And so this is Christmas,

What have you done?

Another year over,

A new one just begun…

Music flooded my ears.

A little girl standing next to me was swaying with the music, holding on to her dad’s hands behind her. Families stood behind me, humming along with the music.

I was at San Antonio’s famous Riverwalk. It was the first day of the Christmas celebration, and the last day of our Thanksgiving trip.

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I created this photo-video of my trip to the four locations, and here is the result: one four-minute long music video of our trip. A high-definition version of this video is available here.

More pictures below. This article was edited on 12/17/2008.

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Treasure the unexpected, a doctor said.

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There was nothing around for miles. The only thing we had, the only thing that pointed us towards the correct direction, were tiny red markers. Without them, we might be completely lost in the barren landscape.

Sand stretched for miles and miles. All you could see was dune after dune, of pure white dust on the ground, slowly building up and being layered by the powers of the wind. And in the far distance, mountains.

We were at White Sands National Monument. It was interestingly inside a United States missile range, and the old man at the visitor center had told us the US Department of Defense conducted frequent tests, firing missiles from one side of the range, over the park, to the other side.

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I was expecting a mountain. I was expecting a few trails around the bottom of the mountain. I was also expecting a mountain trail to the top of the highest peak of Texas, for mountain climbers.

So when my dad and I walked into the visitor center, I wasn’t expecting much. I had agreed that I would hike to the top of the mountain if, and only if, there was a hiker accessible trail to the top.

When we walked out, however, I was stunned. The park ranger had explained to us that the trail would take a day. It was 8 miles round-trip, which normally wouldn’t freak me out, but the trail would climb 3000 feet. And then another 3000 feet down.

6000 feet was a bit more than a mile. Up. If somebody had asked me to climb half a mile straight up, I would have thought they were joking. But here I was, about to climb up half a mile, and then back down half a mile.

I snorted. The park ranger had told us there were little children who had climbed it. That hardly helped my self-pride. I turned around, looking up. The giant peaks loomed around me. They looked very tall. They were not, however, the highest one. Guadalupe Peak was. And it was behind all the other giant peaks. Continue reading →

(more pictures below)

When my father told me we were going to a cavern, I imagined a dark lonely cave, with no one. Maybe there was one person to give out lanterns at the front, but no more than that. The long, winding road from the wide highway into the mountains just further pushed this suspicion.

So when I arrived at the visitor center, I took a look at the photos hanging in a room. There were two walls filled with pictures. On one side, there were all sorts of different formations in the pictures. On the other, there were a bunch of people, faces caulked with mud, waving at the camera.

It was the formations I was interested in. I loved taking photographs. I found the photos very interesting. When I once again strolled out of the room, I wasn’t thinking damp tunnels. I was thinking about the real Carlsbad Caverns National Park: the one that had the largest cavern room in the world. Continue reading →