After leaving our friends' place, we drove down the road to nearby White Sands National Monument. (Yay - another score for our annual national park pass!) The White Sands dunefield is made up of white gypsum sand, and it covers about 270 square miles!

Friends from Belize now live in Alamogordo, New Mexico (elevation 4,334') - it's been too long since we saw them last, so we knew we had to pay them a visit. Jon and Shelly, now have a sweet baby named Julian, and we spent a wonderful weekend with them catching up, playing with the baby, watching him start to walk, playing games, cooking dinner at home, and going out for lunch a couple of times.

Ever since getting an America The Beautiful (National Park) Pass for our Everglades bike trip we decided to make sure we get our money's worth out of it. So, we are on a mission to visit as many National Parks and National Monuments as we feasibly can this year. We had never been to Carlsbad Caverns before, and it was along our general route, so we had to go!

We had never been to Carlsbad, New Mexico before, and it was the right distance to drive for the day, so we got there in time to bike around and check it out.

We've been to San Antonio, Texas a few times before, and we always enjoy ourselves there, so we just had to swing by and walk the Riverwalk

We lived two winters in Austin, Texas (2012 and 2013) - we loved it then, and we wanted to see it again. So, we spent a beautiful week there

On Sunday we drove to Slidell, Louisiana in so we could cycle on the Tammany Trace trail, which is another Hall of Fame Rail Trail.

After getting Eric's flat tire fixed we parked near Depot Park and hopped on our bikes to explore the 17-mile Gainesville-Hawthorne State Tr

We read that the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway has a land bridge and we wanted to see one in person, so we decided to bike it.

Cyclists on the Shark Valley Trail said that the Withlacoochee State Trail was their favorite trail in Florida, so we had to check it out.

We saw the really long Pinellas Trail Loop on the map, so we decided to bike it, of course. We did it in sections, over several days.

Uncle Dave & Aunt Linda were visiting friends who live in Florida, and we met up with them for a bit. One day we all went to Tarpon Springs.

We didn't have anything planned for this Valentine's Day, so we decided to go for a bike ride through the neighborhoods of beautiful Naples.

We ended up in Cape Coral, Florida for a pinball tournament the night before. It's been nicknamed "Cape Coma", but we can't see why.

A friend we knew from Indiana, Erik, was in the area and wanted to meet up with us, so we decided on a bike ride in Naples, Florida.

Our friend, Dave, told us Shark Valley is a great bike ride, and we're so glad we listened to him and rode it. Simply incredible!

We drove through the Florida Keys expecting a lot of cool stuff, but nothing really called to us until we got to Key West.

A winter storm blanketed the entire US, which prompted us to go as far south as we could to find warmth - all the way to the Florida Keys!

So, we arrived at our friend Dave's place in Bonita Springs (really, he's in Bonita Beach on the barrier island) just before New Year's Eve.

It turned out to be a rare sunny and nice winter day in south Florida, so we decided to ride our bicycles up to Fort Myers Beach.