Thursday 29 November 2007

Gutted!

Well, that really is it now. We checked into a Motel in Linden last night and had a meal at the really nasty diner next door. 2 Lasagne's, 1 hot choc, as many pepsi re-fills as you want, 1 side salad and 1 extra large portion of Garlic Bread... all in for £10!
This morning we got up and drove 5 miles to the car hire place to pick up our Kia Optima (sounds remarkably like a battery to me!) with Sat-Nav :-) Jen punched in the shipping company's address in Linden and set off, me in Charlie Camel following close behind.
15 minutes later we arrived at Pembroke Shippings warehouse, sorted out paperwork and were then informed by the nice lady with the face like thunder that it would be at least 4 weeks until the car ships to England! HUH!!! 4 weeks... Steve (Kingstown), if you are reading this expect an email! Gutted! So it probably won't be until the end of January that we see Charlie Camel again :-(
Having waved goodbye to Charlie, we jumped into the jap-crap, set the sat-nav destination to Baltimore airport, set the cruise control to 70mph and sulked our way here to the Holiday Inn Express. We are going out to get horibly pissed tonight to drown our sorrows. Then we'll probably do the same again tomorrow as we have to hang around at the airport for who-know-how-many hours. (Well, Dan will, I'm driving back from resturant... but I do get to eat Cheesecake... Mmm! Jen)
And to make matters worse, Jen has just started singing "And now the time is near!"

Dad, it's been an amazing trip, glad you and everybody else who has posted has enjoyed it.

So, now that we won't have a vehicle to play with off road I'm just gonna have to get cracking on Bertha! :-D

Wednesday 28 November 2007

Blue Ridge Parkway

For the last couple of day's we've been driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway through The Carolina's, Georgia and now we're in Virgina.

This has to be the part of America that looks the most like the UK, principally because we spent one whole day driving through thick fog and rain! lol!



By the time it got dark we had visibility of about 15ft and the going was pretty slow.



Luckily the next day was a little bit clearer and we got to enjoy some of the beautiful scenery.



We stopped pretty early today so we could take advantage of the sunny (but cold) weather and sorted Charlie out for his journey in the container as tomorrow's our last full day with him - boy, that went quick! Tomorrow we're planning on finishing the Skyline drive which will bring us out at Washington DC after 110miles which will leave us only about 220miles to New Jersey where we'll find a motel and drop Charlie off in the morning... :-(

See you all at the Jolly Sailor Saturday night!

Monday 26 November 2007

Heading North and Blog Comments

We started our northern trip after Sea World heading for the Blue Ridge Parkway - a road running along the course of the Appalachian Mountains which, if all goes to plan, should put us out near Washington DC. It was a recommendation from a family camped next to us at Key West.

Today was spent following the I75 to Macon and then the 129 to the 441 and at the moment we're staying around the I95 before following the 441 to the Blue Ridge.

Nothing much else to report so instead we're going to answer the comments that have recently been put on the blog, which we love reading :-) :

Richard and Tracy: You are evil. If it's just the new job, we know about that - Hehe! If you're moving away because of it, then you're not allowed :-( But we're both going mad trying to figure it out!

Granny Billie: Thanks for the Happy Birthday message!

The Farter: We saw Hemmingway house, but didn't visit as we were tipped off that it was a bit rubbish so we went to the pub instead :-)
We arrive back in Blighty on Saturday morning. Keep drinkin' those John Smiths!

Saturday 24 November 2007

The Keys... its Itchy!

Driving down to the Florida Keys is an interesting experience. From the Mainland to Key West is approximately 100 miles, and it's pretty much all big long bridges intersperced with the odd tropical, palm tree covered paradise island.
We had planned a couple of days down at Key West, one day relaxing in the sun and another day investigation Key West. Well, all went according to plan, we spent a day at the camp site chilling out. Before we realised it was late afternoon and time to get some more relaxing done at the local bar :-)
Then the following day we made our way into Key West to check the place out. What a funky little town! We took a walk from one end of Duval street to the other, and then made our way back up Whitehead Street and into Malory square to watch the sunset. This is something that Malory Square is well known for and the watersedge was chockablock with people and street entertainers. The sunset was pretty cool to say the least, and the numerous boats and clippers made it picture perfect.


