Making Our Way Back Home

Guadalupe Mountains National Park

We had originally intended to visit Carlsbad Caverns, but we had a slight mix up with the timed entry reservations. We went for Plan B – Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

It is a little southwest of Carlsbad Caverns, so the location worked out perfectly for us. The drive to the park was impressive as the Guadalupe Mountains were much bigger than we were expecting!

Guadalupe is all about hiking, with no scenic roads leading through the park. Again, with temperatures over 100 degrees, hiking long distances was out of the question. We managed a short hike to the Manzanita Spring.

We continued east and spent the night in Fort Stockton, Texas.

The drive to Fort Stockton was interesting. We determined that we must have been in major oil territory throughout the majority of the drive. All of the other vehicles on the road were either white pickup trucks or 18 wheelers.

San Antonio, TX

The only thing on our agenda the following day was to visit San Antonio. It was about a 4 and a half hour drive from Fort Stockton. After we parked, we walked to the Riverwalk and ate lunch at the Rainforest Cafe.

We needed redemption from our trip to the Mall of America back in 2018 where the boys were terrified of the thunderstorms in the cafe. I am happy to report, we made it through the entire lunch with no tears at all! Haha!

Obviously, if you’re visiting San Antonio, you need to see the Alamo.

So we did!

We were excited for the boys to see the Riverwalk area too!

Louisiana

We spent the night in Gonzalex, Texas and continued east the following day. I found a cool beach in Louisiana that was supposed to be good for finding shark teeth. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t exactly cooperate. We managed to get this picture of us at Rutherford Beach on the gulf……….

……….before this happened!

Lightning everywhere and torrential downpours.

So, we didn’t get to look for shark teeth, but we did see the Gulf of Mexico!!

This was our first of two straight 8-hour days on the road. We spent the night in McComb, Mississippi. The following day, we continued north through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and then into Tennessee!

Mississippi

Shannon found a neat playground for the boys that was in Jackson, Mississippi. Naturally, we needed to get a picture of Jackson with the statue that said Jackson! Haha!

As I mentioned the playground was really cool as well!

Before leaving Mississippi, we stopped at a Smoothie King and got the Dude Perfect smoothie! The boys were very excited about this but weren’t quite as excited about how it tasted! Haha!

Alabama

We soon crossed into Alabama, which meant the boys had officially been to all 48 contiguous states!!!!

We stopped at the University of Alabama football stadium and were going to visit the Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark in Birmingham, but it was closed by the time we got there.

We spent the night in Lenoir City, TN and then made the 4-and-a-half-hour drive home the next day!!

37 days. 19 National Parks. 11,263 Miles. Countless Memories.

Home Sweet Home!!!