Last month we spent 5 days adventure van-ing around northern New Mexico. It was our first camping trip as a family of four, and it went surprisingly well. Jurgen is in a very wiggly stage, where he constantly wants to get down on the ground, crawl around, and put everything (everything) into his mouth. That presented a few challenges, but we managed fine. Welcome to the first post in a 4 part series about our trip.
Queue the scary music. A long drive with 2 kids under 4 makes me shudder: The crying, the boredom, the whining. Dear lord, the whining.
“How much longer?…How much longer? …. How much longer?”
How much longer til mama goes insane?
But, actually, the drive was pretty uneventful. Yes, Alistair began asking how much longer before we were out of sight of our house. Yes, Jurgen had a hunger pang on 285 that necessitated me nursing him on the fly. Yes, surprisingly, we made it to New Mexico without anything more than a quick stop for Reeses Peanut Butter Cups (for me, not the kids).
Catching some zzzz’s (aka not asking “Are we there yet?”)
Things unraveled a bit when we got into New Mexico. Our sights were set on Bandelier National Monument, but the kids (read: yours truly) were getting restless. After some hemming and hawing we settled into a dispersed camping spot somewhere along a ranch road in the middle of nowhere. “Dispersed camping” is, perhaps, Jordan’s favorite phrase, and in adventure van parlance means nothing other than camping alongside the road. It was, admittedly, a nice place to camp. Who knows whose ranch we were in the middle of, but since it was National Forest, I guess he didn’t mind. We only saw one cow, but the abundance of cow pies was proof that she had plenty of friends nearby.
Ali working that arid New Mexican soil.
For dinner, Jordan cooked us up grilled cheese, a van favorite. Good bread, good cheese (brie is my top pick), topped with preserves, cooked til it’s nice and melted in the iron skillet, is camping perfection.
In the morning I tried my hand at vancakes (pancakes made in the adventure van) for the first time and, if I say so myself, crushed it. Despite forgetting milk, and instead improvising with a mixture of yogurt and water, they were delicious. My secret? Butter. Just ridiculous amounts of butter. Butter in the batter, butter coating the skillet, butter on top when served. I’ve been making the recipe at home for a few weeks now (get it here, from Martha Stewart herself), and prior to the trip mixed up all of the dry ingredients, a sort of pre-fab, homemade, pancake mix. That way, all I had to do the morning of was add eggs, butter, and milk (oops). I’m clearly very proud of these vancakes. They were damn good. And when have you ever heard me say that before? Never, probably.
Vancakes. The look on Jurgen’s face says it all.
Our stomachs chock full of buttery goodness, we set forth for Ojo Caliente. A short drive from our dispersed camp spot, Ojo Caliente is somewhat fancy spa resort with hot spring pools. According to the reviews on Trip Advisor, kids are kind of welcome, so long as they are perfectly behaved. Our kids always perfectly behaved, so we went for it. To our shock, our kids actually did behave really well, and we didn’t get kicked out of the place. Jurgen fell asleep in the stroller, and Alistair seemed to actually understand that he couldn’t be totally rambunctious. He couldn’t do cannonballs into the pool, but he did get to play in a mud pool, which delighted the 3 of us (“What! A mud fountain!? And we can put it all over our bodies and wash it off in a muddy pool?! Amazing!” – me and Jordan). To anyone reading this, especially if they are related by blood to me, this sounds disgusting. I get it, I was once like you. I’m enlightened now, thanks to the natural, rejuvenating properties of Ojo Caliente. I love the mud.
Finding his zen.
Muddy mama.
Like a pig in mud.
Don’t be fooled: a baby napping at a spa has nothing to do with parenting and everything to do with dumb luck.
Once we maxed out our zen (but not our welcome), we hit the road and headed to lunch. I could generously describe the exterior of the restaurant with phrases like “hole in the wall”, “unassuming”, and “slightly scary”, but it got great Yelp reviews, so we ventured in. And it was awesome. It was a one man operation, so the hipster that took my order was also the cook, waiter, accountant, and presumably, plumber. It was a unique business model, but impressive and seemed to work. We had pepperoni pizza, a hearty green salad, and Ali loved splashing around in the pristine, very un-muddy creek behind the joint.
Our stomachs full and the kids primed for naps, we set off for Bandelier National Monument.
Up next: Bandelier National Monument