Having been nibbled half to death by the midgeys and itching like a pair of flee bitten muts, it was time to head north again. It was Thanksgiving day so the roads were pretty quiet. We popped into the Everglades again to experience an airboat ride after my Dad sent several nagging messeges instructing us not to leave without taking a ride. WOW! What a ride! I'm sure we didn't go that fast, but with the noise from the V8 engine, silenced only by some flexi-pipe and a couple of cherry-bombs and the wind being sucked past by the 4ft propeller bolted directly to the engines flywheel it felt like we were tearing along! Now an airboat ride isn't the best way to see wildlife, most of it gets scared off by the noise, so we just held on and enjoyed the ride which included some amazing acrobatic boating manouvers.
Whilst there we also checked out the live snake show and as luck would have it Jen got dragged out the audience and had a massive albino python plopped on her shoulders! LOL... she took it rather well actually.


Anyway, onwards and upwards, and heading towards Orlando again, this time to check out SeaWorld. We took a quick detour to do a drive through of Miami, famed for its ArtDeco buildings, and its home for the filthy rich!

We finally arrived in Kissimee quite late looking for a campsite and eventually picked a Motel as it was cheaper than camping... work that one out!

Today, as it was Jens birthday yesterday and she's always wanted to go to SeaWorld, we spent the whole day there. What an amazing place, far better than I expected, and we fed the dolphins!


Now though, with less than a week to go before we come back home it really is time to start our northbound journey. We're hoping to have time to check out the Blue M ountian Ridgeway.

Tuesday 20 November 2007

Pictures added!

I've added the pictures to the two latest posts below so you can see what we've been upto :-)

Nothing much to add today, we only got up at 11am! Spending a nice day relaxing by the pool/hot tub and the coast. Planning on sorting out Charlie for his trip home when I finish procrastinating!

Weather: Sunny with a nice breeze. Lucky eh?

Monday 19 November 2007

Snow?! 27C here...

Well, with a heads up from Tim and Lou I've been having a look at the pics on the BBC website only to see alot of England covered in snow! Home now feel's like a long way away as we're sitting on a campsite on a beech about 14miles north of Key West in Florida. In Fact, today we hit the southern most point of the continental US, only 90 miles away from Cuba. We've spent the whole day in shorts and t-shirts and even now I'm sitting here in my new Portal Tek t-shirt and my tracksuit trousers - but the long trousers are only 'cos of the midges! It's a bit warm.

On our way here we checked out the Everglades National Park. This is a pretty amazing place, what looks like grassland is actually water filled with and immense amout of wildlife. We decided to start with a short couple of walks as recommended by a ranger, only to come across more types of birds and fish than I could count and some pretty large Alligators - some of which lieing only a few feet away from the path! The ranger told us not to worry though, they won't bother you on land. Mm. Ok! lol!





We then headed down to Flamingo at the southernmost end of the NP and camped on a beautiful campsite amoungst the palm trees and on the edge of the Mangroves. As we pulled up the midge-meter was at it's lowest reading which made us happy - but we covered up and put on the bug spray anyway. The next morning I jumped in the shower only to find several hundered bites :( Litterally. Apparently my walking trousers are not mosquito proof, it's so bad I even got sympathy from Dan! lol!

Cooking under tha palm trees:


Several minutes was spent applying bite cream and a copious amout of midge spray before we wandered down to the Marina to take a boat tour out into the park proper. We were lucky and saw lots of American Crocodile, there are less than 900 of these remaining. They're pretty big!

Later that day we headed out towards the Key's and stayed the night in a state park. Whereas camping had previously been costing about $14 in state parks it was now $32, you can tell you're getting near the keys! Today we headed down the amazing drive down here over countless bridges and lots of blue ocean to end up just north of Key West. We've booked into the KOA here (as it has it's own bar and beech!) and are planning a day off tomorrow and checking out Key West the day after.

