Heading Home - Day 11, Monday

 We had some time on Monday morning before we needed to head to the airport, so we went to Fort Worth to see the Water Garden there.  As we parked I saw this group of bikes that you could rent, so I took a picture of them for my daughter-in-law, who is promoting riding bikes instead of driving, whenever possible. 

 The Fort Worth Water Garden was a fun place to visit.  As you can see in the picture below, you can walk down to the bottom of this water area.  I was only able to go a few steps down, because it made me feel wobbly and unbalanced to walk on the path.

 Ken didn't feel that way at all, so he went all the way to the bottom.

 He's the tiny red spot at the bottom.

 This is another view of water going into the area we had just been in.

 Another smaller waterfall and pond.

 This is the aerating pool...

 ...and this is a close up of the aerating pool.

 A dim rainbow in the aerating pool.

 This is a quiet pool for meditating...

...and cypress trees surround it.  The knobs on the trees at their base were interesting to me, and if you look closely, you can see some of them along the edge of the wall surrounding the pool.

Relaxing Day - Day 10, Sunday

 The whole Voelker/Vaughan family that was in Texas for the wedding, gathered at Dale and Wendy's house for a day of relaxing and visiting on Sunday.  It was our first time to meet our new great nephew who is 8 months old and lives in Virginia.  This is Ken's sister, Carol, holding Max as he tries the temperature of the pool.

 Three of the Voelker siblings with their husbands and wife.  Left to right is Dale and Wendy Vaughan, then Ken and I, and Russ and Carol Pitts.

 The rest of the family.  Back row left to right is: Peter and Meagan Kendall, Terri (Dale's sister), Dale, Ken, Russ, Meagan and Mitch Vaughan  Front row, left to right is: Bobby Vaughan (Dale's Dad), Wendy, Me, and Carol.  (Max was taking a nap when we took these pictures.)

 Max looking serious as he pats Ken's face.

 Max and Mitch got in the pool, even though the water was on the cool side.

 Peter got in also, but no one else was brave or crazy enough to get in.

The cold water didn't bother Max, he really enjoyed being in the pool.

Travel Day and Wedding Day - Days 8 & 9, Friday & Saturday

Friday was a travel day, you wouldn't think it would take that long to fly from El Paso to Dallas, but it basically took the whole day.  We got to the airport in El Paso around 11:30 and arrived at our hotel outside of Dallas at 5:30.

 Since our niece's wedding wasn't until evening on Saturday, and we weren't needed until 4:30 for a couple of family photos, we decided to go to the Texas State Fair with Ken's sister, Carol and her husband Russ.  They are standing with Ken in front of one of the attractions that everyone who goes to the fair has to see, "Big Tex".

 Ken and I took a turn in front of "Big Tex" also.  "Big Tex" talks and welcomes everyone to the fair.

 It was getting hot in the afternoon, around 86 degrees, so we were happy to find an air-conditioned building to go into that had a display called, "Canstruction".  This was a peace sign...

 ...and this was an apple with a tree in the middle, all made out of canned foods that were going to be donated to a food bank in the area.  We'd never seen a display of things made out of canned food before.

 After getting the family pictures taken with the bride and groom, Ken and I headed toward the Garden Cafe, where the wedding was going to be held.  We took a wrong turn though, and found ourselves at this park with statues depicting a cattle drive in the old west.  It seemed to be a popular place to have pictures taken, there were 2 groups having pictures taken while we were there.  One seemed to be a wedding party, but we weren't sure what the other group was.  We had been to this park one other time when we visited Dallas, but since we had some extra time before the wedding, we stopped and walked around a bit, before going on to where the wedding was going to be held.

 The cattle herd crosses a stream and winds up a trail, so it looks like a real cattle drive from the old west.

 After arriving at the wedding venue, we asked if we could help with getting some of the last minute tasks accomplished, and we were assigned the job of taking rose petals off some roses to fill the flower girl's basket.

