Well maybe not completely, but we have probably travelled less this week than since the trip began…

Last Sunday we were in Salt Lake City as you may remember, celebrating Matt’s birthday with the Mormons.  What a party!!  Well actually not much of a party – but we did have a good time and loved the setting of SLC – surrounded by the snow-capped mountains. 

On Monday, we checked out of the hotel, after having sneaked in some of our dirty washing from Reg into the hotel laundry…(classy), had our final use of the spa & fitness room (phew) and had our last made to order omelette from the unsmiling chef (tasty).  It was a welcome break from life on the road, but Reg had managed to get a parking ticket so we thought we ought to move on before he was clamped!

Embarrassing in the extreme was discovering on Monday afternoon when we went to have his tyres checked that we have never had his air shock absorbers set up correctly.  A man got busy with an air compressor machine and Reg literally wafted up in the air!  To say we felt foolish was an understatement.  I think the man obviously thinks we don’t have air in England.   Well, that’s how we played it anyway!

Monday night after all these jobs and revelations we purred our way up about an hour from SLC to Willard Lake.  A dam which helps separate fresh water from the Great Salt Lake.  Very quiet spot and we stayed two nights as it turns out as we were killing time waiting for our kayaks to be delivered to Walmart in Salt Lake City. 

Willard Lake was charming, but on Tuesday when we went for a cycle ride around the lake, which turned out to be a 20-mile marathon, we discovered that all bugs in the United States live there during the first week of May.  It was like a biblical plague – they were in our mouths, eyes and ears and we had to cycle with one hand covering orifices and the other hand on the bike.  In the middle of this we saw a Utah prairie dog who stood on his back legs and let everyone know that Matt and I were coming.  It was hilarious and Matt does a very good impression of him, complete with his own whiskers of course!

The insects drove us out by Wednesday when we went back to SLC to collect the kayaks.  Whilst we were waiting for them to arrive we took a hike up Middle Creek Canyon which is part of a national forest.  Located very close to the City so skiing in winter, cycling in summer. The path was packed with bikers, walkers, dogs and runners.  Very pleasant indeed and good to see everyone exercising!

On Wednesday night after we had collected the kayaks we drove up to East Canyon State Park where we have been ever since.  Slight hiccup on the way as the proper road was still closed for the winter, so we had to drive up a very bumpy and dusty Jeremy Ranch Road.  It was a ride of rattles.  Of course, when we get here the ranger asked why we had not taken the other road in!  Oh dear – I think we just wanted to get the air out of the shock absorbers!

Lovely setting – we are beside a lake near the original Mormon pioneer trail. We have mountains all around, covered in snow – yet I have been a bikini this weekend as it has been very warm.  Weird feeling!

The kayaks are amazing.  Awfully yellow as you will see from the pictures, but they have given us a lot of fun this week.  Going in a straight line required a bit of effort and technique – but we are getting there.  I hope that bingo wings will be a thing of the past by the end of this trip – but then heard if you are using your arms too much you are doing it wrong..?!   Who knows.  But we have had a blast.

We are off tomorrow northwards.  Time to get on the road again to Yellowstone and Grand Teton.  Enough of this messing about in water – we need to hunt for bears…

The weather went a bit wobbly on us this week, we started in beautiful sunshine on Lake Powell and ended with snow falling as we walked around our campsite in the middle of Utah.  It’s still chilly in Salt Lake as I write this but the forecast is for warmer days ahead, which is just as well as we’ve ordered kayaks to go boating from our most popular shopping destination, Walmart, there is virtually nothing that store doesn’t provide us with!

The drive to Lake Powell from Monument Valley was another stunning trip, passing out of the Navajo Nation, the largest reservation in the US, into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument which is an area larger than even Yellowstone and so called as along with the geology of the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon and Canyonlands makes up the largest single stretch of geological history on the planet unbroken by glacial erosion.  Well, whatever it means, geologists get very excited about the rocks around here and we have to say we have too as they are so beautiful!

So back to Lake Powell, this is another manmade lake, it’s the second tallest dam after the Hoover and dams the Colorado above the Grand Canyon.  Lake Powell straddles the borders of Utah and Arizona which meant we were never sure what time zone we were in as Arizona doesn’t have daylight saving, while Utah does.  We got slightly confused as the state line crosses the middle of the campsite, we may well have lost or gained an hour but we never did figure it out!  One thing that Lake Powell does is boating and we didn’t wish to disappoint them so we hired an eight-seater runabout with a 150hp outboard which went like the clappers!  We drove it up to Antelope Canyon which is a very beautiful canyon that narrows as you proceed up it and which you must dodge lots of people on kayaks and paddle boards, including one girl doing handstands on hers (nope, no idea why).  You can hire houseboats on Lake Powell and spend up to a fortnight exploring it all the way up the Colorado, these boats top out at $18,000 a week but do sleep 20 people but still not really tempted.

