We arrived safe and sound through rainstorms into Louisville, Kentucky (or in Lucy speak, ‘Tucky).  When the folks in KY heard that we were going through Chicago, they were convinced that we were going to be spending the night because there was a snow storm forecasted.  But it missed the airport and we made our flight.

Uncle Rob was very gracious in picking us up at the Louisville airport, which is about 1.25 hours from Lexington.  He drove through very heavy rain to get to us.  We got to Casa De Perez at about 11pm, and that was OK, because we didn’t have any plans until lunch on Thursday.

Thanksgiving lunch was at a local restaurant that served up main dishes of turkey, ham, chicken, etc, and then had a buffet bar for all the rest.  Very tasty.  In addition to the Perez clan of Rob, Diane, Samantha and Calvin, Laura and Francie Wasson participated in our festivities.  (Uncle Jesse was travelling).

Diane had layed out a feast of desserts for us when we returned.  We had some lunch leftovers for dinner and the kids had some leftover pizza.  Max and Lucy went to bed about 9p and Toby and I followed about 10:30p.  At 10:35p we heard some barking from where the kids were sleeping.  I say ‘were’ sleeping because Max was sitting up on his air-mattress in a pool of his own vomit.  He had projectile- vomited all over himself, the wall, the pillows and the floor.

We cleaned him up and cleaned up the mess as best as possible (the air-mattress and a pillow stayed outside for the whole weekend).  It took about 45 minutes.  Max had complained about his tummy right after the pizza, so I thought it was the food.  At the point where we were ready to get back to bed, Max had another incident.  But we were ready this time.   We had a bucket close at hand and he successfully used it.  This pattern of barfing every hour went on until about 7 am.  He had nothing left in him after the first couple of heaves.  I stayed up with him all night, and we both felt miserable the next day.

Toby came and picked me up in Camarillo. I found out that she had discovered our Rat Terrier is not a “mouse” terrier. Apparently, the mouse jumped out of the sink and when she put Petey up on the counter to chase the mouse, he freaked out and just stood there cowering. The mouse ran behind the stove. Ugh. We made it to Grandma Jo’s house in good time. She had graciously offered to watch Petey and Ginger while we are in Kentucky. After fixing a couple of things on her computer, we left for the LAX motel. When we got to our room, we found a place for the kids to sleep. We spread out their sleeping bags on the floor of the closet. Shhhh! we told them it was a tunnel room for kids. We got to bed at a decent hour. But, our room was right at the top of the stairs and so for about 3 hours we could hear everyone walking by, dragging, rolling their luggage and talking on their cell phones. Also, the motel was strangely laid out, and we had 3 exterior walls that let in a lot of road noise from Century and Aviation boulevards. So, we did not have a good night sleep. Additionally, the parking lot at the motel was really small. We had been under the impression that we could leave our van at the motel while we were traveling and take advantage of the motel airport shuttle. No dice. So it was off to parking lot B. We found a good spot and got good seats on the bus to the airport. When we did the self check in at the Northwest kiosk, we found out that the first leg of our flight was delayed due to mechanical issues. The plane was broken in Las Vegas. God was looking out for us, in that the person who was putting the routing tags on our luggage decided to help us right at the kiosk rather than send us over to the line where all the other stranded passengers were being sent. While Toby worked with the ticketing agent, I moved the kids and the luggage away from the kiosks so that other passengers could find out their flights were delayed. I entertained Max and Lucy with thumb-wrestling and such. One thing they were doing was pushing on the very heavy (50 pounds exactly, good job Toby) luggage. This pushing of the luggage turned into pushing me, and in an effort to keep them distracted I pushed them back, very gently, of course. Well, Lucy got more and more dramatic as my pushes got lighter and lighter and after taking 5 or 6 steps backward with a “Whoa, Whoa” she tripped on her feet. Instead of falling on her bottom, she fell flat on her back and smacked her head on the tile floor. Screaming 3 year old. After about 45 minutes the Northwest ticketing agent was able to get us tickets on United into Louisville, KY. We decided going to Louisville was better than overnighting somewhere and hoping to get onto a flight to Lexington. At LAX, the Northwest terminal is number 2 and the United terminal is number 7. We had quite a trip to make and we had no assigned seats and the plane left in an hour. Most other airports I have been in recently have great trains or trams or something to send passengers between terminals. Not so with LAX. We got back onto a bus to fight our through traffic over to terminal 7. At this point, Max and Lucy were really ready to get on the plane. After waiting in line to talk to a United ticketing agent, we found out that she could not assign us seats on the plane. We had seats, but since it was a full flight, the boarding gate agent would be assigning our seats. We thought that Toby should go ahead to get to the gate and I would bring the kids at a more leisurely pace. Then we hit TSA. We had our boarding passes and IDs ready and handed everything to the agent in front of the security queue. We got to the metal detectors and the next agent asked for boarding passes. What? Toby had put the boarding passes in her back pack since we had just shown them to the agent 4 feet behind us. The TSA guy says “He is a blue shirt, I am a white shirt.” Meanwhile our bags have gone through the screening machine. We have 4 backpacks and are trying to yell at a different TSA agent to describe which back pack. It is the last one he picks up, of course. Then we try to describe what pocket the passes are in. Finally, he gives up and takes my suggestion to bring the bag back to us so we can get the boarding passes out. Then when the first TSA agent looks at our boarding passes, he says that our entire family has been selected by United to receive special screening. What fun it was to watch Lucy get frisked. Eventually we made it through TSA and Toby sped off toward our gate. By the time we caught up to her, she had already spoken to the gate agent and found out that we had 4 single middle seats across 6 rows. Toby got the impression from the gate agent that nothing was going to be done about that. We decided to get a sandwhich for the flight from a restaurant. Lucy had started off rolling along her own little roller suitcase, but had given up because her hand was tired, so I was carrying the suitcase for her. In line at Ruby’s she took a step towards me at the same time I shifted the suitcase and I clonked her on the top of her head with the corner of the suitcase. Now we have a screaming 3 year old, again. I got Lucy settled down and we went to wait at the gate. They called Toby’s name and when Toby came back, she was smiling. The gate agent had really come through. We had 3 seats in a row and 1 seat 2 rows up in an exit row. Toby is sitting with the kids (man, they are loud) and I am in the middle seat of the exit row, with the extra 5 inches of leg room. We are flying into Chicago O’Hare and need to go through the whole ordeal of getting seats together for the leg from Chicago to Louisville. But we are moving forward.

