Every Mile a Memory: May 2012

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Day 19

Today is not going to be very exciting; it is just a driving day. We are in route to the Grand Tetons but we will be stopping for the night in Nevada. We left early this morning (8:00, not that early), destination: Northeast Nevada. Nevada is a gigantic state, we found out. We crossed the border around 10, and won’t even make it out of the state by nightfall. We got groceries in Fallon, NV. We ate at Jack in the Box in the next city, breaking the chain of healthy/boring/easy food, but it was nice to have something different than peanut butter and jelly which is what we have ate for lunch almost every day of this trip.

So basically we drove all day through the desert, just dry plain desert that goes on forever and ever. It was nice to look at the snow covered mountains way off in the distance. Our biggest challenge of the day has been the radio going in and out and we are tired of the same songs that we have on our iPods. So we entertain ourselves by making music videos with the video camera. I have also been knitting and David plans our route and tries to figure where we are staying for the nights we don’t have reservations and writes up some of the blogs. We do a lot of singing, some talking, laughing at billboards and watching the desert. We have reached about 5000 miles on this trip and we are finally heading back towards cheaper gas.

We did drive through a strange town in the middle of the desert that felt a little like being in the twilight zone. It was a really small town, almost everything was closed down or falling down and the whole town was surrounded by these weird underground bunker things as if preparing for a big explosion. It was a little eerie, so we decided not to get gas there.

We made it to our campsite in the middle of nowhere, which is never a comfortable feeling. We made a rice dinner, ate some peaches then spent the rest of the evening reading, relaxing and listening to coyotes howl not to far from us.

Although this day was not very exciting it was nice to feel like we were moving on, Yosemite although proved to be a wonderful experience at least two of the four days, it felt like we had been there forever and we were anxious to move on to the next place.

Day 18

Day 18: Waterfalls Abound!

We woke up to another beautiful, and even warmer day. We packed up camp and bid farewell to our former campsite intruders-turned-friends, and headed into a much less crowded Yosemite Valley. We went straight to Lower Yosemite Falls and parked, then took the shuttle to the trailhead for the Upper Yosemite Falls trail. We hiked up an extremely steep trail to Columbia Rock, ascending 1,000 feet in only one mile. We continued an additional half mile to a view of the Upper Falls, and then hiked down. Yosemite Falls consists of the upper, middle, and lower falls, forming a combined 2,500 feet of waterfall, making it the tallest in North America and something like the fifth tallest in the world. The water-flow isn’t very strong, however, so it is not as impressive as some of the other falls in the valley, like Vernal and Nevada Falls, where we headed to next.

If we thought the first hike was steep, I don’t know how to describe this hike. The mist trail goes up to Vernal Falls and then Nevada Falls. Half stairs, half too-steep asphalt, this trail made everybody seem out of shape. You can probably guess why it’s called the Mist Trail. If you can’t, look at the pictures.

Exhausted, we decided to put in one last effort to go see Mirror Lake… as we rounded the bend to the Lake, it was very familiar… because we had found it yesterday on that other trail we were “lost” on! In the end it was worth it, because we met our first fellow travelers from NC, a family from Rockingham. We went and took warm, FREE showers in Curry Village, bought some snacks we missed, had dinner, and passed out after a long day of hiking. Tomorrow we’ll drive halfway to the Grand Tetons and get groceries!

Day 17

May 27, 2012

This morning we woke up to a miracle, the sun. It was still freezing but we had hoped it would warm up. We cooked breakfast; we are starting to get low on food so a grocery store stop will be added to the route to the Grand Tetons.

We headed down the mountain trying to figure out the best way to see everything that we want to see and avoid the mass amounts of the crowds. As we headed back down towards the valley we were finally able to see why every one loves Yosemite so much, it is so amazing. There are huge rock faces everywhere you look, the most famous being El Capitan and Half-Dome, as well as breathtaking waterfalls around every corner. The drive through the valley seems so magical with the bright green tree’s towering on both side and a white water river running beside you. Our pure enjoyment of the scenery was short lived as we quickly hit traffic. We could not even stop at one viewpoint because there was so much craziness. All of the trailhead parking lots full, we could only park on the sides of the road. We hiked to the top of the sentinel dome which has an awesome 360 degree view of all of the rock faces and down into the valley. It was such an incredible feeling to stand on top of that huge rock and every direction you turned was a massive rock or waterfall or Sierra mountain cover in snow. It’s hard not feel small (in a good way) when looking at this landscape.

