April 23 is Tony’s birthday!

We both woke up a bit early today. Our bodies haven’t gotten the message that we are in the Mountain time zone since yesterday. Tony still got up earlier than Peggy, as usual.

Cavern Tour - denied!

Well, I thought I was being so smart, waiting to make our “entry appointment” until this morning when we figured out when we would be ready to head to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Not so much. When I tried, I discovered that appointments must be made by 5 am on the day of the visit. Of course, I did not wake up THAT early this morning!

Let’s eat!

Tony made chili omelets for breakfast. I should have made his breakfast, but he is so good at making omelets. I did clean up afterwards though!

We finished getting the podcast ready (because we will be driving all day tomorrow) then had lunch.

New Plan

Then we got ready to check out Sitting Bull Falls. Luckily, Tony called before we left, and discovered they are closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. So, no falls either!

To be fair to each of those places, the rules and open hours are written on each of their sites. I just need to learn to read all of the words, not the just ones that suit me.

New, New Plan

We decided to visit the Carlsbad Museum. Yay, it was open!

We have found that we like when a museum has a scavenger hunt. The Carlsbad Museum has one, and I picked up a copy and we found the answers to the questions. I think we pay more attention to the displays when we have to find things!

Wasting away an afternoon

After we finished exploring the museum, we decided to have some ice cream. We had been to KaleidoScoops before with Michael and Micki, and liked it a lot so we went again.

We sat at the ice cram shop and enjoyed our treat. Then we took a little trip to Starbucks. We went inside and wasted some more time staring at our phones while we enjoyed our afternoon coffee. It was a nice change of pace to just sit and enjoy the air conditioning!

When we got back to camp, we took a little walk around camp. The bath house at this campground is really beautiful. It’s obviously been recently renovated. They also have an indoor pool (but no hot tub, sadly). We sat in our camp chairs in our camp site and - yeah, stared at our phones some more.

Let’s eat, again!

I should mention that this morning, Tony looked up “check-a-day” and found that today is International Creator Day. Well, we met that goal by working on our website this morning. It’s also “German Beer Day” so our plan was to head to the local brewery for a German beer with dinner.

Imagine our surprise when we walked in and there was a sign saying “no beer or wine sales” - WHAT??!! It’s a brewery!

Well, that’s no way for Tony to celebrate his birthday! Really, we are starting to wonder what Carlsbad has against us. Anyway, we decided to try something else.

We wound up at Taqueria Jalisco where we were able to order a beer, at least. Yes, they were Mexico beers an don’t German, but at this point we don’t feel like we can be picky any more!

I ordered carne adovada. Tony got a combo with an enchilada, chili relleno, and tamale. The food was decent. The service was okay. The prices were okay. The beer was cold though, and I decided “German Beer Day” means “a German drinking a beer.”

Overall, a nice day

We went back to camp and stared at our phones some more. In the long run, it was a nice, relaxing day, if not exactly what we had in mind.

Tomorrow we will get an early start and drive home. It will be nice to be home, though there won’t be much journey to report on for a few weeks!