Four States In One Day?

How about four states in one picture...

Four state lines converge at The Four Corners Monument.

The Grand Canyon

Some things are too big for words.  Those thoughts, concepts or feelings which are just too great to capture, too liquid to hold, too fleeting to retain or too abstract to describe.  It's that moment when a word or a name hangs on the tip of your tongue yet remains so utterly out of reach that it might as well have never existed in the first place.  A mere sensing of an answer rather than the answer itself.  Like those nights when we lie awake in bed or find ourselves alone and staring at the night sky.  We churn the universe over and over in our minds, the immense size, the unthinkable numbers involved, the planets and galaxies, the atoms, the stars, the solar systems, the vacuous distances between them.  We try desperately to imagine what lies beyond that which only the most powerful telescopes can see, a present lying beyond that in which we exist, the line between the physical and metaphysical.  Yet, each time, no matter how far we reach, we fail.  We return to the here and now with nothing but a blurred outline of the answer spotted in a brief window of meditated thought, a momentary sensation of what the outstretched fingers of our imagination could not quite grasp.  Not a crystallised concept or an answer ready to be put to paper, but merely a sensation more akin to a new smell or an unfamiliar taste, fleeting and imagined, a perception that can only be experienced.

It is this feeling, this failing of language, which our current circumstance so frequently brings me to.  What is it to travel?  How does this feel?  What is this like?  I return to the same picture, to the same hint of a fragmented answer upon which I cannot build or elaborate, and it is this:  As we move around this planet, whether it be by plane, on foot or sat inside a cramped, airless motor bus, the sensation is not of our own movement and the distances we are creating between us and the safe and familiar, but that of the earth moving beneath us, as an undulating, ever changing mass, rolling around in space while we, in our familiar world, stay absolutely still.  As our car rumbles along the tarmac of the American highways, for example, our wheels do not move us nor does our engine push us.  Instead, they put into motion and roll the very earth beneath us - as if we were spinning some giant globe in an antique wood-panelled library, stopping it with our fingers to arrive in each new town while the room around us remains constant and unchanging.  We do not move around the globe, the globe moves before us.  So today, as we climbed two thousand vertical feet out of the Grand Canyon, hiking back along the three mile trail to take us up and out onto the canyon's south rim, it was not our bodies being lifted upwards by each arduous step, it was the ground on which we stood that moved, that sunk down under us.  The entire planet extended in all directions, the steep path ahead, the line of tiny trees marking the summit and the Canyon's rim, all were being pushed downwards by our dusty boots.  The pedalling action of our climb bringing down to our level each new vista, each twist and turn of the trail, each rock we clamber over and each boulder upon which we rest, all sliding down, under and behind us as we walk.

Rust Red Steps.

The Best Picnic Spot Ever.

Beginning Our Descent.

Looking Down.

Layer upon layer, step upon step, mountain upon cliff, rock upon rock.

Breakfast In The Mountains

Just what all hikers need before hitting the trails...

Pine Country Restaurant, Williams AZ

The temperature drops further

Minus nine degrees Centigrade in Santa Fe tonight (16 Fahrenheit).

This is how Rosie kept warm on the way to and from the nearby New Mexican restaurant...

TJ Maxx (TK Maxx in the UK) saves the day

...and this is how I'll be keeping warm now we're back at the motel....

This behemoth of a bottle costs just £14.50.  god bless America(n bourbon).

Altitude Up, Temperature Down

As we left the carpark of our Roswell motel, the satnav gave two simple commands, 'Turn right.  Drive 158 miles'.  After a three hour drive, through billowing dust storms and across windy plateaus while dodging speeding balls of tumble weed, still on that same road, the robotic lady gave just one more command 'Turn left', and we were crossing the city limits of the beautiful city of Santa Fe, nestled at the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains.  With an elevation of 7,260 feet (2,134m) and being just 15 miles from the highest ski resort in the USA, it...is...cold!  Although the spring weather is just on the horizon, nightly temperatures are currently around minus 4C or 25F, but having been in shorts and T-shirts on an Australian beach just two weeks ago (and having enjoyed nothing but super hot weather since leaving the UK last August), it was quite a shock.

