Rocky Mountain High

So I haven't downloaded photos yet but I wanted to share what we did yesterday. We had awesome breakfast burritos at the Steaming Bean Coffee shop in downtown Durango. Then we met the Hills at their RV. We took a beautiful drive through the mountains to Silverton and Ouray. At Ouray we took a little hike up to a very impressive waterfall.

We came back to the camp site and tried our hand at making pizza over the fire. The adults had burgers, beans, and a salad. It was so nice to have some greens. Oh yeah, we had some wine too. :)

Today Rick is getting the oil changed while I'm handling breakfast and this post. Once he gets back, we're going to Mesa Verde for the day. It sounds like we're going to hit the town for dinner tonight. Tomorrow we will be driving out to Zion. That will probably take all day.

Do You Know the Way to Santa Fe?

We do. And we decided not to go that way. Yesterday was a very long extraterrestrial adventure. First stop was Carlsbad city for a car wash (which turned out to be useless at getting the Mississippi bugs off the front of the car) and grocery shopping. Then we headed up to Roswell.

We visited the UFO Museum. It was worth the hour and $5. It was the first real kitchy thing we did. There was a surprising amount of reading at the exhibits. We ate lunch at Farleys which could not serve us our beer at 11:50 when we ordered it. They had to wait until noon to bring it to our table. We searched for the Crashdown Cafe to take pictures for Jeannine, but it wasn't in TomTom or on either of the two main drags in town. We did get some shots of alien signs though.

Then we headed across the state to the Very Large Array. We need to look up the Valley of Fires at some point. We drove right through it and it looked like old volcanic lava flows. That was a really neat stop. There was a nice little movie and a cool little self guided walking tour which we ended up doing with some folks from the UK. I'll let Rick talk about the rest of the day's journeys. I would just like to say that the Chihuahan desert was nice, but I greatly prefer the higher altitudes with the ponderosa pines.

New Mexico in a day

We started the morning at the lovely Guadalupe National park bright and early. I woke (amazingly) just before sunrise. Our original itinerary had us hitting up White Sands and Roswell for the day. We decided to skip White Sands in favor of the Very Large Array closer to the middle of the country. Roswell was a quick and fun stop. We went into the UFO Museum and Research center. The thing that amazed me most about all of the documentation that they had was how badly the government handled the whole shebang. If theý'd have been a little more forthcoming in the first place they wouldn't have this whole conspiracy. We ate at a local bar and grill with decent food and of course I had to try the "Alien Amber" ale. It was quite good,very malty with a light hop flavor.



We then cruised our way up to the very large array (VLA). It's about 1/2 way up New Mexico and a little bit west of the center of the state. It was a little bit out of our way from our earlier planned route but it was completely worth it. The walking tour and video presentation were good and each parabolic dish itself is extremely impressive. We also met a jackrabbit who was not afraid to let humans get close to get some decent pictures.

We decided to be adventurous and didn't backtrack from the VLA back to the interstate. Instead we took some local roads just west of the VLA that were a more direct approach to Durango Colorado. What we didn't know is that the route we'd planned on the map included a significant chunk on a long unimproved road. The prius handled admirably on what started out as a packed gravel road and ended up in a rutted hard packed dirt road. We spent about 60 miles on that road and it turned out to be a great experience. The road was flanked with large ranches and all in all was very wild. We startled a group of antelope who raced us up the road for about a mile. I was going about 25 miles an hour and they were making slightly better time than that when they finally turned on to a side road on the ranch. They were only about 50 yards in front of us (on the other side of a fence and plenty of stopping distance if they decided to bolt in front of us). Just a few minutes later we saw a buck antelope hanging out on the other side of the road. Our route turned out to be perfect. It put us exactly where we wanted to be and now we were just a few hours south of Durango.

We popped off of the unimproved road around 7:00 PM and we were now in northern NM. It is exceptionally beautiful. Another reason that we lucked out on this route is that we got to see a natural arch at a tiny little national monument park. It was a good chance to stretch our legs before we finished the home stretch to Durango.