Lunch on the beech at Key West:


After that small rest we're heading back up north starting our return journey to New York... although we've loved every minute of the trip I think we're both looking forward to coming home.

Friday 16 November 2007

Giant Mice, Aligators and Snakes

Well, that was exhausting!

Sunday meant Kennedy Space Centre Day. It's full of spaceships and things. (sorry, Dan wrote that bit).


As for Disney, I’m glad to say, it appears we may have gotten older, but happily not grown up :-) Still, three days and four nights at Disney was plenty – otherwise the constant cheeryness and everything being perfect may have driven me insane. Besides, Dan was running out of things to moan about ;-) We’re currently driving down towards the Everglades with some very loud Aerosmith on to make up for the almost constant ‘plinky plonky’ music.

We arrived at Disney on Monday night and booked in at the Fort Wilderness Campground, this had the advantage of being ‘on site’ but a fraction of the cost of one of the hotels. We were assigned campsite site 1505… er… ok! This place, like the whole of Disney World was HUGE. There weren’t actually 100 campsites in the 1500 loop, more like 21, but the campsite still was about 700acres. We had a really nice pitch and bearing in mind I’d only booked 4 days earlier we were still pretty much in the middle of everything and near the toilets as I’d requested, impressive. The campsite itself has 2 resturants, a bar, groceries etc, carriage rides, segway tours, tennis courts, basketball courts, big meadows to play in, 2 swimming pools, a beech with hammocks, boat rentals, campfire singalongs, nightly outdoor movies and it’s own stables that offer horse riding. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot but you get the idea. Needless to say, everything was clean and our site well equipped, it was even cheaper than other campsites in the area.

Our pitch: (this was the cheapest option)


While we were here we were planning 2 days in the theme parks (four of them) and a day in the water park – Blizzard Beech, simply because water parks are cool! Sunday night involved a bit of strategy planning as to what we really wanted to see. 2 theme parks in one day was probably going to be pushing it. I'll give a quick rundown as I'm sure you don't want to read a step by step account of our day, anyone wanting more info can ask when we get back:

Magic Kingdom – the trademark Disney. More for the kids (so it suited us!). Runaway mine train = classic rollercoaster fun, Monsters Inc Laugh Floor = a set done up like the factory in Monsters Inc with an interactive show with the cartoon - a stroke of genius and my favourite ever entertainment at a theme park. Awesome.
Amazing fireworks in the evening.







Epcot - Educational fun. Nemo adventure was cool (basically an aquarium so I'm bound to like it!). Lots of different 'Countrys' surrounding the lake, the England has a convincing pub that serves PROPER BEER and good fish and chips! lol!



Animal Kingdom - Coooooool! 2 Landies spotted, need I say more?! Excellent 'African Safari', convincingly done with some amazing animals and research taking place. The best water raft donut ride although I was *litterally* dripping when I got off! lol! Could have spent all day there, but had to go too:





MGM - Lots of shows, lots of good shows, One amazing show: Lights, Motors, Action (if only I could get a job there!). Rear wheel drive, motorbiked engined Corsa's are always going to be amusing! Had one kid crying though because they split Herbie in half! lol! Indiana Jones, still entertaining, back lot tour ok - but none of the cartoonists were working when we went :-( Fantasmic Evening show a bit overrated, but some amazing effects.



One for Sam and Max:



Blizzard Beech Water Park - Cool! Based on a freak snowstorm in Florida that's melting it's all 'ski resort' fashioned. Loads for everyone: 1 acre wave pools, lazy river floating thing, lots of flumes. Dan gets a medal for bravery as he did the 120ft almost vertical 'Summit Plummet' flume and got the mother of all wedgies! He recorded 52mph, I saw a 61 whilst waiting at the bottom! Apparently it hurts!