Santa Fe is a real gem of a place in a part of the world where a strip of motels, convenience stores and chain restaurants gets called a town.  It hosts world famous open air opera every summer, boasts a 1 mile long street of nothing but art galleries, contains the oldest house and the oldest church in the USA (both built in the 1600's) and oozes Mexican, Native American and European history, culture and architecture - having been ruled / owned by each on at least one occasion in the past.  Boutique art and antique stores, all in the traditional wood and clay "Pueblo" style, encircle the historic town plaza with popular New Mexican cantinas overlooking the action from first floor open-air balconies.  As one wanders the ancient streets and alleyways, the nearby snow tipped peaks pop in and out of view and the chilled mountain breeze leaves faces glowing and hands stinging upon entering the log fired coffee shops or bars.  

For lunch, we followed an online 'locals' tip and wandered nervously to the back of the old town's most famous general store, The Five & Dime, where the landmark snack bar serves a world famous dish.  'Two Fritos pies,' I asked, not even knowing how to pronounce it, let alone what it actually was.  

'It's spicy!' the tabarded lady replied.  We agreed that "spicy" and "New Mexican spicy" are two very different things and so she handed us a small sample pot containing what was, indeed, a mightily spicy beef chile.  Determined to find out exactly what this hallowed dish is, we paid our cash and waited as she disappeared into the adjoining kitchen.

She emerged after just a few minutes brandishing in each hand what looked like an opened packet of crisps cupped in a wad of paper napkins.  And yes, they were packets of crisps - mini tortilla chips, "Fritos" to be exact.  They had been slit open along the side and, straight into the bag, on top of the chips, a large spoon of beef and bean chile had been poured, topped with a mound of grated mixed cheeses and with a plastic spork wedged into the whole concoction.  A quick search of Wikipedia suggests that this dish, popular across all of the southern states, was actually invented in this very store (way back when it was a Woolworth's).  Now, the Americans always claim not to have any 'real' history, but when it's  this delicious, who cares?

Downtown Santa Fe

Fritos Pie!

Pueblo architecture - one of only two styles permitted in the downtown area.

"I got my first real six string..."

Street Art Santa Fe Style

Hats, gloves and jackets have been purchased and will no doubt be put to the test as we head further north to Monument Valley and the National Parks of Utah where more sub-zero temperatures await...

The Truth Is Out There...

The journey was like no other, taking us across wide scorching deserts, up and over entire mountain ranges, among forests of fir trees and galloping deer, through military missile testing facilities, past abandoned houses, ghost towns and their rusting relics of another time.  We ran into border patrol check points, rolled past brilliant white dunes of sand, glistening like snow drifts in the middle of the bare desert, and followed the solid white line of a highway so long and straight that it tapered down to nothing but a motionless scratch on the horizon ahead.  With the front tyre kissing this infinite line, we rumbled across the cracked, sun beaten tarmac for a hundred miles or more, as straight as an arrow, rising and falling gently with the rolling of the earth below.  After two days on the road, we arrived at the home of the world's greatest UFO conspiracy theory...Roswell.

We visited the towns two main "Alien Museums".  The first, a rather light-hearted affair, was a kind of, childhood class project that went too far.  Behind the racks of badly printed t-shirts and souvenir mugs that form the front half of "Alien Zone", push through a small creaky doorway and enter the owner's crazy little alien world, with various dioramas for visitors to jump into and have their photo taken.  Aliens watching TV, aliens having a barbecue, aliens serving beers - it made no sense but was a great way to end a long drive, along with being a genuine slice of modern day Americana.

The second stop on our short tour, and slightly more serious and educational than the first, The International UFO Museum & Research Centre, focuses on the events surrounding the supposed UFO crash landing in 1947.  In short, something crashed into the desert, many first hand witnesses described it as a saucer shaped object and the military immediately issued a press release stating that a UFO had been found.  Shortly after, another release from the same source said that in actual fact, it was debris from a weather balloon rather than anything extra terrestrial   Many witness testimonies, (including those from ex-military officials directly involved who have, in recent years, been divulging 'the truth' to their families), support the claim that an alien craft, along with the actual alien beings inside, were recovered and taken to the top secret Nevada Air Force base "Area 51".  There also appears to be a whole raft of evidence showing the government's (often extreme) efforts to silence these witnesses or nullify their testimonies with justifications and rather more down to earth reasonings.  Taken as a whole, regardless of your opinions on the whole "aliens" thing, what the museum puts forward is, at the very least, extremely interesting.  If you want to read more, the Wikipedia page is a good start.  Click HERE.

