Our daughter and our two grandchildren visited us earlier this month and we made the most of their time here by traveling to various sites around the region. We stopped at City of Rocks State Park, the Catwalk near Glenwood, the Organ Mountains and other places in Las Cruces to keep them entertained.
Our biggest trip was a one-day excursion to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. My wife and I had not been there since our kids were about the same age as our grandchildren, so it was a great time to revisit the park and remember what a spectacular place it is.
Hayes, our grandson who is about to turn four, began having some concerns about what might be in the cave. He knew there would be bats, stalactites and stalagmites but he wondered about other creepy cave dwellers.
At one point he questioned whether zombies might be present in the depths of the cave.
We finally encountered a park ranger on our walk down the steep narrow pathway to the Big Room. I asked Hayes if he wanted to ask the ranger anything. He was reluctant to speak, so I asked for him.
“Hayes wants to know if there are any zombies down here,” I said.
The ranger chuckled and nicely replied.
“We get that question a lot,” he said. “I don’t think there are any down here, but if there are, I’m sure they won’t bother good little boys like you.”
That seemed to satisfy Hayes who became so relaxed that he fell asleep in the arms of his weary mother. She had to carry him the last quarter mile to the elevators, a task I was pretty sure I could not have done at my age.
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