After our day on the water we were off to Zion National Park, which before we arrived in the US we’d never heard of.  The reason we went is that we have a guide to the 58 national parks and it says the second best hike in the whole parks system is in Zion, problem was we discovered that as the hike is over 50% wading through the waters of the Virgin River (nope didn’t think I’d ever enter another virgin in my lifetime but there you go …) you have to wait until the water subsides from the snow melt and is running at less than 150 cubic feet per second.  The water when we arrived was running at 700 cubic feet and they don’t expect to open the Narrows, as the hike is called, until the beginning of June at the earliest.

Despite my disappointment (I’m not sure Alex was as disappointed), I loved Zion it has the most incredible sheer cliffs down from high mesas with the Virgin river running along the bottom of the canyon. It was called Zion by Mormon settlers as it provided them with a place of sanctuary and if it weren’t so busy with thousands of tourists it would still be such.  We climbed the ‘strenuous’ hike of Angels Landing, about six miles and an elevation of 1,500 feet to a peak around 6,500 feet.  The top of which you have to haul yourself up along chains anchored to the rock, it was almost as busy as the M40 on a Friday night, this despite the sign at the start stating that seven people have died on the hike since 2006.  The views from the top are majestic back down into the canyon with the river running through it and across to the other peaks in the park and the winding road that brings visitors in and out.

After two days in Zion and more walking than any other park so far, Alex’s activity watch recorded over 35,000 steps one day, we had to leave to visit Bryce Canyon.  We decided to visit this park because back in October in our Detroit hotel the running machine had a video of the canyon that Alex ran through and she felt she’d like to see it in person.  I have to say a big thankyou to whoever made that machine as this is another park with rock formations like no other on earth.  The plateau is worn down by the 180 days of below freezing weather that cracks the rocks and erodes softer rock below a layer of harder compressed clay leaving numerous ‘windows’ and spires that are called Hoo Doos.  The Ute (that isn’t an Australian utility vehicle but the name of the local native American tribe) believe that the previous inhabitants of the valley offended the gods and were turned to stone in punishment.  You can see why as the many of the hoo doos look incredibly like humans, one really looked like a woman standing in the distance and others had numerous ‘faces’ in them. 

We walked along the rim on the evening of our arrival and the next day we walked down into the amphitheatres that make up the park to look more closely at the formations.  This is where the weather began to play a part, as stated Bryce has 180 days where the temperature drops below freezing, and when we arrived there was still snow on the ground from winter.  As we drove in on the second day we were met by a snow flurry but persevered with our walking clothes and layers on we were quite warm and it was well worth it as the sun came through and warmed us as we spent the majority of the day wandering in awe of the hoo doos.

On Friday 28^th, my birthday, we drove from Bryce along the scenic Utah Highway 12 through the Dixie National Forest and again through the Grand Staircase, and yet again we had stunning scenery.  We crossed into a region called the Devils Backbone a region that has the Henry Mountains (the last to be mapped in the US mainland) overlooking checkerboard rocks and numerous canyons so difficult to traverse the road wasn’t completed until the 1930s.  We stopped for lunch at a restaurant called the Devils Backbone Grill which is owned by a Buddhist and run by Mormons, not sure what the directions are like but they obviously don’t want their guests to get fat as Alex’s trout salad was on the small side!  I phoned, and tried to phone, members of my family but the signal kept cutting out as we climbed the mountains on the far side of the backbone and through what was dangerously looking like a blizzard at one point.  We reached our campsite, Palisade State Park, where the girl who checked us in said she’d never met anyone from England before, went for a walk and it snowed!  I can honestly say it’s the first time its snowed on my birthday.  We locked ourselves in Reg and clandestinely drank several lagers (Utah was a dry state for a long period of time and there are still some restrictions on drinking in public) and played canasta, very rock and roll!

Saturday, we drove up to Salt Lake City noting that the churches of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints were becoming bigger and more ornate as we went.  We parked Reg opposite our hotel as we are enjoying a ‘weekend break’ and rather than going to see Johnny Mathis, who was in town, went to a performance of Barber’s Adagio for strings (introduced to me by one William Orbit many years ago!), his Violin Concerto Opus 14 and some Brahms at the Utah Symphony.  We both loved it, really beautiful music, only slightly marred by the fidgeting 10-year-old in front and the row of ancients behind who in between coughing rustled their sweet wrappers such that Alex gave them a Paddington Bear stare that would chill any normal human! 

Sunday is drawing to a close as I write this and you won’t be surprised to hear that we were slightly under the weather this morning and consequently decided against going to the Tabernacle for Sunday service which is meant to be incredible for the choir alone. 

Thank you to everyone for their birthday wishes and we’ll be back with our next instalment in a week’s time!

M

This is going to be hard to write this week without wearing out the words awesome, amazing, breath-taking, wonderful, etc.….  I am not just talking about Matt on the eve of his birthday – but where we have been of course – although he would be thrilled with the big up!

We came to this area 8 years ago and it made an incredible impression on us then and we were not disappointed on our return now.  In fact, we think as daft as it sounds we will probably come back again when this year is over – that is how beautiful it is.  (Shall we play superlative bingo throughout this blog – there is a beautiful to get you started!)