We continued to Glacier Point, which was another incredible view, but there were so many people it was hard to even get a good look at the vast scenery in front of us. As we gazed at Half Dome in the distance, we noticed a waterfall behind Half Dome. The problem was, there is no waterfall behind Half Dome! It was an avalanche!

Next, we headed down into the valley at a snail’s pace because of traffic. We got out and hiked up the small trail to see Bridalveil Falls. I love the view of a waterfall from the bottom and to be able to fell the mist falling from the water falling and crashing into rocks. Once again the trail was cramped, I have never seen so many people at one small view point, we just sat an watched all of the people, cameras, babies and dogs being passed every which way for pictures.

We headed back into traffic to go on hike to see the mirror lake. When we finally found a parking spot we still had a good walk just to get to our trailhead. It was the one of the most beautiful trails I have walked (besides the horse manure everywhere). It was a wonderful evening, the sun shone through the trees across the river and highlighted the rock face skyline. We walked a long time until we finally realized that we missed the intersecting trial to get to the mirror lake, but it was ok because we found such a pretty trail. David bounced from rock to rock and tried very hard to cross the very rapid river, he even wanted to attempt to walk on water.

We finally made it back to the car after another hour or so getting lost trying to get back to the car. We pulled out of our parking spot and sat in traffic for another hour or more barely moving a few feet every 20 minutes. We have learned our lesson never to come back to Yosemite on Memorial Day weekend. Now we’re heading back to camp, hoping it will be a little warmer tonight.

Day 15 and 16

I am putting these two days together because they were equally our most miserable days on our trip so far.

We got up early and headed to Yosemite. I really love driving through California I love seeing the rows and rows of orchards of every kind of fruit. We also see a lot of pickers and occasionally you can see the mountains on both sides of the valley through the smog. As we were driving we started to notice that the beautiful blue sky was becoming more grey and cloudy, so I looked up the weather and found out that it would be raining for two days. So not only were going to fighting the crowds for Memorial Day weekend but we will also be camping in rain, great.

We made it to Yosemite it was rainy and cold. We got there to late to try and get the campsite we wanted to try and reserve for the weekend. We went to our campsite and it was rainy pretty hard so we went to the visitor’s center to find out what hikes we should do and to find out where we could stay for Saturday and Sunday night. We had reservations for a camp that was advertised to be close to the park but it was almost 2 hours away. So we talked to the ranger who told us that there was camp that opened early for the season it was about an hour up the mountains. So we started the drive everything was foggy so we couldn’t even enjoy the views. We drove up and it was starting to snow harder. We found a spot paid and headed back down the mountain to stay at the campsite that we had down there since it would be warmer. We made dinner in the rain/ice mix and then went to see a free film about this mans journey on the high sierra trail from Sequoia national park to Mount Whitney, which is the highest peak in the continental U.S. Before the film started we were sitting and waiting in the sierra club building and a woman tripped on my chair and screamed as loud as she could, scarring me half to death. She was ok and it was funny after it all happened. The movie was a really good film and it showed some of the trails that we took while we were at Sequoia. It made me want to do that 60-mile trek but it would take a lot more hiking experience.

After the film we spent about 45 minutes on the shuttle trying to get back to our camp but at least it was warm. We made it back to camp and it was still rainy and cold so we decided to forget about the tent and we slept in the car.

The next morning we found out that the camp that we reserved a space for was closed now or at least the road to get up there was closed due to icy roads. jumped in line at camp 4 the only walk-in camp, David waited in line and I tried to get back to camp to pack up everything but kept getting lost until I ended back at camp 4. Unfortunately we were about ten people away from getting a spot. So we hurried over in all the traffic to get our name on the list for reservations cancellations. After that we went packed up camp and parked the car. We took showers, finally and one plus was that they were free. We walked around the village to kill time cause there was nothing else to do in the weather. So we walked around the shops and museum and watched the free documentary (which we both fell asleep in). At three we went to see if we got a cancellation spot. Once again we were a few spots too late, by this time we were a little worried and feeling homeless since the road was still closed. We went to the visitors center to find out what we could do and the ranger told us that they just opened the road and in the same instant we found out that they were about to close it again because of freezing. So we got to the car and tried to get to campsite before the road closed. We made it and the weather cleared we actually had a little bit of sun break though. We made it down the bumpy road just to find that someone had taken our spot. Apparently the campers beside us told them we left even though some of our stuff was there and our receipt to show this was our spot was there. So we made new friends and we shares the camp spot. They are really nice, they are from L.A and have two little girls. It turned out to be nice because we got a fire, a s’more and a fun evening talking around a fire. When it got to cold we went to sleep, but we froze all night in 19-degree temperatures.

