Car, check. Morale, high.

Well, we have a car. It's not ours, and frankly we are nervous wrecks driving it. But, we have to take advantage of this opportunity, or we won't see the caverns. So we muster up all the courage we have, and take off on the hour drive into the moutains/desert to go to our first national park.

We made it there just fine, and in excellent time thanks to the super charged engine. We were giddy with excitement about the caverns, and buying our national parks pass. It's called the America the Beautiful pass, and it covers up to four people in a car. Absolutely worth the 80 bucks.

So the caves were awesome! The natural entrance was terrifyingly large, and our very informative audio guide told us all about the animals and people that have come in over the history of the cave.

it's hard to tell, but the natural entrance is huuuuuge.

I was very interested in the audio guide

 We walked all over the cave, and were really excited about the furthest point in the cave, the Bottomless Pit. They really work you up over this Bottomless Pit, and once you get there you are ready for some never ending hole in the ground. But, like most things in life, its only 146 feet deep. We still had a really good time, and had an awesome chili dog for lunch.
So after the caves it was back to Caveman Auto Repair to pick up Lib. She is as good as new! Plus, she has air conditioning, which was an added bonus.
We loaded up and headed back to the camp grounds, because we had to be in Albuquerque the next morning. No big deal, hitch her up like normal, right?
Of course not. We were getting too comfortable and Lady Luck knew it. (On a side note, we forgot to mention that by this point we realized that the license plate on Campy is MIA. hm. oh, and we have a tail light out.) So we fiddle faddle around and grow increasingly more frustrated with the hitch, and decide to go find some men to help us.
We found some strapping young men who quickly fixed the hitch and made us look really dumb. Oh well, they were really nice and wanted us to stay for dinner, but we HAD to get on the road. Wasn't the easiest choice of my life, but a responsible one.
We hit the road and drove up through Roswell. I (Carrie) was pretty much scared out of my seat the whole time, but survived. We drove through mountains and small tee-tiny towns, got stuck on the interstate with no turn arounds, and 8 hours and 270 miles later we landed in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Albequerque.

A thank you to Mr. Jordan Baron for the homemade lemoncello.