At the entrance to the park

November 1, 2007 was our 10 year wedding anniversary. Toby did a great job of planning our anniversary trip this year. We went to Carlsbad Caverns in Carlsbad, New Mexico. (For those of you who keep up with the blog, Carlsbad may sound familiar. We went to Carlsbad earlier this year. Carlsbad, California, that is.) The travelling itself was as easy as it could be. We flew Southwest to El Paso, TX and overnighted there. In the morning, we toured the local Walmart and made a leisurely 2 hour drive to White’s City (the little town that is at the Carlsbad Caverns National Park). Texas / New Mexico has a lot of empty space. We went to a little grill planning to eat lunch and then meander up to the cave (still about 10 minutes away) for the afternoon. After ordering our food the counterman made some conversation and asked if we had been to the caves in the morning. We told him that we had just arrived and were on our way. He looked at us funny and said “The natural entrance to the cave closes at 2p”. It was 1:35p. Toby tried to call the park, but no cell phone reception. She was able to use the diner’s phone to call. The diner people were very gracious and brought our food out to the car where we were putting on shoes and socks in a mad rush. We zoomed up to the cave and bought our tickets at 1:59p. Whew!

Natural Entrance
Can you spot Toby?

The opening of the cave is called the Natural Entrance because there is also an elevator that goes down 750 feet to the cave. We did the walking tour of the Natural Entrance (the opening where the original cave was discovered) and drove away very excited to be spending more time at the cave. On the way out, I detoured on a scenic driving loop. Toby doesn’t find the desert to be scenic. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Lunch room 750 feet below the surface

Over the next two days, we took a number of tours, both self guided and ranger-guided, both on trail and off trail. Toby really did a good job of planning our tours so that the tours progressed in intensity and adventure. We did all our on trail tours on Thursday: a self guided tour through the Big Room and a ranger guided tour in the afternoon. Then Friday we did 2 off-trail tours. There are miles of trail in the caves that have been paved and have metal handrails and scenic spots and such. The off-trail tours take you to the lesser known areas, past the warning signs and into the undeveloped sections of the cave. The morning tour was to ‘The Left Hand Tunnel’ and was done with candle lanterns to give a sense of what the first explorer’s might have seen. The view of the caves is quite a different by candlelight as opposed to modern LED D-cell flashlight. On this tour we also had a time of utter blackout when the ranger asked everyone to blow out the lanterns. We sat in the dark for about 10 minutes waiting for our eyes to adjust to the complete 100% dark, but they never did, and never would. It was a very claustrophobic feeling.

Like in the olden days

The afternoon tour was to the ‘Lower Cave’. For this off-trail tour we had to have helmets and gloves. We started by going down a steep incline for about 50 feet using a rope for balance. Then it was down another ~100 feet via small ladders at various angles. Most of this tour had to be done in single file and one part of it had to be crawled. There were a number of spots where we were instructed on how to help the person behind to navigate the obstacle. It was all very exciting and exhilarating for us ‘cave rookies’.

Adventure!

Down Down Down

Most of the pictures we took of the cave formations did not turn out very well because of the low light conditions, but we did get a couple of good shots.

A mini cathedral

Little Stalagtites

Popcorn

Our travel home was again very easy. Both directions the plane was only 1/2 full. On the way back Toby even slept most of the flight lying down in her own row. Thanks to Poppa and Yaya for watching the kids and the dogs, and thanks to everyone else who also took shifts with the kids. It was most appreciated. Next week : off to Kentucky!