Ice Caves and El Malpais

Keeping up with our "lets see New Mexico before we leave" plan we also stopped at the Ice Caves on our long way home. I learned about the Ice Cave while I was teaching 3rd grade and told Matt all about it because I thought it looked so cool. It's off the beaten path and I didn't think we'd ever make it there, but we saw signs and it was only 20 miles off the freeway so we stopped. :)

The Ice Caves were formed by volcano's that created lava tubes and there are tons of volcanic craters there. So first we hiked up to the highest one which is right on the Continental Divide. It was nice to get out of the car and walk and the crater was pretty impressive.

Most of you know we got a new camera right before Addie was born. It came with a remote control which we love because it makes it easy to get pictures with all of us. At first the remote worked perfectly, but we must have changed a setting or something because now when we use it, it takes 6-7 rapid fire pictures. We're trying to get good at switching our poses quickly (like the models we are) so we don't have tons of pictures of us in the same pose looking silly. Anyways, it's pretty funny, so I thought I would share.

 

Then we hiked down to the ice cave. It was more impressive in the pictures that I saw when I was teaching, but it was still cool to see. We walked down some stairs, about 20 feet below the 90 degree day and boom! There's a cave you could ice skate on. It's green because of arctic algae. Don't I sound smart?!