Category Archives: Camping

Camping, My Family, Parks

OKLAHOMA WHERE THE WIND COMES SWEEPING DOWN THE PLAINS!

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I was not excited that our trip was coming to an end but I was excited to finally check out Quartz Mountain!My oldest two could have spent several days here!

We only spent an hour or so because I had not left a lot of time and was nervous about getting a camping spot still.But the kids would really like to go back again!

The road to get to the climbing area was interesting with a 30ft long travel trailer…

But I had taken Nick down worse roads on this trip already so those made it seem pretty easy.

At least from the passenger seat 😉

I really had NO CLUE what we were going to be able to do here but there were several areas to climb. The boys enjoyed it the most and might need climbing gear before going again.

They went pretty high…

Poor Milo, he could not make it. Such a pretty area, the park was pretty run down looking but the landscape is beautiful.

I am pretty sure this was one of the top stops for the boys of our whole trip!

Camping, Hiking, Museums/Events, My Family, Wildlife Preserve/Reserve

Camping in Texas, CHANGE OF PLANS!

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We needed a stop on our way to the Palo Duro Canyon from the Cibola National Forest so we stopped at the Mesalands Community College’s Dinosaur Museum. It was a pretty small museum and did not look like much from the outside.

I was glad that the twins stayed with Nick and went to find a park while I only paid for 3 kids to go in.

HA It ended up being really interesting though and the boys really enjoyed the exhibits. Little Bit loved looking for touchable exhibits and had a lot of fun looking for the blue handprints that let you know you can touch things!

Next stop (we thought) was the Palo Duro Canyon!

We were getting there mid week in May so we thought we should be able to get a site for a night or two.

I was wrong…

They were having an event and all their sites were booked!

I had no clue where we were going to stay that night, we loved the Palo Duro so much the last time we came that I made sure we went through there on our way home so we could stop again!

In a panic I started looking for somewhere to stay that hopefully was not an RV park(I don’t like how close together most of the spots are) and found Buffalo Lake  National Wildlife Refuge.

We decided to check it out and found beautiful open sites and hardly any people! The best part though was it was totally free with our National Park Pass! It is really cheap even without the pass but free was nice. We did not see as much wildlife as at previous refuges we had stopped at but it was still very pretty. There is not a lake anymore, I guess it was not safe so they drained it.

The only downside to this beautiful spot was the vault toilets which were pretty bad but doable.

Our black tank got damaged getting to our last boondocking spot so we could not use the rv toilet.
After backpacking with Nick and having no toilet though I am pretty thankful for anything with a door.

We stayed two nights here and got to explore a local museum(free again!) and we did get to check out the Palo Duro Canyon but it turned out to be another fail.

HA

I will share why in the next post!

It was just a good lesson in not judging a place because of a bad visit!

Camping, Hiking, Museums/Events, My Family, National Forest

We got in for free!!!

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Our Children’s Museum Pass is a part of the ASTC Passport program and gets us in for free to many museums around the country! I had not used this benefit before but sure enough we were able to get in for free to three museums in Albuquerque! We only went to two of them though.

First stop was the New Mexico Museum of Natural History.

It does get a limited number only in for free but that worked fine for us since someone always needed to stay with the dog.

I took our boys and our youngest to this museum and our twins opted to go to the dog park with Nick and Milo(our dog).

This museum had some incredible displays. I used to worry a bit about visiting places like this as a creationist but have found that I can enjoy it just fine. I find their theories fascinating and I love to see what they think the area looked like before.

It really brought a lot of the natural places we had visited to life.

Do you spot Little Bit in the pic above?

She was insistent that she wanted to go but had her moments of being done…
The boys knowledge of dinosaurs and creation science actually far surpass me.

It is actually like having two tour guides along. This boy LOVES dinosaurs.

He enjoyed so much of our trip! They had an exhibit on the how the brain works also that was interesting. After we were done we all got lunch and then Nick took all five into Explora which was actually right next to the Natural History Museum.It is a science/children’s museum and they really liked it!I really enjoyed the quiet in the vehicle.

The RV plus 5 loud kids can make silence all the more golden.Afterwards we ran around town looking for a part so Nick could get our electricity going again.

There always seems to be something that needs worked on during our trips.

Our site might have been a lot of work to get to but it was pretty.It was also right by a trail system so we could go for a walk easily.Next we headed towards Texas and got turned away from our next camping spot!