What a Grand 100th day!
Today marked the hundredth day of my trip and was also the day I would finally get to see the Grand Canyon which always appears near the top of all the spectacular travel lists in the world. We even managed to get up reasonably early since we would be driving and walking around all day. The sun shone but there was a chill in the air which would only get deeper. We scoffed our bran flakes in the room and went off to discover the next great American State park. Daniella really isn’t a very good navigator, I had put in a random road for the town by the park village and was following those directions and we passed the turning for the south rim without me seeing it. Dani did say something but then waited for another 50 miles before mentioning that we had probably gone past the turning. The random road was the highway that leads to the village and I had obviously messed up but she should have more forcefully told me I had passed the junction. Oh well, cursing our dual doziness we had to turn around and head back. More time wasted we could be spending in the canyon though. At the junction we stopped for coffee and m&m’s. As I’m getting in the car a woman pulls up and tells me that the coffee I had just bought isn’t very good and I should be buying it from the coffee place just around the corner. Apparently they make it with ground water. Great. Thanks for telling me I wasted my $1.20! Like I’m now going to tip it away and go buy some more…..
99:Tuba City, Az:Shiprock, 4 Corners, Monument Valley, getting covered in shite…
This part of New Mexico was pure desert, mostly flat when we started out in the morning but we could see a massive rocky mountain looming on the highway as we drove towards it. Checking the map identified it as Shiprock and it looked like a mass of sails towering into the sky. I will have to Google it sometime, but my guess it the remains of a volcano. The state park where the 4 States meet was close by now and we were happy to learn we wouldn’t have to pay the normal $3 entry fee as it was a holiday. Why anyone would want to go there and pay to have their picture taken surrounded by a circle of souvenir shops… I don’t know. 90% of the stalls were closed though so we grabbed our pictures and got the hell out of there. The Grand Canyon was getting close now just another day away and the scenery became more rugged and dramatic. Shiprock was a just a taste of monument valley further up the road. I should look at the map a bit more I guess but that wasn’t my job any more. We drove slowly through a huge valley of dramatic rocks erupting from the red dust, flecked with snow that hadn’t quite melted.
97:Santa Fe, Nm:Day trippin’ in the cold mountains.
Santa Fe is an artists town and I had now realized this was where Mel-Mel was based but since she was now enjoying herself in Thailand wouldn’t be available for drinks. The place is full of galleries but we weren’t looking to buy a load of paintings, we’d rather concentrate on seeing something cheap. We took Mikes suggestion and had a drive up to Taos which was a small road with lots of character and spectacular scenery. Heading north we finally arrive in town which was coated in a light covering of snow and pulled up to the tourist information place for some maps and ideas of things to do. There was plenty of suggestions but highest on the list was the local Pueblo where the local Indian people live in traditional dwellings still. There was also the 3rd highest suspension bridge in the US nearby as well as drives around the snow capped mountains and trips up to the local ski fields. It looked like they we about to have a good season too but we were hardly prepared for skiing. That would have to wait.
96:Santa Fe, Nm:Too cold for art.
I wasn’t going to make the same mistake I did at the dinosaur park and we paid up our $14 pronto before they called in the feds and we headed back to Roswell, intending to go to the museum. I also intended to get a photo of me standing by the city limits sign with a plastic bowl dangling on a piece of fishing wire as I cowered in terror but we somehow drove past it on the way. There was always the one on the way out though. We went back to the coffee shop to make some couchsurfing requests for the next stop, Santa Fe. We didn’t hold out much hope since it was pretty late in the day already but we crossed our fingers and left town, not even bothering about the museum. I guess that was one mystery that would have to remain unsolved for us. Terrible tourists.
We had put my bike on the roof and it constantly flapped in its tarpaulin, buying a load more bungee cords didn’t help either so when the noise got too much it went back in the back, quieter and better for the gas consumption. I haven’t even ridden it for a mile either, tragic. We looked for the city limit sign on the way out but couldn’t find it this time either so that’s a photo that will have to wait until I go back one day. We got an text from a guy called Mike as we drove up to Santa Fe offering us a place to stay for a couple of nights so it looked like we wouldn’t be sleeping in the walmart car park again for a while. We thought it prudent to wait and check his profile before we said ok and we stopped to steal some wifi and found 2 more people offered us a place to stay. Even better. We ended up going with Mike in any case and one of the other guys suggested we try to arrange a meal out in town the next night. Seems they don’t get too many visitors, especially ones as fascinating as us!
Mike was busy working on editing his cousins novel so didn’t have time to take us out to explore the town but gave us a few ideas for dinner. He lived in a small condo complex with another girl so we dumped our stuff in the living room and went out to check out the infamous Santa Fe. Its about 7,000 feet above sea level and it was cold. Very cold. We parked up near a group of bars and went for a walk. It turned out to be a very short walk as within 5 minutes we were desperate to get inside to get warm. We ended up going into the Cowgirl which is a popular bar, but they had lots of vegetarian options on the menu so I was perfectly happy with that. I had some great quesadillas and despite constant warnings of the level of spiciness am not really finding Mexican food too hot on the tastebuds. We went back to Mikes and there I found Dani had never seen Taxi Driver. Well that would never do so we sat and watched Bob DeNiro go slowly insane on Mikes big TV.