With all of the people, the confusion, the rain and the cold, we were ready for these two days to be over. Day 14

Today we went to the Giant Forrest, named this by John Muir who is a influential figure in preserving the two of the first national parks Sequoia and Yosemite. We had a reserved spot in the same camp ground for tonight we just had to wait for the campers their now to pack up and leave. I have always been surprised how fast campers wake up, tear down their site and leave, except for this couple. They took forever to break down and we had to wait for almost two hours before we could finally pick up our tent and carry it over.

Today was the opening of the summer season for the park so the shuttles opened up. We took the shuttle to Morro rock/ Crescent Meadow because our camping neighbors told us about how amazing the view was. We took a longer hike instead off the shuttle from the meadows to Morro. We hiked to the first viewpoint on the high sierra trail., then we hiked over to Morro rock through what is called “Bear Territory”, it is the area of the park that they see the most bears. Have I known that before we hiked through I would have taken our lunch out of the backpack I was carrying; instead I walked around as human bear bait. We started up the staircase to the top of Morro rock which is a staircase of about 200 hundred straight up, steep and slim stairs. Once you get to the top the trek up is all worth it. There is such a beautiful view of the sierra’s and the other mountains. We ate our lunch up there dodging the crows and the swooping swallows that were speeding by us. Then headed back down.

Next we headed over to Giant forest, which is largest grove of sequoias, it has about 7000-8000 Giant Sequoias. We started at the museum to learn about the trees, such as the Giant sequoia is the biggest in volume but the Redwood on the coast of California is the tallest. We also learned that the sequoias need thousands of gallons of water and will evaporate about ten thousand gallons a day. When one of the Sequoias fell, water poured out. The biggest tree in the world is General Sherman. We barely could get the entire tree in the picture it is so big. We also went to visit General Grant, which is the third biggest tree. We found some of the other record-breaking trees and we had a lot of fun crawling through the holes and gaps in the trees. We hiked on the some of the trails in the giant forest and it was just amazing to stand next to these Giants, David was even afraid of them they were so big. After we hike around we went drove over to drive through the log tunnel, which is a tunnel that you can drive through that they made out of a fallen tree. We also walked through some other tunnel logs and went to see the auto log which was a popular drive way on a fallen tree until it was closed due to rotting of old age.

After our day among the Giants we headed back to camp, had another pasta dinner and David did another dance with the fire which was really good until he tripped on a piece of wood a landed in the fire, luckily the great caught so he didn’t get hurt but this furthered David’s battle with building fires. We went to bed so we can get up early to try and get a camping spot in Yosemite for the weekend, Memorial Day weekend.

Day 14

Friday, May 25, 2012

Day 13

A day in Sequoia

I am sitting here warming up by the fire that David worked so hard to build, after trying a fire started, poking it, fanning it with extreme force, rubbing alcohol and breaking the ax we brought trying to cut some logs, we finally have a nice warm fire to take the chill out of the air. Lets just say my dinner came with a show tonight, David and his fire dance. We had a great day in Sequoia national park, the national forest and Kings Canyon National Park, which are all three basically the same area. First I have to say that the day started out really nice because we were able to sleep in until 8 and we didn’t have to take the tent down. We had breakfast and then headed out to explore. We were going to start with the giant forest near our camp but since the shuttle system does not start until tomorrow we decided to go ahead and do the longer drive out the Kings Canyon. It was a beautiful drive and we mapped out which scenic views and trails we wanted to go to. We followed our path down the curvy roads. These roads probably have to be the curviest roads I have been on, I don’t get carsick and these roads were making me a little a sick. David of course was having a great time driving on them. With as windy as these roads were we next expected to be flagged down by a guy telling us that we can’t through because a wide-load tractor-trailer was stuck around a corner. As we were watching them back the truck up back and forth just enough to let the cars pass I am thinking “ Why on earth would anyone think they could get this truck up this road?”. We were finally able to pass and we continued on our way. We stopped to look at two waterfalls, the third biggest tree General Grant and we took a hike through a beautiful meadow. David was so excited to play on all the rocks he called it his “playground”, he would jump from rock to rock and even tried to scale a few which did not work out so well. It was a really nice hike with amazing surroundings. I really wish everyone could see some of the amazing sights that we have seen, I have taken a ton of pictures but it can never really capture the feeling you get of looking up to something as tall as an almost 300 foot tree. Some of our highlights for the day was getting to walk through a fallen tree, meeting our neighbors who was a really nice older couple, the waterfalls, singing in the car as we drove, and just spending some really beautiful days together. Our best highlight of the day was that we saw a bear! This was really exciting but also made me afraid that all these bear precautions, like the bear bin we have to store our food in is necessary. We have had no cell phone reception up here so we have not been able to talk to our family’s, but we wish Daniel, David’s brother, a happy 16^th birthday, we wish could be there to celebrate with him! Now we are just sitting here by our fire thankful the rain cloud we away, and looking foreword to our time in the Giant Forest tomorro

