Hey everyone! I’m so happy I’m finally here with this post! I’ve been procrastinating on developing some film. Anyway, if you remember last year, I blogged about my birthday trip to Big Bend National Park with my best friends. That trip was so much fun and I knew I had to do something again this year.

This time around it was just Lyle and me and we decided to head back west. We left early Sunday morning in the middle of a thunderstorm and made it out to Balmorhea State Park. This place was absolutely amazing. I didn’t take too many photos because it was a super hot day and we just wanted to jump in! The water was pretty cold but it felt amazing.

We left Balmorhea and got back on the road to New Mexico. Monday morning we got up and headed to White Sands National Monument. It was a really hot day but the sand was so cool on your feet. It eventually got a little windy and was basically perfect weather. We spent a few hours here flying kites and running around in the sand. We left to grab lunch and then decided to check out Alemeda Park Zoo. The zoo looked really small and didn’t seem to offer much but we decided to visit anyway. It ended up being way bigger than we thought and had lots of cool animals! When we finished there, we headed back to White Sands to check out the sunset. White Sands when the sun is setting is an entirely different place. It was so peaceful and amazing. A small storm began rolling in but we only got drizzles so it wasn’t too bad.

On Tuesday morning, we got up and had breakfast at a cute waffle house/diner across from where we stayed. We sat at the bar and watched them cook our breakfast right in front of us! I wish I had snuck some footage because it was really cute but I honestly wasn’t thinking about it at the time. From there, we headed out to the mountains! It was such an amazing view just driving through the winding roads and I was absolutely in love because I had never seen anything like it before. We ended up taking a turn down some random road, losing cell service, and getting lost in the forest. We eventually made it back out and found a trail head and then ended up getting lost there too. Clearly, we’re great adventurers. We probably wouldn’t have had the experience we did if we didn’t get lost though, so it all worked out. Throughout our time in the forest, we spotted an elk, some bear tracks, deer tracks, and smaller animal tracks.

Pictures or it didn’t happen? Nah. I didn’t document any of this, but after finally making it out of the forest, we ate dinner and a tiny Italian restaurant. We ordered a pizza and I’m willing to say that it was honestly the best pizza I’ve ever had. After that, we ended up on the other side from where we started and made our way to Ruidoso. We headed to Inn of the Mountain Gods to do some gambling and what not. After spending a few hours there, we headed back to where we stayed and went to bed. I was super sad to leave the next day but this trip only motivated me to get out and adventure more.

If you made it this far, I hope you enjoyed reading about our adventures out west. There’s so much more I could say about it but I decided to keep it (somewhat) short. I have another blogpost coming up with more photos and the video from our trip so be on the look out for that! I’m definitely thinking of keeping the tradition alive. Where to next year?! 0:)