 The flower girl helped us with the task, so it was quickly finished.  While we were doing that, our niece came into the room to wait for the wedding to start, so I was able to get a few picture of her also.

 This is our two nieces, the bride and the matron of honor.

Our nephew getting ready to help his wife, who was the official photographer, with taking pictures of the wedding and talking to his brother-in-law, while he waited.

Carlsbad Caverns - Day 7, Thursday

Thursday we headed back to New Mexico to go to the Carlsbad Caverns.  One of the areas is only accessible by going on a guided tour, so that's what we did first. 

 I can't remember which pictures are from the guided tour and which are from the self-guided tour that we did after lunch.

 On the guided tour we learned about a 16 year old boy who was the first one to explore the cave, it was amazing to think about him coming into the cave with just a small lantern and trying to explore the cave.  He discovered the cave by watching bats fly out of it in the evening.

 This type of formation is called a drapery formation.

 The area where visitors can go is 750 feet below ground.

 There are all these little nooks that are highlighted by being lit up.

 Another type of formation.

 This formation is called "A lion's tail".

 I thought this looked like a waterfall coming out of a cave.

 A reflecting pond.

 This formation is called "Rock of Ages".

 Last view in the cavern.

On our way to the caverns in the morning, we saw the top of this mountain, but most of it was covered in morning clouds.  On the way back to El Paso, we had a better view of it.

El Paso - Day 6, Wednesday

Wednesday, we drove to El Paso and met up with our niece, Meagan.  She is a professor at UTEP (University of Texas at El Paso) and took us on a tour of her department.

She also showed us a temple given to the University from Butan.  This is a view of the inside of it.

Another view of the inside with some costumes.  Not something I expected to see on a university campus in Texas!

Meagan and her husband, Peter, are buying a house that is in the process of being built.  We got to go on a tour of it.  They will be moving there in 30 days.

The last thing that we did before meeting Peter for dinner, was taking a tour of a home from the late 1800's.  This was the formal living area with a nice square grand piano.

This was the bed in the master bedroom, it has a huge headboard, but it looks like a narrow bed to sleep on.

I liked this corner in the master bedroom, especially the dress.

Alamogordo Area - Day 5, Tuesday

Tuesday morning, we headed up into the mountains to go to some places Ken remembered going to when he was young.  (His family lived in Alamogordo 6 months when he was in second grade.). This railroad trestle was one of the things he remembered seeing then.

This is a view from up in the mountains, the white strip in the background is...

...White Sands National Monument.  You can see the white sand from a long way away.

We took a short hike while we were up there on a very rocky path!

We hurried down the mountain, so we could take a tour of a pistachio farm before lunch and going to a museum of space history.  (Unfortunately, after doing that, we discovered that the museum was closed on Tuesdays!). This is us in front of a large pistachio.

This rose bush is important to the grape and pistachio growers because if it starts looking sick, they know something is wrong and they need to find out what's wrong before all the trees and vines get sick.

A pistachio tree with some pistachio's that didn't fall off the tree when they harvested them.

Since we couldn't go to the museum, we decided to go to a small city zoo for awhile after lunch.  These are some black swans in the zoo.

There was a walk through aviary at the zoo, where this bird was making a nest.  We sat and watched him quite awhile.

A close up of the nest.

Later in the afternoon, we went out to White Sands National Monument.  Since we had gotten to hot at the zoo (it was 86 degrees), we waited until later in the day to go out there.  I figured the sand would be really hot, but I was surprised to find that the sand was cool to walk on!  The road is covered in sand and the side of the road looks like the sand has been plowed, just like snow!

Some of the sand dunes and the road.

Our hotel had saucers that we borrowed, so that we could slide down the sand on them.

Ready to go!

Ken sliding down a sand dune.

Standing on top of the sand dune.

Another view of some of the dunes.

A plant growing in the middle of the sand.

We went on a sunset walk with a park ranger and learned some interesting things about the area.  This  is a reflection on the mountains opposite of the mountains that the sun went behind.