a weekend trip

Last Thursday, my dad announced that we were all going to accompany him south, to Midland, Texas, for some business he had to do. We planned to travel thirty minutes on to the sand dunes in the Permian basin. We've been there once before, when I was about eight, so I was excited to be going back. We also were going to go into New Mexico and go to the Carlsbad Caverns.

Well.
We did both those things.

We got into Midland and reached our hotel--which was, incidentally, a Hilton, an experience I'd never had before. It was pretty much like any hotel anywhere else, except that they didn't have a complimentary breakfast. It was too fancy shmancy for that. But first we had to think of dinner. We tried walking to some Italian place that Google Maps couldn't locate. It was full, and we had to turn back after smelling the deliciousness of breadsticks and spaghetti. After walking back through downtown Midland (which, to tell the truth, wasn't all that fun; it was windy. There were also two fellows we passed three times on this walk, who were sitting in front of a coffee shop. They were still there when we returned to our hotel at about 9 that night. Apparently, whoever they were, they have no lives), we got in our car and drove to the nearest Olive Garden.

There was an hour wait for a table, so my mom and my sisters and I did the obvious thing. We walked across the parking lot to the Barnes N Noble, leaving my dad with my brothers. Bookstores are dangerous places when you're bored and like to read. After remarking on the size of the Teen Paranormal Romance section (four and a half shelves, in case you were wondering), I strayed into the world history section and promptly found three new books that I wanted to read. Now, some of you know me very well. I dislike leaving unread books just sitting there, calling my name. Because that's what they do. I picked up a couple of them, read a paragraph, and was instantly hit by the overwhelming desire to finish them. But alas, I could not.

Instead, I had to return to the Olive Garden, where we had to sit for twenty more minutes until our buzzer went off. I remember now why my family doesn't go out to eat often. Imagine a herd of elephants all attempting to hold a democratic meeting about what to do for new feeding grounds. That's about what my siblings look like. I hold no bad feelings toward them. I speak only the truth. Once dinner was done, we headed back to the hotel, where (very sick) Kyla tried to go to bed before discovering that her Nook had somehow bought Catching Fire all on its lonesome.

Kyla was not very happy. But it was eleven o' clock at night, so Kyla couldn't really do anything about it. Kyla also starts talking about herself in third person when she gets tired. It's currently eleven o' clock as I write this. I apologize.

The next morning we got up a bit more rested than we'd been before, and headed off for the sand dunes.

The dunes were tiring. I don't know if you've ever tried to slog up steep hills with cold, mushy, fine sand that just grabs at your feet and tries to suck you down like it's some sort of world-crushing demon, as illustrated by this handy-dandy little graphic I drew to show you.

Anyway. Sand-zombies aside, as soon as we left the dunes we headed west, into New Mexico and toward one of the seven wonders of the world. Or is it nine? I always forget. Anyway. It was Carlsbad Caverns we were headed for, which shall be covered in part two of this blog post.

Why will there be a part two, you ask? Well, mostly because I'm tired, but also because this is getting long and I don't want to bore you. Stay tuned.

- Kyla Denae