Day 12

The land of the giants.

We are in Sequoia National Park! Its beauty easily pars that of Grand Canyon and Zion. We woke up this morning to song birds in Malibu, ate grits and oatmeal, and drove North East. We found gas for the great price of $4.29 a gallon! Much better than the $4.49 down the street ($4.55 is the most expensive we saw in California yet). Later we filled up for $4.19. We drove through California’s Central Valley, where a lot, if not most of America’s produce, meats, and dairy is raised. The drive up the foothills into Sequoia was beautiful, but the forest at the top of the mountains is amazing. If you think your puny maple or oak tree is big back in NC, wait until you see a sequoia. It’s like walking through a make believe world, like Disney World in the Sierras. We set up camp, had lunch, and went on a quick hike to a beautiful waterfall surrounded by huge boulders, fallen hundreds or thousands of years ago from their homes, now cliffs towering a thousand feet above us on both sides. On the way to the falls a doe approached us on the trail and we got some great pictures. For dinner we got creative and used one of the nine (9) mac n’ cheese boxes we brought to make plain noodles and added artichoke hearts and marinara sauce to it. Unfortunately, I spilled the noodles into the fire pit on the first try, trying to drain them (we forgot a strainer), so good thing we brought so many boxes! It got down to 39 degrees Fahrenheit, so we pilled on the layers to get a good nights rest.

Day 11

Los Angeles de California.

I’m going to Hollywood! But not for American Idol. We arrived in the city of angels around noon, drove around downtown, and headed for Hollywood. The traffic there is crazy! Not in the sense that it back’s up (which it does), but the speed and lane changing everyone is doing. Every highway is 65 MPH and the merging lanes are nonexistent. Katie decided she would never live in L.A unless she was a celebrity and someone drove her around everywhere. We walked around Sid Grauman’s (spelling?) Chinese Theatre where the handprints and signatures of movie stars are in the sidewalk. Katie was finally able to take a picture with the Harry Potter hand print block after waiting for several people to walk off of it. It was a lot of fun to see so much history in one area. That was our favorite part of Hollywood. Our second favorite part was Beverly Hills; mansions and outrageously priced shopping, Go Amuhrca (for all you Al Gore fans out there). We found it funny how the celebrities with big houses put up walls and very large shrubberies to keep the tours from seeing their homes. Why did you build such a nice house if you don’t want anyone to see it? We drove all around the Hollywood area trying to get a picture of the Hollywood sign and I was on a mission to find the Hollywood Bowl, which we even though I spent a lot of time trying to follow the signs and Edna the GPS, we just happened to come across it later that day when were not even trying. Eventually we made it to our campsite at Leo Carrillo State beach off of the Pacific Coast Highway, just south of Santa Barbara. What a beautiful beach. Other people must think so as well because a movie was being shot there along with a fashion model photo session. They even have Baywatch style lifeguard towers. I don’t know why they need them though; the water is too cold to swim in. Maybe it’s better in the summer. We stayed out on a really windy but beautiful rock face to watch the sunset. We got hot showers (our first in three days), ate some mac n’ cheese, and went to bed.

Day 10

Vegas Baby!