We pulled in to Durango Colorado just a few minutes after 11 PM to end a perfect day on the road.

The Stars at Night, are Big and Bright

(Note: This post was written last night but posted this evening as soon as we were able to hit a wifi)

deep in the heart of Texas. Actually made it all the way from Austin to Carlsbad New Mexico in time to see the bats leave the cave. It actually made for a good comparison. While there are significantly more bats at Carlsbad than under the Congress bridge in Austin, the bats at Carlsbad take their time coming out. The Austin bats are a bit better organized and all come out at once which makes for a really impressive few minutes.

We thought that today we would do the Carlsbad caverns stuff in the morning and come back to our campground for some afternoon above ground hiking. Instead, we ended up doing almost all there was to do in Carlsbad. We went on the King’s Room tour and took the self guided audio tour from the natural entrance down to and through the big room. We started around 10 and were done at about 3:30 or so. I’m composing this blog entry sitting at our beautiful campsite at Guadalupe National Park. We noticed that most rest stops have wifi access so we hope to upload this in the morning. I have to say that it feels very strange to be typing on a laptop while camping. I think all of the other campers will start making fun of me any minute now.

Tomorrow we NEED to do some grocery shopping. We need to make sure that we have some fresh veggies soon. Anyway, Rick left his toiletry bag in Austin and we won’t be able to pick it up again until we hit Phoenix so he needs some manly deodorant. He doesn’t want to use my “strong enough for a man, but made for a woman (with sensitive skin)” stuff. We will be setting the alarm early so we can make it to White Sands around noon. I think we will also hit Roswell tomorrow too. I don’t know if we will be spending the night there or just driving straight through. We will see how weird things are there when we get there and we’ll play it by ear. So far, that strategy has been working just fine for us.

On through Texas

Yesterday was the first day when we started noticing a distinct shift in the vegetation as we cruised by. Without regard for the topography much of the first third of the US looks very much the same from a vegetation standpoint. At our stops to and in Missouri I saw many of the same plants that we have back home in Maryland...including unpleasant ones like stinging nettles and poison ivy to the pleasantly familiar like honeysuckle and mayflowers. The trees up until yesterday were tall and green, with a broad mix of conifers and deciduous trees. About midday yesterday we started noticing the yellowing of the land and the shrinking of the trees. I don't know what the tree type would be called. Their size doesn't exactly compare to the scrub oak and mesquite of the desert , they're much larger than that, but the trees and shrubs are definitely not of the same stature of those in the well watered East. The ground-cover is also starting to look decidedly brown.

Whup! Looks like it's time to head out. Onward to Carlsbad!

That's Right (You're Not from Texas)

...but Texas wants you anyway. Man, Texas is BIG. We were through Louisiana before noon yesterday and spent the rest of the day going through Texas. We're not even half-way through. Regarding our pace, now is when we do slow down a bit. We actually looked at our sketchy outline for the trip yesterday and I think we got a day ahead of schedule. Probably the trip from Missouri to New Orleans. We did it in a day and I think I budgeted for us to take two to get there. It's nice to have an extra day to play with. I think today we're going to find a somewhere to do some laundry then look for a campsite on the way to Carlsbad. We might be out of internet range with the exception of the odd wifi coffee shop for quite a while now. We will do our best to have updates, but we will definitely be able to keep you all posted through the Twitter updates from my phone (unless we get out of cell phone range too.) Enjoy this shot of the bats coming out from under the Congress Street bridge.

The Prius so far

Thus far the Prius has been great. It's been handling well on the roads and did well in the mini-mountains so far. It's worst gas mileage was 41 MPG in the mountains but the rest of the time we've been averaging 45-46 MPG. To and from work I normally get 47-48 MPG so I blame the loss of a few on Mandy's driving. Or, it could be the fact that we're carrying a lot more weight in the car than normal w/ all of our camping gear and trip stuff.