After our road trip to some of Utah’s National Parks, my friends and I decided to do some more detailed planning for our future trips. (For more details on that trip you can look at my previous post on it.) Our next adventure was set for New Mexico and Texas and we had everything planned down to who was driving which stretch. Of course very little went as planned.
So first off we planned for this trip to happen in the beginning of January. We were going to drive roughly 1,300 miles round trip from Denver, Colorado to Pine Springs, Texas. We had found a cute airbnb cabin in Carlsbad, New Mexico and honestly up until about a week before our departure we were feeling good about it.
Road tripping Gods: 0
Road tripping squad: 1
My friends and I are fairly politically involved and we keep up with current events. When the government shut down on December 22, 2018 we thought it would be a short term issue that would be quickly resolved. As we reached the end of 2018, we realized that our vacation plans were in trouble. If you weren’t aware of the government’s closure and what was impacted you can check out USA Today’s coverage. We started to do some research on how National Parks w
ere impacted. Turns out, all National Parks were closed during the government shut down.
Road tripping Gods: 1
Road tripping squad: 1
We, as the stubborn people that we are, were not turned away by this news and we embarked on our journey anyway. Our trip started at 5:30 in the morning and we were doing good until we got into New Mexico. It had snowed and the roads were icy. Our 9 hour drive turned into a 12 hour drive. We got to our airbnb and 90 seconds into making dinner we blew the fuse in the kitchen. Let’s just say it was one long day.
Road tripping Gods: 3
Road tripping squad: 1
The next day we set off for Guadeloupe National Park for a morning hike. We left around 5:00 for our hour long drive down to the park. Because the park was closed we had to park about half a mile away from the trail head. It was cold. It was miserable. We didn’t even make it to the trail head. It was so pretty though!! I call this one a draw.
Road tripping Gods: 4
Road tripping squad: 2
We tried again to get into the National Park after we warmed up a bit but we decided it wasn’t worth it. So instead we drove 500 miles round trip to the chile capital of the world: Hatch, New Mexico. We all stocked up on green chile and took in the beauty of the cities we drove through. We got stopped by border inspection twice. It was honestly an amazing day, just not exactly what we were expecting to do with the day.
Road tripping Gods: 5
Road tripping squad: 3
On our last day of adventures we were supposed to drive up a volcano and hike the rim. As we were driving to the volcano there was a herd of cows crossing the street. It was really funny seeing the stubborn cows walk back and forth in front of the car. Unfortunately, the volcano was also closed. We spent the night stargazing before we settled at a KOA. The next morning we drove back home.
Final Score
Road tripping Gods: 6
Road tripping squad: 3
The trip did not go as planned…. At all. We are going to have to redo the whole trip so that we can visit Guadeloupe National Park, Carlsbad Caverns, and the Capulin Volcano. It was a good trip filled with lessons learned, memories made, and lots of laughable moments. I think we learned that sometimes planning every detail isn’t the best thing you can do, it’s the ability to roll with the punches and to get back up when you get knocked down that truly matters.
