Texas!

We actually got two e-mails making sure we're doing okay since we haven't posted in almost a week. We're glad to see people are following our travels and everyone can rest easy as we're doing fine and having a wonderful time! (It's good to know we have at least two fans!)

We were sad to leave Santa Fe, as we had such a good time with Asa's Aunt Debbie. We went south through New Mexico, making a quick stop in Roswell. Roswell is an interesting place, worth a drive-through, but not much else. We went to a museum there where we saw information about Robert Goddard, an early rocket engineer from the 1930s who was from Worcester, MA - interesting mainly because that's where Jaimee's family lives! It's a small world!

After camping at Brantley State Park in the Southeast corner of New Mexico we stopped at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. This is definitely worth a stop! We did the full self-guided tour through the caverns - it took us over two hours to walk the whole thing. It's a pretty neat place. It also seems to employ a lot of Park Rangers - they rove around the cavern on "Cave Watch" duty - looking for misconduct or for those who didn't "assess their hiking fitness" and need assistance.

We continued on to Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas which is now one of our favorite parks. It's a "wilderness park" meaning that if you don't want to hike or backpack there isn't a whole lot to do. It also contains Guadalupe Peak, the "top of Texas" at 8,749 feet. West Texas has some tall mountains! While climbing the peak we met the first, but definitely not the last Texan who was proud of his/her state. Texans love Texas, and they let you know that. I think that's great - you should love where you live.

After two peaceful nights, where our campsite hosted both skunks and deer, we traveled southeast to Big Bend National Park. Despite being about "10 hours from anywhere" it's also a great park. We camped up in the Chiso Mountains basin, the only mountain range in America to be entirely contained inside a National Park. We did a few hikes in the mountains before heading down to the Rio Grande side of the park.

I wish I had visited Big Bend prior to 2002 as that was when they began policing the border aggressively. Prior to 2002 the Rio Grande in this area was considered a "soft border crossing" meaning for a small fee a Mexican would row you across the river to one of several Mexican villages for beer and tacos. Now, the rangers follow the tourists making sure that no "Mexican Nationals" are illegally crossing over. It's pretty ridiculous - we essentially had our own escort of two law enforcement Rangers who tailed us as we went from section to section of the park. Then, when dusk came the mosquitoes were horrible! They were so bad that we didn't even cook dinner that night and just hunkered down inside the tent. We would have put our bug spray on but we'd actually just taken showers so didn't want to soil ourselves so soon!

The next morning we got up and made the long drive toward Austin. We took the "scenic route" by stopping in Del Rio, Texas and making a quick stop across the border into Mexico. This is one of the "approved" border crossings. Ciudad Acuna isn't that great, but I was able to get a $2 haircut. And we had fries and a drink for $2.50. The border patrol searched our car pretty thoroughly when we came back into America - I would have taken a picture if pictures were allowed as they let the K-9 German Shephard right into our car to sniff around. He didn't find anything although the border people did find a lot of broken glass which made them suspicious.

We broke up the pictures into two albums:

Into Texas

Big Bend and Mexico

Now we're in hot and humid Austin. We just toured through the Pecan Street festival and are having a fun time here so far. But more on that later...

Santa Fe

Despite one bad incident involving the car, we had a wonderful time in Santa Fe. Overall it was very relaxing. We spent a lot of time visiting with Asa's Aunt Debbie and cousin Jessi, as well as seeing a few sights of Santa Fe. We went out for a really nice dinner with Debbie and her boyfriend Paul and the next day when we went to the Farmer's Market we saw the owner of the restaurant buying produce. We also went to the Flying Star bakery/coffee shop for outstanding desserts.

The Santa Fe farmer's market runs from 7AM to Noon, a time that would never work in Seattle (Seattlites don't get up that early on the weekend, unless it's to go hiking :-), but seemed to work really well here. Of course, selling wonderful pastries and coffee helps. The market was packed with vendors selling all sorts of food and produce.

We also visited Canyon Road, a street that contains lots of art galleries and sculpture gardens. Most of the items were out of our price range but it was fun to look. People watching along this road was good too. We got to see our first sample of "texas hair" as many of the people along this road seemed to be visiting from Texas (based on the car license plates).

Although we enjoyed seeing these sights, mostly we enjoyed hanging out with Debbie, Jessi and Paul. We shared some meals, played some Scrabble and watched some movies.

Now we're waiting for our car window to get fixed and then we're heading Southeast to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Depending on when we get there today we will spend one or two nights before heading to Texas.

Click below to see the rest of our photos from Santa Fe, including pictures of my cousin's hand-built house!

Santa Fe

5,000 miles and a break-in

We have now traveled just over 5,000 miles and are staying with my Aunt Debbie in Santa Fe. This morning we went on a hike of Atalaya Mountain (peak #26) and when we came back our car had been broken into! They smashed the drivers side window and stole Jaimee's purse which had her wallet, checkbook, phone, etc.

We canceled the credit cards and suspended the phone so it appears that no lasting damage is done. Unfortunately, no one in Santa Fe can repair the window until Monday morning and since it's raining off and on here we put a garbage bag in the window.

I think it looks pretty classy (the blue painting tape adds a nice touch):


Apart from the break-in, the first 5,000 miles have been great. We'll be hanging around Santa Fe this weekend, visiting with my Aunt and cousin.

Here's the summit picture of our hike up Atalaya Mountain:

It's a great hike, just remember to not leave anything valuable in your car if you go...

The Road to Santa Fe

We encountered our first rain of the trip last night. Leaving Arizona yesterday we drove east into really dark clouds and an impressive amount of lightning. We stopped for dinner in Gallup, New Mexico where the Navajo Indians would come by the table trying to sell their jewelry.

We ended up driving out to the National Forest and found a primitive campsite and pitched our tent in the rain. The rain eventually let up during the night and we were able to pack up our tent this morning without any rain.

We crossed the Continental Divide, went through some caves at El Malpais National Monument (the Mexican Badlands) and continued on to Albuquerque. We'll tour around here a little bit before heading on to Santa Fe.