Proof that Dan is undeniably crazy, this is Summit Plummet:


We also went to Downtown Disney one evening to use our $15 voucher at Planet Hollywood for dinner. Lots of shops, including the largest Disney shop in the world (good job Mum wasn't with me!) and a superb Chocolate shop. Nice atmosphere to wander amoungst the bars and things. We had hoped to go to The House of Blues to check out some live music, but it was closed for a private function :-(

Finally, we met a nice English member of staff who told us some interesting Disney Stuff! But, it's not for writing on the blog, it's one for the pub over a nice pint of warm beer ;-)

So, in summary, Disney still do everything just that little bit better than everybody else, their attention to detail is incredible. We enjoyed ourselves but are definatly looking forward to getting into the Everglades National Park tomorrow and then heading down to the Keys to check out the Coral Reef and beautiful beeches. We were all themeparked out at the end of the stay, so I'm waiting 'till the trip back up for Sea World...

...Assuming we survive the night. The campsite we're at: 'Alligators and Snakes Campground' ... mm, interesting name.

Sunday 11 November 2007

The Deep South... YOIKS!

Dan:

One thing Jen forgot to put on the last blog entry about New Orleans... The locals seem to be taking it all with a bit of good spirit. They have a bumper sticker there that goes as follows: "Took my Chevy to the Levy, but the Levy was... GONE!"

Anyway having left New Orleans and the best state park camp site we have ever used, we headed for Destrehan Plantation. This is an 18th century sugar plantation that was pretty interesting. All the staff who do the tours have to wear period costumes... very silly! At the height of their success, the Destrehan family had over 200 slaves living in rather scanky wooden shacks. These slaves had a big hand in the uprising that led to the ring leaders being beheaded and their heads put on stakes for all to see... Hmmm... nice!



Happily things have changed quite a bit since then and Louisiana is actually a really nice state, the people were some of the friendliest we've met so far.

A quick visit to a Walmart Express-lube for an oil change and we hit the road again and made tracks towards Florida along the south coast. The drive to Florida was all interstate, so not very exciting, but we did pass through Mississippi (the state, not the river!) and Alabama (Richard and Tracy's CD was put on with "Sweet Home Alabama" at full volume!).

We finally arrived in Florida late last night and camped in St Augustine, the oldest established city in the USA. For the first night in months we were able to sleep with the tent open. Yep, it's luuuuurvly and warm :-) In the daylight we took a short drive around and saw the European architecture. Then we headed off to Daytona beach. For $5 a day you can drive about 10miles of the beech. Well, it would have been rude not to, wouldn't it :-) Unfortunately you are not allowed to splash in the sea so we made do with enjoying the drive and rescuing the locals who had no idea how to drive on sand! We ended up dragging one car about 40feet along the beech after he'd managed to get hopelessly bogged down in the sand!.





Jen:

This is where our "holiday" begins, we will be doing all the touristy things for the next couple of weeks before we head back to New York and home. Actually, it's not that bad - we are booked into Disney for the next 4 nights, 2 days in the theme parks and two in the water parks - Hehe, but appart from that the plan is to visit NASA and the Kennedy Space Centre tomorrow and after Disney head down to the Everglades National Park and then down to the Keys - there's a KOA down there with it's own bar on the beech, lol! :-) When we head back up we'll visit Miami and SEA WORLD! Wahoo! That, I am a little excited about. As Thankgiving is somewhere in the middle of that lot we hope to find a nice little resturant that'll feed us as my birthday treat. Cool eh?!

P.S. My elbow is still killing me after falling off in Moab (almost a month ago now), any ideas if this is right?! It's ok usually, but if I lean on it it feels like someones stabbed it with a big carving knife! Ow! Answers on a postcard...

Friday 9 November 2007

New Orleans - the city America forgot?

Well, we did well heading south! By the end of the day we were at the Louisiana border and everyone was sounding very southern - as a consequence, we both sounded very English, it's very strange hearing yourself talk in a place like this! :-)

This was prehaps the 5th night on the trip we couldn't find anyplace to camp. The state park had shut the camping for the season and the RV parks were all closed up for the night, so we headed into a little town in search of a motel. We found one - £17 a night! It was you typical cheap motel, we even had a dead cockroach in the corner, lol! But the bedding was clean so that did us, it was also a bit warmer and Dan's toothpaste didn't freeze which was a bonus. We got a pizza from Pizza Hut, I think we were hte only people in town that night and settled down for a night in front of the tele (which means I got to watch Basketball all night, heaven :-) ).

