This came to mind tonight, no idea why – but in another 3 years we might be ready to tackle Carlsbad Caverns which is only a nine hour drive away. Hahaha! 🙂 But we could camp there and the general entrance pass is $6 per adult, free for kids under 15 and is good for 3 days. There are two self guided tours available and the bat exodus thing so you could spread it out and camp for a couple nights and spend some time exploring the caves and hiking in the area. I’m thinking if we went in September we would avoid the summer crowds and it wouldn’t be so hot. Or maybe October would be better… 🙂

Then someday much further down the line I do want to explore Arches and Yellowstone and Zion and perhaps if we’re crazy ambitious we’ll head towards Nevada and California (as the kids have begged, especially C wants to see California – his birth place.)

But first we’ll start local with the Texas parks and then slowly work our way up over the next three years. I think Carlsbad is the closest “big” national park and I remember it as a kid. I also need to see what there is to see between here and there, because I would want to stop and camp at some point on the journey. Maybe a night on the way there, camp three nights there, then head back?