I am too slow about blogging!  We have covered so much ground and done so much, it is difficult to remember where we have been.  After Breaux Bridge we spent one night in a Texas state park, Steven F Austin.  From there we went to Fredericksburg, TX, where we spent three nights at Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Park.  Fredricksburg is an interesting German community and home of Admiral Nimitz and the National Museum of the Pacific war.  We enjoyed a German dinner and visited the wildflower store.
Next stop was Alpine, TX for one night en route to Big Bend National Park. We stayed in Terlingua, TX for our Big Bend visit.  Spaces out here are so vast!  From Terlingua to the park headquarters is 30 miles, virtually all within the park.  The desert and the mountains are so magnificent.  The annual rainfall is about 9 inches. Then another 30 miles to the southwest corner and 30 miles back.  Then another 30 miles to the southeast corner and then back.  These roads were steep and winding, average speed probably 30 miles per hour.  They had received 2 inches the night before we arrived and 4 inches the day before that.   Needles to say,  some roads were washed out and/or flooded.  By our third day we were able to get to all of the parts of the park we wanted to visit.
We intended to leave Terlingua on Saturday but the winds were blowing 25 to 30 miles per hour with gusts upward of 50.  We decided not to attempt to travel and relaxed (not hardly, Muriel did laundry).
On Sunday we drove to Carlsbad, NM to visit the Carlsbad Caverns.  But first, on Sunday evening we drove to the Caverns to watch the bats leave the cavern.  Right at sundown they began to fill the skies.  They say there were tens of thousands which leave the cave each evening during the summer.  This is what lead the first man to the cave, he wanted to see what was turning the evening sky black.
Muriel and I walked into the cave from the natural entrance.  It is a steep walk along switchbacks until you are 750 feet below the surface.  Then we began the tour of the Big Room which has so many beautiful formations it is impossible to take it all in.
Today we drove from Carlsbad via El Paso, TX to another state park outside Las Cruces, NM.  We lived at Fort Bliss (El Paso)  for the two years I was in the army.  Nothing was recognizable from our time there.
Tomorrow we will visit White Sands Nationsl Monument and Las Cruces before we head on toward Tuscon, AZ.