So, on Easter Sunday we had brunch in Albuquerque – which is impossible to visit or to type about and not sing that annoying Prefab Sprout song.  What is even more annoying is that between us we only know about three lines so have to constantly loop the title. Anyway, the brunch was nicer than the song and it broke our journey nicely before arriving in Santa Fe. 

Very excited to be in Santa Fe due to our love of Georgia O’Keefe and her works.  On Sunday, we were too late for the museum, so wandered downtown and got the feel of the place.  A lot of Indian arts and crafts – wind chimes and tut – but pleasant enough and due to the pueblo architecture, you would never have thought you were in a US city in 2017.  We had a beer on a terrace above the main plaza and it was very nice to relax and take it all in.

Next day we did go to the Georgia museum and it was brilliantly arranged so that you could clearly trace the different elements in her style and the huge impact that moving from the East coast to New Mexico had on her art.  The pictures of out here are amazing (ding) and the story of her life were illustrated well.   That she ended up as the old woman in the desert is completely understandable when you are here surrounded by what she saw.  Huge skies, balmy winds and the sharpest most beautiful colours in the rocks, trees and flowers.  Stunning (ding!).

Once we had come off our artistic vibe it was time to get back to our other love – US governance so we had a quick tour of the New Mexico capitol building and saw their House of Representatives and the Senate.  Absolutely no security whatsoever so if Guy Fawkes was around today – this would have been a pretty good target.

We had dinner in Santa Fe and again the food was much better than we have had. New Mexico and Arizona have a foodie reputation and it shows.  Still lots of Mexican influence – but European fusion too.

After our mini break in the big city (hardly large Santa Fe – but in a state of only 2m people it is big) we set off north to the border with Colorado.  Driving on our route we passed by where Georgia lived, the famous ‘Ghost Ranch’.  The scenery was stunning – red cliffs, canyons and amazing cloud formations.  There were cottonwood trees in the valley – exactly as she painted.  Superb!

Every day in Reg we sit up front and look at America the beautiful out of the windows – but sometimes it is even more amazing than we are expecting.  The drive from Santa Fe to our camp that night – Heron Lake State Park – was one such journey. We went from dusty canyons up on to a plateau, which was Alpine in feel.  We had snow-capped mountains, pine forests and streams after having been in a red dusty bowl.  The transition was quick and definitely a road to remember.  We call it landscape overload.  It is so beautiful you can hardly process it.

Heron Lake was completely deserted as a camp ground.  Clearly covered in snow in winter, the trails were marked for cross country skiing as well as hiking.  It was warm and sunny for us – and so lovely to be completely on our own.  We saw one other couple out walking but otherwise our companions were bunnies and deer who were numerous.  I saw bald headed eagles at the dam and we had the most spectacular sunsets.  Amazing place – one that we might come back to.  For those reading the blog it was almost like Land Between Lakes which we went to in November between Kentucky and Missouri.

We had another amazing drive from Heron Lake, into Colorado on our eventual way to a National Park – Mesa Verde. It is a pretty long old trek to Mesa Verde so we stopped a night in Durango, on a site underneath a mountain.  Even simple chores like taking the rubbish out are magical here as the stars are so bright in the dark skies – but very chilly!

Slight mishap on the way to Mesa Verde the next morning –  Reg decided to get a flat tyre. A sign of our new resilience to these types of dramas is that we just left the park and went to the town of Cortez and found a tyre shop then and there.  We used the time it took to do some errands in the town so that we did not lose the whole day. I think we are getting a bit more resilient in our sixth month of the trip!  We have now covered 10,000 miles by the way.

Mesa Verde is all about native American cave dwellings, but on so much of a larger scale than what we had seen in Gila National Forest.  These are huge constructions – Cliff Palace in one cave has 100 rooms.  All mind blowing and the setting is superb.  Reg had to earn his new tyre as he climbed up some really steep hills.  He does groan a bit we have to say!  Anyway, we made it – about 8,000 feet up.  The tours at Mesa Verde are booked ages in advance so we had to make do with a trail instead.  My sister H will like this one – we saw our first snake on a path and the leg of an elk – still with hoof and fur on but no longer attached to a carcass.  Charming!

So, we come to the best bit of the week which was Monument Valley.  It was completely magical all over again.  This time we came from the other direction having been in Mesa Verde, so arrived on the scenic road 163 (one for the anoraks out there) and as the sun set on the huge, red lumps of rock it was all too much.  I felt my eyes were going to be sick… it is so beautiful it is a little like eating too much or drinking too much – we just felt overloaded.  Not a bad thing, you just hope that the images get burnt on to your brain to recall them years later when you need them on a grey day in London!

