family membership that gives you reciprocal benefits at zoos, aquariums, science museums and children’s museums that are part of national associations. The kids had a lot of fun. Here is a picture of Josh using one of the construction vehicles.

And of Samantha and Timmy playing checkers….

Because it was New Yea’s Eve they had special art projects, face painting and confetti and sparkling cider at the strike of noon. Here are pictures of the kid’s faces painted.

After we dropped off their art projects at the RV we walked to the River Center for lunch at the food court. This is a three story mall that is on the man made part of the river that goes through San Antonio. They have boat rides that you can take from the mall that goes through 2 1/2 miles through man made parts and natural parts of the river and follows the River Walk. We decided to end our day with the boat ride. I tried to take some pictures but ended up with Josh on my lap because he was getting tired. Here is a picture of five bells in La Villita that signify the five missions in San Antonio.

We are tired and are back at the park now. Although the office wasn’t that concerned with our missing hose when I asked this morning we found out when we got back today that our neighbor had taken it because they weren’t sure if we were coming back…. so we now have it back again. Tomorrow’s outing will be to Cascade Caverns.