Yo, it’s D Rock, rockin’ da blog. We left the north rim of the GC at 6:30, not bad after freezing all night. On our way to Vegas, we drove through Zion National Park in Southern Utah. I’m still not sure whether that was a smart decision or not because all it made me do was want to stay there instead of moving on with our trip. But I’m glad I did because Vegas was definitely worth it. We went straight to our campground at “Las Vegas Bay” on Lake Mead, (a national recreation area, yet another place accessible with the national park pass, thanks mom and dad!). It wasn’t really a bay, seeing as the nearest water was half a mile away. We wished it was much, much closer as we set up our tent in the 100 degree desert sun. Before painting the town, we drove to Hoover Dam, walked across it, proposed, that is, watched a proposal (Katie says Hoover Dam isn’t her idea of a romantic spot anyways), and drove into Vegas. We parked at a park and ride south of the strip and rode a bus to the main section. After a confusing and hot walk around Mandalay Bay, we went into MGM (no lions though L) and New York New York, saw the solar eclipse outside (wow) and went into Excalibur. As we left there, we realized that the Billboard Music Awards were being held in MGM’s Grand Garden Arena at that very moment, so we rushed back over there, but found no celebrities. We left, heading north to eat and see the Bellagio fountains, hoping we would see a celebrity out partying somewhere along the way. The fountains were a hit with both of us, so we watched them twice in a row. We proceeded to walk all the way down Caesar’s Palace and got to Treasure Island where we decided it was time to go back to the car and back to sleep. We waited and watched the pirate show at TI first, and it was terrible. It reminded me of a zombie musical I saw at Scarowinds. It was no longer an adventure pirate show, but scandalous sirens and pirate show. We watched the Bellagio fountains one more time and continued to the car. We road the bus back with a very loud southern woman who was yelling about moonshine, not a good representation of the south. We got back to the campsite around 12:20 (after Taco Bell…Shhhh we’re supposed to be cooking), and went to sleep for a much warmer night that the one before.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Day 9

Today we headed over to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We had to get an early start because we had a four-hour drive over there and the camping sites are first come first serve. It was beautiful drive with glimpses of beautiful Canyon walls since we were going around the Canyon. We saw a lot of RV’s all heading towards one side or the other of the Canyon and as much as we love camping were a little envious of how much easier it would be to travel in one of those.

We made it to the Kaibab national forest, which basically intertwines with the Grand Canyon National Park North Rim. It was a beautiful drive through the forest with tall pine trees and then we started to see part of the forest that burned down in a forest fire about ten years ago. It really took out most of the forest but it is starting to show signs of new life and it is beautiful. We made it to our campground, which is in the stare forest. It is really nice. We set up camp, had lunch, traditional pb&j, and then headed out to the Grand Canyon. I am not sure if it was because we saw the south rim yesterday or because we are nearing ten days of non-stop traveling but David and I were a little sluggish today. We decided to just to walk around some of the easy paths to look outs and good views. We even found a nice sturdy cliff and took a load off for a while just to marvel at the Grand Canyon in front of us. We spent the rest of the driving around to look at the views and then headed back to camp for make dinner and have another fire. We wanted to go out for the sunset and stars and wildlife again, but we’re exhausted/freezing, so we got in our long johns before the temperature dropped below 40.

The day was pretty mellow, which was much needed since we have been going non-stop. I have noticed not only are we getting tired but also everything is starting to get dirtier and smellier. I am about to febreeze the car now and then try to knock some of the pile of dirt that has built up in out tent.

Day 8

I cant believe we have only been on this trip a week, it feels like it has been longer but in a good way. Today we left Sedona and went to the Grand Canyon; south rim. We hiked down a trail called “Bright Angel” trail. It is the most popular trail so it was pretty crowded and as we were heading down I was a little worried about how rough the people were looking coming back up. The hike down was so relaxing, especially compared to the hike we had in Sedona. I was taking a ton of pictures and David was telling me to stop taking so many pictures or we would never get through the hike. It was just so amazing to be so up close to canyon. The view from the top of the rim is incredible but being down in side the canyon looking up and being so close to canyon wall is indescribable, it definitely makes a person feel small to say the least. At one point I was able to go out on to a flat ledge area and just look up and completely circle around and from every direction it was just massive and just amazing. We hiked down a few miles then headed back up. I realized why they people were looking near death, some of the slopes up that were a breeze coming down were really steep on the way up, but we made it and in pretty good time too. I think we had a good warm up from the day before or maybe were getting better at this hiking thing.

When we got back to the top, we walked around the rim for a little bit and then we decided to go over to the visitor’s center. It was such a great place and was able to learn a lot about the canyon. We watched this really good movie about the canyon, which made me want to go rafting in the canyon very badly; it looks like so much fun. I am going to add it to the list for the next road trip.

After we left the visitors center we went and set up our camp at the campsite in the Grand Canyon Park. It was really nice and it had showers, which was much needed. After we showered we cooked dinner, Mac and cheese and corn, yum. We ate quickly and then went back to the Grand Canyon Rim to catch the sunset. It was one of the best sunsets I have ever seen. We met some people also doing a road trip but mostly around Utah. Their made us realize we need to do a separate trip to Utah to see Zion, and some of the Canyons out that way.