Our site was run by David who had just started it – we were again his only customers for most of Friday – but he was lovely and made us very welcome.  The park is administered by the Navajo so it is not the same as a national park.  We had a jeep tour on Friday afternoon and we saw different parts of the valley than we had seen before. Arches blown in the sandstone by wind and rain, petroglyphs from earlier tribes and of course stunning views.  The Navajo are fairly commercial and it was frankly a fortune – $190 and our guide Bryon was probably the hardest person to talk to in the world.  No Park Service free talks at Monument Valley!

Next day we did our own thing – we walked around the West Mitten Butte before breakfast which was very tranquil and peaceful and then at lunchtime we made a picnic and set off on the Thompson Twins and cycled down the valley road. If anyone has been to Monument Valley they can imagine how bumpy and dusty this was.  No matter – despite the dust and being completely worn out with the gradients – it was a huge experience to be immersed in the landscape and to think that it was formed millions of years ago. 

Monument Valley is the thing that everyone should see in my humble opinion. No matter how they try to explain the geology of it – it is simply nuts!  Huge great lumps of red rock and then sandy desert all around.  It is breath taking.  We have vowed to come back again – as we still absolutely love it. 

Reluctantly we said goodbye to David and that beautiful scenery and headed west towards the top of the Grand Canyon at Page.  There is a huge dam here on the Colorado River and we need to be up here to visit Zion National Park this week.  We are staying at Lake Powell which is a recreation area beloved of campers and boaters.  To join in this afternoon, we hired a speedboat and went up Antelope Canyon and had another picnic whilst marvelling at the geology which we have not got any more understanding of than before!

We are at the end of this week – red, flabbergasted at what we have seen and very aware of how lucky we are to be on this trip.  This, as I say, may just be the best bit… but stay tuned to find out!

We left you in Tucson, suffering from our first hangover for a long time, we’re getting out of practice but I’m confident that our friends will help us over it on our return.  After a late start we walked into Tucson, looked at the University, which seemed to be populated with young women wearing little clothing, fine for me, not such a hit with Alex.  We had dinner at a so-so Italian and got a call from Sheryl and her posse from her birthday party, which was really lovely and made us think of you all and miss home somewhat although with our current inability to drink we may not have made it through the party intact.

Feeling more refreshed on Sunday we set off for the Desert Museum as recommended by a couple from Chicago (the randoms we meet!), big disappointment as although the cactus garden was excellent and informative it was depressing to find they had examples of the local wildlife caged for people to gawp at, including a very sad looking black bear and an ocelot that was pacing backwards and forwards in a small area.  To cheer us up we decided to walk up another mountain!  We popped into the Saguaro (pronounced sah-wah-ro, and is the name of the majestic Cactus that everyone recognises from countless John Wayne movies) National Park Visitor Centre and were suggested we do the King Canyon Walk up to the top of Mount Wasson.  Quite a long hike but the views were spectacular, acres and acres of canyon and slopes with thousands of Saguaros (they only grow their ‘arms’ after the age of 75 and live to between 150-200 years) and a grand panoramic view of the whole of Tucson across to the Rincon mountains on the far side of the city.

We drove through the evening and into the night to reach the Lost Dutchman State Park, eating our first Sonic burgers on the way and where Alex petrified the staff by walking into what she believed was the restaurant but is their food prep area, we think they may have thought she was attempting to hold them up!  Sonic’s claim for your dollar is their large selection of ice cream milkshakes and slushy drinks, you wonder why Americans are so fat?

We woke up at the Lost Dutchman to the sight of our own Saguaro outside Reg’s door and an Ocotillo (you’re on your own for the pronunciation of that one) which had beautiful red flowers on it and was visited regularly by at least two hummingbirds very pretty (Shaun, we’re just rubbish at identifying what type they were we couldn’t see if they had black throats, they just were tiny and green to us!).  Really stunning setting underneath Superstition mountain, which is a volcanic plug pushed up from the earth (we’re learning geology on our trip too).  Obviously the first thing we do on spying a mountain is to walk up it these days, Alex checked at the visitor centre and they said the path was marked to the basin and it was an extra 2,000 feet to the summit from there and a hard scramble.  We walked to the basin, it was steep enough and the views of Apache Junction (not as romantic as you might think) were great and the old gold mine train (tours on the hour we believe but can’t certify) was tooting away in the distance.

The park is named the Lost Dutchman for the German (don’t ask) gold prospector who discovered a major gold lode but after returning to civilisation could never find it again, they did find some gold and hence the tourist attraction across from the park but it wasn’t the one he alleges is out there!

The next morning, we rose early and took the Thompsons for a spin into the Tonto national forest, the highlight of which was we saw two coyotes running across the path, more ticks in the fauna section of our travels.  We drove to Scottsdale, right next to Phoenix, to a campsite near the centre of town parked Reg and walked to the ‘river’ for some lunch at the Olive and Ivy.  Can be heartily recommended for both the food, I had a posh kebab (or kabob as they’re termed here) Alex had the tortellini, and the atmosphere and it was all washed down in the beautiful sunshine by a bottle of sauvignon blanc.  In the evening, we wandered around the clubbing district which was quiet on a Tuesday but we suspect worth a whirl on a Friday and Saturday night if anyone’s ever in the vicinity.

