Sunday, June 12, 2016

2016 Summer Vacation Part 1 - Monahans Sandhills State Park

So we just got home from our 2016 Family Vacation!  We had a wonderful time touring Texas!  We saw an awful lot in the 2 weeks we were out!  We stayed in 5 different state parks in 14 nights!  We saw many sights!

Our first stop was Monahans Sandhills State Park, which was just west of Odessa, TX.  We stayed there May 27-May 30, 2016.  This was quite an interesting place.  It was miles and miles of sand!  I kept thinking we would see the ocean but we were nowhere near any body of water!

Climbing the dunes was very difficult and sliding back them proved to be difficult as well.  Aaron did the best and gained the most speed of anyone in sand surfing!   In fact we only spent about an hour trying before we decided we were done!

Our 2nd full day we spent at a water park in the town of Odessa LOL!  We decided that this state park was a good one night, possibly two night park!  It is neat to see and would be a good stop over if you are headed out to Big Bend (God's country).  While we were in Odessa we also discovered that Fuddruckers has gluten free buns so Alyssa and I got to enjoy a REAL hamburger!  It was awesome!!

One thing to note about this state park is the STARS!!!  With it being away from a major city and only a couple of hours from the one of the darkest places in the United States (Davis Mountains), coupled with the fact that there were NO TREES, you got a SPECTACULAR view of the night sky on a clear night!!  We brought out the telescope and enjoyed the clearest view of Jupiter that we have seen yet and saw 5 of it's moons surrounding it as well!!  We also got to watch the International Space Station fly by!  That was a super fun evening and THAT is what will draw us back to a repeat trip to this park! :-)

Here are the pictures from our stay!


Day 1 - arriving and checking out the park, stargazing


















Day 2 - sand surfing and kite flying





Day 3 - spending the day in Odessa - swimming and eating hamburgers











(I am dividing up my blog posts by the parks that we stayed at!  Stay tuned for the rest of the posts!!)

Until next time,
Kellie


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