95:Roswell, Nm:The truth *is* out there, but I’d rather sit in the warm drinking coffee…
We woke up in the wal-mart car park feeling like we’d been abducted by freaks. Stumbling into the bathroom for a wash and teeth clean the people in Carlsbad looked liked they’d been breeding with Aliens or something. I’m guessing we might have looked just as weird to them but I’ve never seen such a sorry bunch of hill-billies in my life. Shallow faced, slack jawed, limp haired crazy folk wandering around pushing trolleys full of plastic from china. I needed a coffee if I was to escape this episode of the twilight zone I had strayed into. Carlsbad is famed for its caves. Huge caverns formed millions of years ago and only just discovered. Massive natural cathedrals of rock filled with natural wonders and formations of lime, stretching for miles into the earth. We got to the exit of the car park and neither of us could be bothered. Sod the caves, let’s go look at imaginary Aliens in Roswell!! :p
94:Carlsbad:The end of the road?
When I got up my headache was still throbbing in my skull but at least I could see and think straight, everytime I bent over my forehead would feel like my brain was trying to slosh out of my head. Still I had a job to do and it was the last day of my crazy writing tour of the South, one final line south and then the road to victory north. Daniella would finally be free to direct me as she would, preferably somewhere warm. We left Ozona temporarily to head down towards Mexico but before we made it to the Rio Grande I did a u-turn and the final line was in the making. Could you see my trip from space I have been asked? Probably not, but then it depends on how many pixels wide it was.
93:Ozona, Tx:Evil Cake!
The sun came out in the morning but it wasn’t enough to turn the car into an oven like it would in Florida and get us up. We filled her up in San Angelo and determined that today would be the end of my groundwriting and we would be free to go where ever we wanted. First we had the stupid A to complete and after a slight cock up on my part we had missed part of the bottom and it meant we would be driving part of the route we had driven the night before. Driving down the same road 3 times because of some strange obsession seemed a bit stupid, but its only gas and time. I spotted a good place for some pictures on the way back and we ended up back on the 88 south passing through Paint Rock (the gate was now closed) and past Eden (the sandwich shop was open, but we weren’t interested) before heading on the way back up to San Angelo.
92:Somewhere in the heart of Texas:Im not going to Graceland, in Memphis Tennessee
The weather was shockingly bad when we woke up, rainy and very cold. We had been watching the weather reports and it looked like the front of snow would just miss us but we still had a few miles north to go. We left Abilene and followed the road until it was time to go east at Haskell, abandoning my original route. It was grey and dull, and we stopped in Newcastle to have a coffee and a sit down. Bad mistake. The coffee was awful, the people eating the ‘food’ looked like they had escaped from a mental institute but we amused ourselves by reading the local paper which was 4 pages of drivel and trying to make the tiny amount of milk the waitress gave us fit into 4 coffees. ‘Y’all come back now’ she mumbled as we left. I think I would rather die.
Now I had the horribly boring job of driving the 50 miles back to Haskell and onto finish the T in trousers which I set to with a dull resignation. Graceland would have to wait.
89:Dallas:Picking up the passenger
I didn’t get an early night in any case and couldn’t get to sleep until about 3am. I had started reading His Dark Materials again and that kept me up later than I should have. I managed about 10am which was potentially too late but I wasn’t going to kill myself getting up to Dallas. I packed up my gear, gave Josh a hug and set off first east to continue the loop of the O towards Houston and then onwards to Dallas. It was a pretty unremarkable drive, slightly overcast but the temperature was a sweaty 28 degrees. The traffic was light as usual but as I turned North and past Huntsville the clouds piled up and the temperature started dropping along with some rain. It seemed it was the end of my luck with the weather and I watched it drop and drop, into the teens and then down to 4 degrees, the coldest since Huntersville a couple of weeks before but at least there the sun was shining. I can’t really complain that I had 89 days of great weather and it should finally get cold in December. I was intending to swing further to the east to make the letter O more defined but in the end I thought it more prudent to stick to the I-45 North to get to the airport at a reasonable time. Daniella was due in at 4.30pm and after driving for 6 hours or so, stopping only for coffee and gas I made it to a chilly Dallas-Fort Worth airport with 20 minutes to spare. Finally a passenger for my Gringo Taxi!
88:Austin, Tx:Everyone is Santa!!
Despite the cheap, as in free, beer I didn’t get too drunk and got up determined to do something fun. Josh is a big biker, as in he likes bicycles, he’s not a fat hells angel, so I asked him if he could suggest somewhere to buy a bike and he certainly could. Seems Austin has a place where the locals rescue, restore and redistribute used and broken bikes called the Austin Yellow Bike Project http://www.austinyellowbike.org/ hence the crazy guy I had seen the day before. We gave them a call to see when they closed and I ate some breakfast and made my way up there.