The next morning was Dan's Birthday! Wahoo! 36 Today! I'd managed to sneakly get him a pair of long fingered Mountain biking gloves without him knowing at Rim Cyclery in Moab so I think he was quite pleased, although he then moaned because apparently that means he's got to buy me a pressie on my birthday. Grumpy git. Although I'd planned to cook him pancakes for breakfast as we were in a carpark next to the road we passed on that idea and just got going instead.

We were only abou 4 hours from New Orleans so pushed on only stopping for lunch at a Drive Inn which was quite cool! We'd planned to visit one of the old Plantation Houses on the Mississippi and have a look around the City before heading to the French Quater. We arrived a bit late to get all that done, so resolved to do the Plantation house tomorrow and headed into the city.

We looked around in the best way possible - we got lost! Well, not really, I knew we were rounghly heading in the right direction, but the devestation from Katrina was still plainly evident. Beautiful old houses were standing either half in ruin or abandoned and borded up, the roads were more like a rollercoaster ride and I was quite glad we had Charlie Camel and not my little Mini as I think getting down some of them would have been interesting! Everywhere you looked though there were messages of definance, many houses had sprayed on the boarded up windows 'we'll be back!' and you oculd see people working to clear debris. There were RV's and caravans scattered outside houses obviously holding the occupants whilst they worked to repair their properties yet everywhere we went people waved and smiled at Charlie, clearly the only way to cope is to get on with things!





The thing to remember - Katrina came through in 2005.. we're now in late 2007.. can you imagine neighbourhoods in New York or Washington still being in ruin over two years later? These neighbourhoods need help and I don't think they're getting it.

10blocks later and we were in the French Quarter - this is on higher land and was largly uneffected by the flooding. Well, the buildings were, apparently most of th workers come from the 80% of New Orleans that was effected so the businesses lost alot of workers and tourists that cancelled vacations, taking a hit financially. It is a stunningly beautiful part of the city with French/Spanish and Mexican influences in the buildings, this is clearly the toursit part of town as we looked at an old Paddle Steamer and the large numbers of bars and cafes.



We did our bit to boost the local economy by having a few beers in a micro brewery ;-) and of course to celebrate Dan's birthday.





As darkness drew in it was clearly time to find a place to camp so we headed out to one of the local state parks. 8ish miles on the map and 20odd later we found it, nice and secluded with free wifi (lol!), clean showers, free laundary... mm, why so many facilities? Ok, there's Aligators (which grow upto 20ft), Lynx, Coyote's... quite glad we've got the rooftent then! Still, a bargin at $18.

Birthday Pancakes this morning:

Sing along now… (Dan’s title) ARGH! (Jen’s title)

So, where did we leave you? As you might have guessed we’ve been counting the miles off recently and seeing a few things on the way. Probably the easiest way is to do the brief highlights of each day since leaving Denver:

Day 1:

Heading south on the I25, 4:40pm – a bend in the road! Wow! (seriously, I made a note of the time).

Day 2:

This was a little more interesting, we’d spent the night in Las Vegas (NM not NV) and it was bloomin’ freezing. We were still heading south on the I25 today, but when we got to Socorro we took the 60 west for a bit so we could see the rather unimaginatively named VLA (Very Large Array), this is a radio astronomy telescope made up of 27 antennas with 25m dishes. It’s used by astronomers all over the US for various projects from studying the sun to various distant galaxies, each antenna can be moved on the tracks to span a distance of 13miles apart along each arm, at the largest configuration larger than the city of Washington DC It would take a antenna with a dish of 17miles wide to do what the VLA can do. It was pretty cool to see it all in operation – even better that is was free! Dan got very excited in his geeky Si-Fi way as it was in the film ‘Contact’ with Jodie Foster.