Wednesday was culture day as we had discovered that Frank Lloyd Wright had a house and architecture school in Scottsdale called Taliesin West which he used as his ‘laboratory’ for trying new styles and processes and where he taught students architecture.  These students had to pay for the privilege and along with studying were also expected to help build the house (including two theatres), clean the buildings, cook meals for everybody living there and after all of that entertain Frank, his wife and any guests they may have.  You might think exploitation but most seemed very happy to be near him and learn from him.  The setting is beautiful, when Frank bought the land at a knock down price, there was only one ranch building on the horizon, unfortunately there are many more buildings now and what made him particularly furious was the power utility put a line of major pylons across his favourite view.  In a huff, he refused to install electricity to the property for another four years after the lines were installed.  Needless to say, we loved it so much we signed up as members of the friends (or whatever) of Frank Lloyd Wright that gives us access to discounts and tours at a ranch of buildings he designed through his life, most of which seem to be in states that we aren’t going to visit!

Thursday, after a night at the Dead Horse Ranch (the children of the owner who donated it to the state named it that), we drove up to and through Sedona.  We’d visited once before and really liked it and we wondered after having viewed so many natural beauty spots whether we would still love it.  We weren’t disappointed, the natural red rock of the area combined with the erosion of water and wind over millennia mean that it still stands out as an incredible sight.  Found a mountain, Mount Wilson, and raced to climb it before it got dark.  Guess what?  Another amazing walk through changing landscapes and vegetation up to a high plateau which had snow melt still on it from the winter.

After another late drive, Friday found us in Homolovi State Park which contains the ruins of thousands of Pueblos created between 900-1300 AD.  After breakfast, rather than investigate these ruins, we went to the Petrified Forest National Park.  Very different park, created to stop people stealing the petrified wood, which was created over 225 million years ago when trees were trapped on a sandy river bank and through  #he ages the wood is replaced by minerals.  The petrified wood is multi-coloured and popular with tourists for keepsakes.  The landscape is very different with the Painted Desert that surrounds the wood having a range of colours to reflect the different strata of rock laid down over history.

Saturday morning, we visited Homolovi II, the most extant of the pueblos in the park, quite interesting, more for the insight from the Ranger at the visitor centre that the Hopi tribe, who are descendants of the original pueblo Indians who build the site, provide financial support to the park to keep it open.  Shows that people are more interested in lakes, mountains, trees and killing things than in the history of the country before the arrival of Europeans.

And on that controversial note we’ll end this weeks entry and look forward to telling you next week about Santa Fe, Georgia O’Keefe, the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley!

M

We are not wanted by the police just yet, but we did end up underground.. we also have been to some edgy places this week…

We started the week still in New Mexico at Caballo Lake.  We had a wonderful view from our pitch of the dam across the Rio Grande.  We cycled and walked as usual – it was gorgeous and very relaxing.  We seem to find it very difficult to avoid beer and tortilla chips…and last Monday was no exception as we cycled to a town called Arrey – we like to think named after Redknapp and consumed more of each in a local roadside shack.  Men came in wearing Stetsons and boots – we kid you not!

We were really off the beaten track at this stage – but superb scenery.  New Mexico is huge skies, mountains on all sides and great plains. The light is amazing and although windy as usual in springtime, it is not so hot that you cannot go out. 

After Caballo Lake we had a change of temperature and had our first underground excursion – although strictly speaking they were caves.  These were in the Gila National Forest.  In 1200 approximately some Native Americans found these amazing limestone caves and built walls and floors into them and lived in them for 40 years.  They are still standing now – so no one knows why they left.  They reckon about 80 people lived there – but they have not much more to go on than that.

It was an interesting thing to see – but the drive there was the highlight as we had to get through a twelve and half foot bridge. The man at the RV place said to me in a very sexist way when we bought Reg – make sure your husband does not go through anything lower than 13ft – so we were a tad nervous as you can imagine!  All ok – we still have the aerial on the roof.

Gila National Forest is as large as Wales – or it felt like it!  We camped up there – very remote and incredibly chilly due to the altitude.  On the way down I drove and we stopped at one particular spot to admire the amazing view and then noticed the twisted metal of a car wreck over the edge!  Not very encouraging… To give you an idea of how slow and steep the roads were, we did about 30 miles in two hours!  Or I have turned into Miss Daisy?!

On Wednesday night we drove into a town called Willcox as we were preparing for our next round of mountain edges – at Chiricahau National Monument the next day.  Willcox was charming in a very poor, abandoned way.  So many businesses were shut down – the empty lots had almost become a feature.  Some chap had posted on the net all these scenes of dereliction and then had been taken to task by the residents… I do not want to have the same thing happen to me – so I will stop there. Yet again had some beers and tortillas with the locals.  Willcox was kind to us so we will be kind to it.