After the sunset we sat out under the stars and then we went to buy firewood so we can have our first fire of our trip. After that it was a perfect camping night, like you would picture in a movie. The stars were bright, the fire David built was perfect, it was chilly out but the fire kept us warm, and there were bats flying over head. All we were missing were the S’mores.

Day 7

May 17,2012

This morning we got up at 5 am! It was early but it wasn’t too hard, I think because we are still on Charlotte time, which means it would have been 8 am for us. We had a wonderful breakfast prepared by Aunt Jan and then we headed to spend the day in Sedona. This is not our first time in Sedona but it is such a beautiful place I would not have wanted to miss it on our trip. We decided to spend the day hiking, So we stopped at the Ranger station since Sedona is in a national forest, which is really cool because all around the area is different trails and sight seeing spots. We chose to hike up to see the cowpies (which are giant rocks shaped like cow manure). We started out on our hike on a trial called “mungs wagon”. It was already 96 degree’s when we started in the morning. The mungs wagon trail was to lead to us to the cow pie trail. We hiked and we hiked in the hot weather and it was hard hiking, very steep, rough terrain etc, just a difficult hike in that hot of weather. I started to burn 20 minutes after putting on sunscreen. We continued on and hiked for about 4 hours. We never found the cow pies and David is still trying to figure out where we went wrong but we found some pretty amazing views of Sedona, it was worth it in the end, but I think we were both very happy when we made it back to the car.

After the hike we went to find a nice place to eat lunch. So first we treated ourselves to a Gatorade (which any thing besides water is a commodity on this trip), then we set out to find a bathroom, then we got lost trying to find a picnic spot that didn’t cost money. We finally found a place, when I realized that the travel size battle ship game my parents gave us melted in the car, so I was trying to find all the pieces to the game when David came over and said he needed to go to the bathroom (he didn’t go earlier) so we went back to the same gas station and by that time we had spent an hour trying to eat basically so we gave up and had a snack in the car at the gas station.

After that we drove around Sedona looking at all of the beautiful red rocks and then went to our camp. It was the cutest little campsite, with pretty trees and a creek right next to us. We spent the evening hammocking, reading and talking with our neighboring camper who had two poodles, “Romeo and Juliet”. He was road tripping up to Alaska. Next we went to watch the sunset by the airport, which is the best view of the whole city, it was such a beautiful sunset. After the sunset we decided to treat ourselves out to dinner because David wanted to try this restaurant that had cactus fries and rattle snake. We changed our mind about the rattle snake when we found out it was rattlesnake meatballs which grossed us out, but the cactus was pretty good. I had my first bison burger, which was also really good. After dinner we headed back to camp. The stars we so bright, so we set up our crazy creeks (which is a type of fold up chair) on top of the picnic table to watch the stars. We saw three shooting stars and David swears he kept hearing something in the bushes so he was on a mission to find it with the flashlight. After that we went to bed, because we were so tired from the long, but really fun day.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Day 6

Today was mostly a driving day because all we did was drive 9 hours to Phoenix, AZ. It was really beautiful scenery the landscape of New Mexico, West Texas and Arizona is just so amazing and so surprising. I never expected to see so many mountains, they were so big and incredible. It was really cool to the dried up water beds which looks like a beach without the water. We also saw whirling dervishes, which are these dust/sand mini-tornados. We saw tumble-weed, old trains, and a road runner. We drove around the Guadalupe Mountain National Park, which is so beautful. We would love to come back some day and hike to Guadalupe Peak, (I'm sensing another road trip needs to happen lol). Today was my favorite drive so far. There was just so much to look at and so many cool rocks and scenery. The most exciting part of our day was driving around the border of Mexico. Border Patrol was out hot and heavy, we even had to stop at a check station for border control, and tell them all about who we were and where we were going and why.All the while I am praying please don't make us take everything out of the car to search it or whatever, it is a miracle we get it all back in the car in the first place. They let us go on but then we were nervous because we remembered we had a "Drop the I word/ No human is illegal" bumper sticker of Davids mom's that she had put on the car. This is not the safest place to advertise such ideals. We drove on through the desert passed all of the tourist traps about ghost towns and Mexican imports. We passed cow farms were there were a ton of cows all stuck in to small pins, and there were miles and miles of these small cow pins. We also saw orchards in the middle of the desert, where they are using all of the water to grow these tree's that should not normally grow in such a dry place. We saw the Rio Grande but it was completely dried up( probably because it is going to all of the misplaced orchards). It was really quite incredible to just drive for hours and hours and see nothing but desert with all of the uses that we have made out of it. Some of it is for oil, or natural gas, or wind farms or orchards or dude ranches. The West is so completely different from anything I have ever seen before, but I really like it because I feel like it has not changed completely since people have been around it, it has changed a lot but it is not completely developed, there is still so much land.