After driving 45miles in the wrong direction we thought we should get back on track and headed along the 380 east past the ‘Trinity Site’ – the site of the first nuclear bomb – we didn’t hang around and found a nice quiet place down the road to camp only to discover a leaking hub seal on the rear axle. As we were camped on BLM land in the middle of a field essentially, it was quite a way to the nearest town so we thought it best not to start the job here and put it on the ‘list of things to do tomorrow’.

Day 3:

Oh dear. Roswell. Well, it had to be done! We pulled up on Main Street to be faced with the funniest street lamps, I think I might ask HCC to introduce these in Eastleigh:



Roswell, as you probably know is the alleged site of an Alien space craft landing in the 1940’s which was confirmed by a member of the armed forces then quickly denied with several follow up stories including a weather balloon, Air Force dummy and probably several other things. We popped into the UFO Museum which was actually quite well done! I expected the worst I think, but they did a good job of trying to present both sides of the story when we could see they wanted to say ‘It was Alien’s!!’. Lots of eye witness accounts of the ‘spacecraft’ crash and subsequent search for bits of spacecraft and a bit of info on some interesting things like crop circles, ancient history etc. with only a few accounts sounding like they’d come from completely mad people :-)

Everything in the town was alien themed, even the Walmart had a spacecraft painted on the side and lots of inflatable Alien’s inside, but we liked them as they didn’t mind us using their car park to change the hub seal. Dan set to work and I went into do the shopping, I think he got the better deal! But, the people of Roswell are very friendly, a total of 6 vehicles stopped to see if we needed help/bits which was pretty good of them as we were well out the way at the back of the car park.



Job completed and we headed up on to the most hell-ish part of the trip for me – and the reason for the thread title – we were going towards… Amarillo. ARGH! 2 days of Dan signing ‘Is this the way to Amarillo’ is enough to drive anyone insane, good job they didn’t have an international airport or I probably would have been on the next flight home, lol!

As we crossed into Texas the Cattle Ranch’s began. Wow, these places are HUGE! Pen’s of cows as far as the eye could see, only separated by HUGE farm buildings and the odd HUGE dust storm (everything in Texas is HUGE!). As we crossed over the border we headed back into Central Time so lost an hour of travelling time so we decided to head to a KOA on the other side of Amar… no, I can’t even bring myself to type the word anymore! Did you know that place sits atop 90% of the worlds Helium? And I didn’t see one balloon :-( This win’s the award for the most noisy campsite we’ve stayed at, we should of known as in the brochure it stated ‘no interstate noise!’ but failed to mention the airport *next door* and the rail road the other next door. Lol!

As it was our only night in Texas we thought it right that we should go out for a good ‘ol Steak Dinner, and as recommended headed for The Big Texan - this win’s the award for the tackiest, yet funniest place we’ve eaten so far.



On the menu was basically every type of Steak you could imagine (don’t come in here looking for a salad) as well as some local delicacies such as fried Rattlesnake. Mmm, tasty! Our server was wearing a big hat and cowboy boots and the whole place was decked out like a huge dancehall/saloon. We thought we’d been caught in some really touristy restaurant only to realise practically everyone eating in there was local! Lol! We did get our server to admit he usually wears trainers and a baseball cap though, not the cowboy boots and huge hat he was working in. Still, the staff were friendly and the food was good so in my book that makes it a pretty good place to eat and apparently one of the most popular on Route 66.

Day 4:

Following on from eating at one of the most famous places on Route 66 we headed north on the I40 following the direction of the old road to Clinton and the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum. On the way though we stopped at the Cadillac Ranch. One of Amarillo’s eccentric helium millionaires has ‘planted’ 10 Cadillacs in one of his fields next to the I40, it’s to show the different fins that were part of the designs from 1949 – 1963 and is open for people to decorate/graffti as they please, in fact, there were some cans lying around to encourage you to do just that!



We left our mark and wandered back onto the interstate heading for a Barnes and Noble, this made us very happy as we managed to get hold of a LRM so we could catch up on all the news from the UK Land Rover scene… boy, Billing was a bit wet eh?! Good write-up for Simon and X-Eng, and Shire got a couple of mentions too.