Chiricahau was another out of this world experience.  The alternative name for these rock formations is ‘Standing Up Rocks’ and they are literally columns of rock in all shapes and sizes.  There was a duck, punch and judy, sharks, a gravity defying balancing rock. Please check out the pictures as you will not believe me as to how incredible these things are.  We climbed up amongst them and have taken at least a hundred photos – so get ready for our presentation!

After recovering from our steep climb up and down, we piled back into Reg and set off for Bisbee.  This is an edgy town in Arizona.  We know this as the flyer for the town features someone with blue hair… sadly we never got to see her!  A real old hippy greeted us at the site which was part of the Queen Mine complex.  On the way there we passed the most massive manmade hole – the Lavender copper pit.  Not named Lavender to reflect the amazing colours of the rock which were indeed orange, brown, purple – but no – just the name of the chef exec of the mining company!

In our pursuit of edginess in Bisbee you guessed it – we had more beer and chips.  Some of the IPA brews are very strong so we slept well that night.

Next day we went underground.  The Queen Mine stopped operating in 1974 but they have kept the train and shafts open as a tourist attraction.  We had to don hard hats, luminous vests and best of all we were each given a leather belt to attach the davy lamp on to.  Marvellous photo opportunity for everyone.  We then had to mount the train – you straddle it – and we headed 700ft underground and 1500ft into a mountain to see the traces of the copper and hear all about it.  It was very cold and dark as you can imagine, but the guide was a real joker and had a very wry sense of humour. 

We emerged into the blistering sun and then set off for another tourist attraction – Tombstone.  This western town is famous for the gunfight at the OK Corral between the Earp brothers and some cowboys. We were in full tourist mode now – so went into the saloon named the Big Nosed Kate – who was the prostitute lover of Doc Halliday, on the side of the Earps in the gunfight.  Inside there were an awful lot of fringed shirts, spurs, boots and hats… some people taking their trip down memory lane a little too seriously for our European sensibilities… – but we sat at a shiny bar and had – well you can guess!

At 2pm we went and watched the gunfight be recreated with some actors in a dusty facsimile of the buildings.  It was very loud and I thought I had been shot at one stage!  It was real pantomime stuff – but it is history and as ever the people we met were charming, proud and friendly. 

On our way to Tucson that night we passed the border patrol – now maybe our sixth time we have been stopped in Reg…but hold on it was 5.03pm and the border patrol had closed.  The signs for the roadblock were tossed to one side and it seems to be a free for all weekend! Welcome Amigos!

Tucson was our final destination for the week.  Got a taxi downtown and had dinner out.  Very proud of its food culture and we could see why.  Afterwards we went looking for edge again – not this time on mountains, but would there be an underground bar or place to go? If there was we did not find it!  Tucson is only half a million people and during Friday night we did keep seeing some of the same faces in different places.  Everyone seemed to be heavily tattooed and overweight – we felt old, thinner and sunburnt!  Far too much hip hop for our liking so we retired to Reg at 1.30am – not bad for people who earlier in the day had been down the mine.  Arthur Scargill would have been proud of our stamina. 

 Have a great Easter everyone.

A x

This week on the Travelling Bradbury show we’ll be scaling the highest peak in Texas, descending to the deepest caves in the North Americas, cycling across a missile range and still find time to visit Walmart!

Picked up Reg who had had a few of his ailments fixed, not though the most irritating ones such as the extractor hood fan, the fridge light and the front hob burner (well they’re irritating for the one who does most of the cooking). We set off for Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas, which is home to Guadalupe Peak at 8,751ft (2,667m) the highest peak in Texas.  We arrived late to find no spaces available in the main camping area, we were then directed to the ‘overflow’ parking which was the car park at Frijoles Ranch just down the road and was ‘primitive’ with no electricity, water or sewerage; we’re a self contained RV so no great problem unless you want to shower more than once or wash up more than twice, hmmm … we’ll see how we get on.

So to warm up we walked the Spring Trail from Frijole Ranch, which was once the only building in the region, in the evening and settled down for the night on our lopsided car park.  The next morning we drove back to the main campsite, which is really another car park that is tarmacked and level, bagsy a ‘site’ for the grand total of $8 and set off on the Guadalupe Peak Trail, a mere 8.4mile round trip which was uphill (and quite steep for some of it) for the first 4.2miles.  While it was harder than we expected the views of El Capitan, the mountainous outcrop next to the peak, and of the Chihuahua Dessert stretching into the distance along with the flora (apart from one deer and a couple of mockingbirds there wasn’t much fauna) were worth it.  The trail snakes up the mountain, switching backwards and forwards to scale the gradient, across a trestle bridge and at times across rock screes to reach the top where we had a picnic looking over Texas and New Mexico in the sunshine with what was ominously a building wind.  After 4.5 hours we had gone up and come down again and had an incredible sense of accomplishment and were completely knackered.  We retired to Reg to relax and whilst there the weather closed in, the wind began to really blow and it rained.  We watched as others, who had set off later than us, straggled in wet and windblown.  We switched on the TV to catch a weather report to discover that Texas and New Mexico had both had tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings for the afternoon and into the night.  The night was interesting as the wind howled (with peaks up to 65 miles an hour) and Reg rocked from side to side, such that in the middle of the night we pulled in his ‘extensions’ to reduced our size in the wind.