We made it to Phoenix and we are staying at David's great Aunt and Uncle's beautiful home. We had delicious food and good conversation. It was a nice evening and now it is time for bed because were getting up at 5 am! Woo! Also Thanks to Jan and Mike Valder for letting us stay with them, cooking for us and letting us wash some laundry!

Day 5: Katie

We got up early and back on the road as soon as possible. I don’t think I hardly slept at all and we had a 7-hour drive to Carlsbad, New Mexico. This was fun a drive we were able to drive down an 80 mph road in the middle of the desert and we had to whole road to ourselves for the most part. I was truly amazed by all of the land, just dusty land as far as the eye can see; it is really something to look at. I did get to see my first oil pump (I guess that is what they are called) and then I got to see about 500 more. They were everywhere just pumping away, but in the distance you could also see beautiful wind turbine farms up on top of the mountains and hills. We drove for a long time and I was able to pass my first truck on a two-lane road going 80 mph, it was really exciting and scary, also I had David yelling, “Gun it! GO! GO!”. It made my driving a lot more exciting,

We finally made it to New Mexico. We went straight to the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in Carlsbad New Mexico. We made it in time to be able to hike down the cavern instead of taking the elevator. We entered the natural entry where the cavern opens up, and it is full of birds flying every which way, it smelled horrible because there was bird poop all over the place, and of course I am not in the cave two seconds and a bird poops right on me! I had kindly just pushed David out of the way thinking it was going to land on him but no it hit me, so I wore bird poop all day and I wore it well. So we kept on walking into the cave, it was getting darker and darker, and colder. Then I started to think about the bats in the cave and I was a little scared of the cave. It was really dark and water would drip on you from random places on the ceiling, which added to creepy feeling. Then as we continued on we started to see the amazing stalagmites, and other features in the cave. It was breath taking (well literally because the air was really thin down there) but it was just amazing. It is just incredible to think that all this is 900 feet below the ground, yes 900 feet down. It took about and hour to hike down to the main part of the caverns ad the whole time down I was thinking that what we were seeing was the main part that is how awesome the whole thing is. Then another hour or so too look around the main area and then we took the elevator back up, we were past the time to be able to hike back out of it, I took way too many pictures and my camera felt inadequate compared to the all of the other thousand dollar cameras it was taking pictures beside haha. My favorite part of the whole cavern was the mirror pool, which reflected the ceiling and the cave feature called draperies, which were rock formations that looked like beautiful, soft, cloth drapes. I also really liked the iceberg rock which was a 250 ton rock that had fallen off of the cavern wall it was so big we were still passing it a few levels down, This rock also made me afraid that the next falling rock would occur while we were down there, which made my heart pound a little faster. The cavern is one of the most amazing sites I have ever seen it is just incredible.

Later on we went and set-up camp in a really nice camp site about 16 miles from the caverns. It was a much nicer evening and reassured my attraction to camping, we were at the camp with about a hundred kids who were on a field trip, and so they did a good job of scaring the snakes away. We did have some new friends, some turtles who were housed near our campsite. We were able to lay out all of our camping stuff to dry from the rainy night before, which the dry desert air help a lot with that then we cooked a yummy rice dinner with nutella and peanut butter for dessert. It was nice evening, we sat outside and I knitted. Then we went back to the caverns to see the bat flight. This happens every night from may to October the bats will fly out in masses out of the Cavern. It was so cool, there were about 1000, which is low, In August they will have about a half of a million bats. They will house hanging on the ceiling of the cavern. They are small and fit about 300 per square foot and when they are all in the cave and they will raise the temperature of the cavern from around 56 degrees up to 90 degrees. It was so cool to see them all fly out and over us; I gained a new appreciation for bats.

After that we headed back to the tent, and then we sat outside to look at the stars. It was a nice desert evening and we were asleep by 11:00 pm.