As we’d done quite a few bits of the actual route 66 as it exists now on our journey, we were keen to find out a little more. For $3 each the museum was a bargain and I’d highly recommend it. They’ve managed to salvage as many bits and pieces as they can and reproduced a few others to give an accurate account of the history of the road from LA to Chicago and everything in between. It was quite sad though and a living example of what happens when you build interstates (or bypasses in the UK) as many of the communities, or at least the businesses, disappeared once the new roads bypassed their towns and passing trade disappeared.



We stopped the night just west of Oklahoma City to yet another freezing evening and a night of going to bed with a warm hat on. We’ve had quite a few of these now and it seems to be becoming a theme with central America, warm days and then waking up to find all the water around us frozen (and Dan’s toothpaste – lol!). So, today we’re heading south even if we have to drive until Midnight!

Oo, better go, we turn off in 177miles…quick, get the map out…

Sunday 4 November 2007

Back on the Road... even though we prefer off-road!

Well, after much umm-ing and arr-ing and a considerable amount of procrastination on my part, we finally dragged ourselves kicking and screaming away from Moab. Our route for the next few days will take us in a huge “U” shape, ending in Denver, basically following all the recommendations of places to visit from the guys in Salt Lake.

Having left Moab we picked up the 191 south and headed towards the Navajo Nation Indian Reserve and some of its offerings, firstly Monument Valley. But just south of Moab Charlie Camel decided to let us know that he didn’t want to leave either by getting a flat tyre. Imagine our surprise when we got the wheel off and saw this crack in the rim.. YOIKS!!

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So that’ll be the end of that rim then. Anybody who has any suggestions about how this could happen we’d love to hear them!

Anyway, back on the road again and heading towards Monument Valley. This is the classic western landscape that everyone has seen the pictures of and includes such geological features at the Mexican Hat. We just drove through Monument Valley without going to the “Tribal Park” itself as according to the ‘Rough Guide’ you can pretty much see most of it from the main road. There are various Navajo-led tours around the valley itself, but we were content to just admire from afar.



Next stop on our whirlwind tour of this region was Canyon De Chelly (pronounced De Shey) National Monument, which had been recommended to us by a whole gaggle of people. The Canyon itself is a sacred place for the Navajo people and you are only allowed in with a guide. There are various view points along the rim that look down the 1000ft canyon, but as it was getting late we decided to camp the night at the FREE campground. That evening I had a go at repairing our wheel and the hole in the inner tube using the patented Wallace Gaffer-tape hole patching method ;-)



But not to fear, we put in a new tube in it and we’re now using it to mount the bikes on – we won’t run it on the interstates, the spare that was on the back is now on the bonnet, so fingers crossed we won’t get two flats at the same time.

The campsite and the Cayon itself were absolutely stunning, sadly, the rest of the reservation, well, wasn’t. It was kind of like Pilands on a bad day, Jen didn’t cope to well with the vast amount of dogs running around clearly homeless and the dead/uncared for animals that littered the sides of the road. Combined with the warnings about leaving your car unattended it didn’t make for relaxing visiting, so we planned to make a retreat after visiting the monuments and natural wonders we were planning on seeing.

The following day we were up bright and early and drove through 4 states in about 8 seconds – no, sadly the warpdrive still isn’t working – we were at Four Corners Monument. This is where you can stand in 4 states simultaneously, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.



After all that excitement we were off again, this time in the direction of Mesa Verde National Park. On the way there we went through Cortez and saw the stereotypical classic American Diner. Well, as it was lunch time it seemed only right that we should pop in for a small snack (massive burger with huge portion of fries and as many free top ups of coke as you can manage!). These classic diners with their polished mirrored outsides and nasty glass tiled insides are getting rarer and rarer. We’ve seen a few on our travels, but it’s never been the right time of the day to stop. Unfortunately, this wasn’t “Peggy Sues” or “Rosies”, but a Denny’s. Never mind, it did the job and all the waitresses had really big 60’s hair doo’s!