We woke on Wednesday morning, tired from the night and down to very little water in our tank, such that I had to go backwards and forwards to a standpipe with our one empty 1.5 litre water bottle to get enough water to washup and clean our teeth.  You’ll be pleased to hear we had our one shower after returning from the walk the day before.  After breakfast we set off to do what is described (by whom, I have no idea) as the ‘best’ trail in Texas, the McKittrick Canyon Trail, which winds along a canyon formed by a river millions of years ago.  It was a pretty trail, and would be even prettier if the flowers were all out or the leaves autumnal, i.e. times of the year that we won’t be there, but we enjoyed it as it was only a 400 foot gradient increase, somewhat less than the 3,000 feet we climbed on Monday. 

Highest and best trails completed in Texas, off to New Mexico. a new state for both of us, and the Carlsbad Caverns.  We’ve both done ‘caves’ before, me the Jenolan Caves near Sydney, and Alex Wookey Hole in Somerset.  Neither are quite the same as the Carlsbad Caverns, which while they include only the fourth largest cave in the world (as the longest cave at Carlsbad is 128miles long the other three must be something else), are a Unesco World Heritage site and are quite overwhelming.  We arrived later than planned and could only take the elevator down to the Big Room cave.  The elevator, constructed in a time before people worried about the environmental impact to a pristine environment of tunnelling, is the equivalent of 77 stories deep into the mountain.  You exit into a visitor centre and then walk a one mile long self guided route through part of the Big Cave, which is 30 miles long in total (the 128 mile long cave is not open to the public) past incredible formations of stalagmites (going upwards), stalactites (going downwards), soda straws (really thin stalactites), drapes (they really do look like curtains) and other shapes created through the millennia by the interaction of the limestone and water.  It is all tastefully lit and is overwhelming in its scale and the thought that they have existed for such a long time in complete darkness.  This is one place that we would both like to come back to to undertake some of the ranger led tours (which were fully booked and we typically hadn’t organised earlier) and to get even more overawed by the whole environment.  The only disappointment for Alex was there was no witch like at Wookey Hole (that last sentence may have been untrue).

We spent the night in the Brantley Lake State Park, next to a man made lake surrounded by the dessert and thousands of remarkably tame bunny rabbits, why they’re so tame when generally the Americans love to shoot anything that moves I have no idea.  Thankfully the winds had died down considerably and we got a good night’s sleep.

Thursday was sunny and windless and we set off after a leisurely morning, after a run and bicycle ride of course, to our next campsite at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park in Alamogordo New Mexico.  What we didn’t expect was the spectacular trip across the top of the Sacramento Mountain range along highway 82, where Reg laboured up and down the hills until we reached a verdant green valley with a stream running through it that reminded me of alpine mountains.  We continued upwards and the slopes became covered with pine forests (not surprising as we passed a sign saying welcome to the Lincoln National Forest!) and then it was pine forests covered in snow.  We’d inadvertently taken a route that took us from the dessert up into the snow-covered mountains and a temperature range from about 25 degrees centigrade to about 2 degrees!  The trip was capped by seeing a ski run in a village called Cloudcroft.  On the way down we went through a tunnel in the mountain and emerged to what looked like a valley of snow in the distance, this though was not snow but the white sands of the originally titled White Sands National Monument in the distance and our destination for the next few days, Alamogordo.

Oliver Lee Memorial State Park is at the entrance to Dog Canyon underneath the Sacramento Mountains on the Tularosa Basin (that should keep you all occupied on the geography and geology!).  The basin is important as it provides the correct environment to create a landscape of gypsum sand dunes, in particular the Tularosa Basin contains the White Sands National Monument which is 275 square miles of gypsum sand dunes and famously also a United States Missile Range (the first nuclear bomb test was 50 miles to the north), which is still in use today.  On arrival we found the site we had booked had no water or power, which was problematic as our water pump had stopped working, so we snuck into a vacant site with both and fortunately were able to stay for both Thursday and Friday nights.  We also managed to locate the water pump (in the barbecue storage area if you’re interested) and got it working again.

Of course the park has a trail which leads up into the mountains and we promptly set off to climb up it, we are learning though and decided we would turn back with half an hour before sunset to enable us to get down in the light and with a reduced opportunity for me to turn my ankle in darkness (invariably this happens at inappropriate times and always followed by a string of invective and foul temper).  Again, we’d managed to find a location with beautiful scenery and the sun setting across the basin on the San Andres mountains (the thing about a basin is there are mountains all around it) was something to see.

Friday dawned and we were in the shade of the mountains and as the morning went on the winds increased which determined we didn’t want to go to a park full of sand dunes during a gale so we spent the time visiting our most popular shop, Walmart, grocery shopping at Albertsons (one for Sally) and buying a new rucksack in a sports store.