Day 4: Katie

We have left Houston and we are now headed to San Antonio. It was nice drive on the highway full of trucks, ranches and cowboys. We made it to San Antonio after driving all around until we finally found the cheapest parking. We ate pb&j on the back of the car and then headed out to see the city. We started to head in the direction of the what we thought that was going towards the Alamo, but a few signs pointing towards some park caught David’s eye and we then found ourselves in probably the worse part of San Antonio, full of some sketchy people. We finally got out of their but only after being hit up for money three times, (we must have looked like tourists).

We stumbled upon the river walk, this was my favorite part of San Antonio it was absolutely beautiful walking down around the water, it was full of trees and pretty landscaping. I noticed that it seems like every tree in that city has stings of lights on them, I would love to see it at night. We finally made it to the Alamo. I really learned a lot about the whole story around the Alamo, I really loved seeing where everything was in comparison to where it is today. I was surprised that the famous building “The Chapel” at the Alamo was not even the front of the Alamo it was in the back, plus I really love being in the long barrack which is the one of the oldest buildings in Texas.

The city of San Antonio is so pretty but so HOT I would not want to be there in mid-July but if you haven’t been you should go it is a lot of fun. We finally got back to the car after David leading us in the wrong direction (again), by not listening to me haha. We got on the road to go to our campground and there we sat for over an hour in traffic. We finally made it and I think when we got to our camp ground we were both a little hesitant to enter. It was a little backwoods RV and campground where most of the people there are permanent residents and the “office” is an outside stand. We chose a spot by the river it was really nice until I heard David yell and do a little Dance where he was a few feet in the air and he yelled rattle snack. I couldn’t believe it our first night camping we have a snake and a storm was rolling in. So we called the office people and one of their residents with a thick accent and almost fu-Manchu style mustache killed it for us, death by Hoe style. We set up camp ate another pb&j and fought off the storm all night. I rediscovered my long lost fear of storms, something about being in a tent with bright lightening, loud thunder and the whole tent rocking back and forth from the wind can bring back a persons fear of storms. It also didn’t help that the tree we were beside was putting a shadow on the tent that looked like a man holding a machete, so I had David sticking his head out of the tent to check every five minutes, haha. It was a long night that I thought would never end,

Day 3,4,&5: David

We left New Orleans on Sunday after eating at Katie’s restaurant. They were doing a fine job of managing her restaurant, and I’m still waiting for her to cook for me like they did J. The splash guard fell off the bottom of the car, we got it fixed and continued to my home-town, Houston! We stayed with our family friend’s, the Anthises (Anthis’s?). It was really great seeing them (thank you so much for letting us stay with you!).

Yesterday we drove to San Antonio, one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen. We stopped at Buc-ee’s, a Texas tradition, we’re told. The bathrooms we’re very clean. Every billboard for gas stations along I-10 boasted the cleanliness of their restrooms. I wish that tradition would make its way up to NC. We also noticed the abundance of Texas pride, as most signs had the state shape, flag, or the lone star on them. The Riverwalk was awesome, and so was The Alamo. Turns out the Texans actually lost the battle of the Alamo…who knew!? I really liked that the history was a celebration of both Texans and Tejanos (Mexican Texans) and their unity in gaining independence for Texas the 1830s. I love all of the Bilingualism in Texas too. 95.1 on the radio in San Antonio (I think), is a Spanish channel! We got the full San Antonio experience, with traffic on 281 N doubling the length of our drive to the campsite, Lazy R&R Cove in Spring Branch, TX. It was really pretty, right next to the Guadalupe River and Canyon Lake. I had a close call with a chicken snake, but I don’t think their poisonous. They do, however, look and act like rattle snakes. The snake pretended to rattle its tail, but it made no noise. We got one of the more permanent RV campers to come down and cut its head off with a hoe. We had been debating whether to do it or not since we couldn’t tell if it was poisonous, and didn’t want to kill a harmless snake. But since there were two dogs at the camp, we did it for their safety. It was fun getting to meet some of the interesting campers there too. We had some neighbors, law students from a school in San Antonio with a golden retriever named Cowgirl. Our first night camping, we had a snake, and of course, rain. It rained all night. We stayed dry, but had a few puddles on the inside of our tent because we have the rain fly for a much smaller tent.

The Snake is in the top picture if you can make it out.

Tuesday: we got up at 6, packed up the car, and left for Carlsbad Caverns at 6:45. We are currently en route, and Katie has successfully passed her first Tractor-trailer on a two lane highway. The other side of our splash guard sounds like it’s falling out. I might become an auto-mecanic with some zip ties overnight.