We hauled our enormously over fed and gassed up bodies back to the car and took off again for Mesa Verde. This park has some of the best preserved cliff dwellings, built sometime between Christ and 1300AD by the ancestral Puebloan people. They got bored and moved out at some point, probably because they over farmed the land and bled it dry, but personally I reckon they moved out because they’d only get a short amount of sunshine during the day! (just encase you were wondering – it was actually drought – Jen)



Next stop was Telluride. We were actually passing through looking for a mountain road to Ouray that had been recommended to us as a stunning drive. Unfortunately it turned out that the road didn’t actually get as far as Telluride so we had to get back on the main roads. We eventually reached Ouray, a delightful little town and it was in the full swing of Halloween! We’ve all seen the films and stuff, but I never really thought that local people made that much of an effort, but people here really get into these things, houses get decorated with cobwebs, coffins, witches and of course the obligatory pumpkins, people get dressed up and there is a real happy, fun, party atmosphere… not like in the UK where you get a group of knife wielding spotty oik of a teenager wearing a hoody banging on your door and threatening to kill you cat if you don’t give ‘em a tenner!
We arrived slightly too late to visit the hot springs, so went out for a bite to eat instead. The following morning though, we made our way to the hot springs and spent an hour relaxing in the 102-106 degree f water while looking at the snow capped mountains. If only we could have some mountains overlooking Richard and Tracy’s back garden!

We then went in search of this road we’d been trying to find yesterday. I think we failed, (sorry Rob!) but we did find Engineers Pass, a mountain trail that led high up into the Uncompahgre National Forest and gave us some stunning views of the 14309ft mountain peak.

We left the trail after taking a million and 1 pictures and headed north again, this time towards Fruita. We’d heard from a couple of people that Fruita offered some good mountain biking. We arrived just as the visitors centre had closed, but had a little drive around town and found Over the Edge http://otesports.com/ . We popped in and asked about the biking and the chap serving us was fab. He knew straight away in which direction to point us. We also bought a book listing all the trails that have been created in the BLM land. The main difference between the biking here and at Moab is that here it is all single track stuff, created specifically for mountain biking… cool! :-) Moab provides a completely different experience with slickrock and sand, and the trails are quite often shared with motor bikes, ATVs, horses and of course “Jeeps”. The bizarre thing is that Fruita is probably on a par with Moab for what it has to offer the mountain biking enthusiast, but unless you are a local the chances of you hearing about are pretty remote, which is sad.
Anyway, we managed to get a couple of good trail done, Kessels Run, Prime Cut and Joe’s Ridge. The last one was brilliant, some really nice fast downhills. Jen freaked out being just ever so slightly scared of heights, but gotta give her credit, she only walked one small **EXTREME** downhill bit with a several hundred foot drop down either side. Me, well I just shut my eyes, peddled like billy-o, shouted a lot, and prayed!
The riding here is quite similar to what we have at home, so as we were slightly pushed for time, we made our escape, but have added it to our list of “Future Visits”.



Back on the road again, this time heading for Denver. I had joined the Solihull Society forum (a Colorado based Land Rover club) to ask all sorts of boring questions whilst we’d been planning the trip. And now we had the opportunity to meet a few of the core members. We arranged to meet at the Landsdowne Arms, an English style pub. How happy was I when I saw that they had Tetley, Bass and London Pride on tap! I could have stayed there all night. This is the first time in several months that I have had a pint of proper bitter. Mind you, it was still too cold!!
We had a good night talking to Tom, Jim (Jimfoo from LR4x4) and Todd, and it was great to meet them and their vehicles. It sounds like Colorado has just as much to offer as Moab, maybe more! So that’s another place added to the list of Future Visits then!

At the end of the evening we exchanged club stickers, and Todd kindly donated a Solihull Society Moab Rally t shirt to the “Keep Dan Warm in these freezing cold Nights” fund. Tom then led us to the nearest hotel, which happened to be a Marriott. But with my charm, sophistication and fluttering eye lids, I managed to blag a hotel suite that was bigger than our house for 50 quid! Bargain!



The south is calling, so we’ll be “bigging up” for Nascar from now on in the hope that we can get to Florida without getting shot!