Saturday was a better day and we left Oliver Lee and drove to the White Sands National Monument, past a sign explaining that during missile tests both the park and highway 70, which it is off, are closed in case of mishap (they really do fire missiles over the top of an area of outstanding natural beauty).  We watched a good video at the visitor centre on the formation of the dunes along with the plant and wildlife that life there and that have adapted to the dunes.  What is amazing is they have only been in existence for up to 10,000 years, a blink of the eye in the history of Earth and that humans hunted mammoth in the region until the end of the last ice age and before the dunes were created.

We parked Reg at the end of the shod road and got the Thompson Twins down to cycle the rest of the scenic loop, we stopped along the route and walked out on to the dunes which are incredible, very like those in Dubai, however these are from gypsum rather than silicon and have more vegetation in the interdune gaps.  The park was really popular with people, probably more so than any other, there were people sledding down the dunes, barbecuing and a lot of people setting up camp for the night in tents on the dunes.  We took the sunset walk with a ranger to learn more from someone who was really passionate about the park and its environment. 

We parked overnight in the Alamogordo KOA and on Sunday did those exciting but necessary chores such as laundry and cleaning Reg, which entails me getting completely soaked after the washer failed on my hose attachable brush, nonetheless he looked better for the scrub while we looked better for the clean clothes!

M

We left you in El Paso last weekend, preparing to go skiing.  El Paso is a high desert plain, surrounded by mountains on all sides with the Rio Grande river running through the centre and Mexico and New Mexico bordering it.

It was very exciting to see the border running along where the river should be, but both the Mexican and US governments long ago decided to reroute the river into a concrete underground channel as it kept changing course and was proving too hard to manage.  We saw a long wire fence in places – shortly of course to be upgraded to ‘the big, beautiful wall’!  It was very interesting to see the city of Ciudad Juarez on the other side, but not safe enough for tourists to venture in to it. 

We left Reg at a garage as he is still trying to have some warranty issues sorted out – nothing serious and headed for our flight up to Denver.   Packing for a ski holiday in 90 degree heat was a surreal experience and to our horror it did not really get any colder when we arrived in the mountains.  We hoped for an icy wind to greet us as we stepped off the plane, but no it was warm and balmy. 

We stayed in Steamboat Springs which is further away from Denver than Aspen or Vale.  This means that it is not so busy and more of locals’ place. 

At the resort the pastes stood out on the hills, strips of white against the brown of the mountains – odd weather everyone kept saying to us.   They were managing with what they could – but it was ‘spring’ conditions.  This means icy in the morning and slush at lunchtime.  On Friday, we stopped for lunch for about 40 minutes.  We came out and it was like icing sugar as during our lunch the temperature had gone up about 10 degrees. People literally were skiing in shorts and we saw one chap in proper lederhosen complete with an Alpine trilby!

I will not recount how great we were at skiing (yeah right) but we had a good time despite the snow.  Marie and Shaun will know that following Matt on a ski slope is sometimes a challenge… we all still laugh about when he went off the edge one time… but I survived ok.  There were only a few black runs with moguls… Being in the mountains is beautiful regardless and the runs are tree lined and wide, also fairly empty so a good change from Europe.   Matt loves the lifts as they have free tissues whilst you wait – if ever you have to wait. 

We had a good old natter on the lifts.  We met some great people during the week. A couple from Barnstaple at après ski one night, a very wealthy couple from Sydney one day on the lift – which was amusing as Matt said to them that he would never trust an Aussie that did not drink, whereupon the wife said that she was tee total. Whoops! 

Similar ski boot in mouth at a bar when the lovely Kelsey was suggesting some great places for us to visit in Utah, Montana and Arizona.  She had packed a lot into her thirty years – three children, university, loads of travelling hence why she was talking to us.  How were we to know that she worked in a bar yet was a Mormon until the moment we offered her a drink?!

Highlight of the week was also where we stayed.  We had an apartment that was larger than our flat (not that hard I grant you) but it came with all mod cons – including the most amazing washer/dryer set up as only Americans know how to do.  I had barely worn my knickers before I had washed them! 

During the week we had great food – at home and out, which was a welcome surprise and quite a bit to drink.  It was very relaxing not to be driving or planning where to go next so as an experience within this year of travel, it was fantastic and we loved it.

Back on Saturday to El Paso and we had time to kill so we took the transit fast train to downtown Denver.  We heard about their Borough Market – a place called the Source in an old warehouse in the north river district.  Very up and coming – like Omega Works and Bow to those that remember the flats we used to manage there.  Great food and Colorado clearly has the influence of Californians in its tastes and cuisines.

Tough week for everyone at home with the attack in London. We thought of everyone and felt very weird being so far away.  Because of watching the news we saw an awful lot of Trump stuff as he was trying to get his healthcare plan through.  We watched with open mouths how the media cover things and how confusing, cynical and remote the politicians seem to be on all sides. 

Reg was waiting for us in El Paso – hot and dusty.  Back on the road and as I type we are in the Guadalupe Mountains.  No snow here either!!