87:Austin, Tx:Killed by cheap lager….
Ah, the bliss of a bed that isn’t wrapped in plastic like the one at the hostel. Josh had gone out early leaving me his phone number and his key. I hope he checked my references :p I took a shower, read for a bit and then found out where he was a drove up to join him. He was in some cool co-op supermarket/café near the University and on the drive up I decided I not only liked Austin, I could possibly live there. Would just have to get past the whole stupid American work ethic and I could be quite happy. Maybe I should see the place in the searing summer first though. It’s a major, MAJOR University town so the place is packed with students and the cool places they love to hang out in. It was a breath of fresh air after driving through the hick towns of the south and I got myself a Tempeh Burrito and coffee and we sat in the sunshine checking the local free paper for bands to see.
86:Austin, Tx:Guilty as charged officer!
Well doesn’t time fly. Only one month left on my US visa and still so long to go. After a night of catching up on my blog and then taking some fun long exposure photos I was back on track and ready to get a move on. Stupidly forgetting to set my alarm meant that I was up very late and as I sat eating my breakfast pancakes was collared by the park ranger who drove up in his big white truck. I saw the night before that the camping was going to be $5 entrance plus $25 to camp. Kinda crazy prices I thought. I considered telling him I had come in early but decided quickly that honesty was the best policy and promised to come check in (and then leave) when my breakfast was done. I was feeling more hard done by when I took a shower in a block filled with dead and dying bugs and felt the ‘no dishwashing’ sign was an affront to my personal diginity as I washed my dishes in the toilet block anyway. Where was I supposed to wash my dishes? Isn’t this a camp site?
I went off to see the place with the tracks again and found myself on the cliff over the river I was walking along the previous night. It showed some tracks in the water on the photographs but after climbing down the rather perilous bank I saw nothing after a good look. Some marks in the river bed were contenders but the tracks can freeze over and they slowly erode, nothing to see here, move along. I hauled myself back up the dirt slope using the abundant roots and thinking how much my nephews would love to come Dinosaur hunting with me down here one day. I swung by the main site but I could see nothing down the bank. Most of the best tracks now lived in the New York Natural History Museum I learned and wondered if they were on display when Renae was corralling me through so she could get packed up in time. Who knows. I had a thought in the back of my mind as I got in the car to leave, I would be able to make a choice when I got to the gate and I didn’t know what it would be. $30 or doing a runner? I’d spent loads in all these state parks and wasn’t really using the water and electricity. I wasn’t even staying a full 24 hours like most RV’rs, usually turning up after dark and leaving in the morning. $30 was horrendously expensive. I drove up to the office by the park entrance…. I saw one parked car, no Ranger 4×4 ….and… kept going…. I got about 100 meters and saw a flash of white in my rear view mirror. The Ranger pulled out into pursuit….
85:Dinosaur Valley:65 Million years ago…
Fool that I was I didn’t put the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door but it was still very annoying when they repeatedly tried to get in to clean. It was nice to have a proper comfy bed for a change but I had more miles to do. By completing the U I was nearly halfway through my task and despite the 300 miles journey of the day before I checked the GPS and found if I had driven straight across the top of the U on the I-20 I could have done it in just over an hour, 70 miles. I filled her up and got some coffee, which is admittedly growing on me since I started using my own milk instead of that cancer fat juice they give you to put in it. Today Dallas? I roared down the I20 and when I finally got a glimpse of the skyscrapers rising like monoliths in the scrubland ahead I changed my mind. I had a loop of the O to do now and would be back in Dallas when that was done so it could wait. Maybe until the weekend.
80:Louisiana:Living it up in the Big Easy
I guess the slight advantage of it being so cold while camping is that it certainly encourages me to get my ass out of bed. It was 6 degrees, so not too bad, and I was wearing plenty of clothes which certainly took the edge off it. I was starting to hum a bit since my last shower wasn’t since Tuesday and there wasn’t a shower in the Parkway campground but I was planning on making a hostel in New Orleans tonight. I cooked up some oatmeal and finished up my left-overs from the night before and carried on South West through the Parkway. I was looking for somewhere to grab a cup of coffee on the way but I would be waiting a long time for it. We were in the midst of a high pressure system so the sky was clear and the heater in my car soon got the chill out of my feet. Best to make the most of it since there was rain forecast for the weekend.
79:Mississippi:Looping down to New Orleans
After a night in a carpark in some nameless town I was desperate to check my bank balance after constantly forgetting the previous day and my funds were in dire need of a top up. I was now driving west again in the big S loop down to Louisiana and the Big Easy, New Orleans. The roads were pretty much the standard I was now used to, long, flat and boring. All the junctions had the same set of chains for gas, food and lodgings. The interstates were convenient for getting around the country quickly but hardly a tourists dream journey. For most of the day the most exciting thing I saw was a dead mountain lion on the side of the side of the road. What a treat it would be to see a live one but I would guess roadkill would be the closest I would get this trip.