A slightly more "realistic" diorama 

Tucson AZ

The first town on our first road trip of the U.S. has not disappointed.  Lined on two sides by the rust brown walls of the mountainous Saguaro National Park and sat on open plains of desolate, rocky desert, Tucson shimmers like a mirage under a hazy blue sky which constantly roars with the engines of F-16's from the nearby Air Force base.

Despite appearing to be in the middle of nowhere, there is a lot to keep you entertained in Tucson (the 'C' is silent by the way - "Tooson").  Being just sixty seven miles from the border, the place has, according to many, some of the best Mexican restaurants in the States.  We headed over to Mi Nidito, one of the oldest in town and another establishment featured on one of our favourite TV shows, Man vs Food.  After some tortilla chips and spicy salsa, we were served a huge taster platter (created for President Clinton's visit in 1999) of tostada, taco, relleno, enchilada and tamale, and a deliciously creamy flan for desert.  Cradling our fully loaded stomachs, we left looking forward to more of the same as we tour the border states of Arizona and New Mexico.

That's a spicy salsa!

In the day, Tucson has so much to do we had to pay for an extra night to see everything.  First on the list was The Aircraft Boneyard.  This military compound is a 2,600 acre storage facility for retired aircraft waiting to be reconditioned, scrapped or to supply parts for active aircraft around the world.  Accessed only by a high security tour-bus from the nearby aerospace museum, civilians are taken on an eerie one hour drive among rows and rows of aircraft, all sat in the open desert and stretching right to the horizon.  Fighter jets, attack helicopters, the famous and enormous B-52's, jet black stealth bombers, high altitude reconnaissance aircraft, air to air refueling freighters, 747's, C-47 Skytrains...the list is endless.  It was quite a sight - to see thousands of these dormant giants, laying out in the scalding sun, some hacked and chopped into unrecognisable skeletons of twisted steel, all sat against the lunar backdrop of the mountains and arranged in perfect rows like an army waiting for orders.

Then, onto the once top secret Titan Missile launch site - the last remaining of dozens of facilities that dotted the U.S. during the cold war.  Donning hard hats and descending into the deep underground bunker, led by a former employee of the site, one could still feel the echoes of the tension and fear that would have once hung heavy in the recycled air, all sealed inside eight feet of steel and concrete, behind two, three tonne blast doors, and buried beneath 140 feet of desert soil.  The place, despite it's controversial use, is a miracle of technology and craftsmanship, especially given that it was built in the early 60's.  Everything, even the rooms and corridors themselves, all hang on springs and shock absorbers to ensure that the Presidential command could be received and the hydrogen bomb rocket launched even after a direct nuclear strike to the bunker.  The targets where always pre-determined, identified by the very highest authorities and known to those at the site only as numbers.  Through either one of a multitude of radio and telephony systems, the command would be received at the facility from the President himself whereby a series of codes, keys and security systems was worked through, (including a secret passcode held offsite to release fuel into the engines). Within fifty eight seconds of that initial command, at the simultaneous turning of two keys, the 31 metre Titan II missile would be airborne, launched from the adjacent underground silo, heading up and out of the earth's atmosphere before rotating into a controlled descent, down onto it's target, without a single way of stopping it.

'Launch alert Alpha.  Authentication code sierra whisky seven november charlie four foxtrot mike zero nine, fuel release passcode 396401, target number two, immediate launch, over'....

The one and only entrance.

Rosie turns one of the actual launch keys - oopsie!

As part of the post cold war peace agreements, various visible deactivations had to be made.  All but one of the Titan sites were blown up, a large hole cut in the warhead of the remaining rocket and the blast door sealed half way open - all for Russian satellites and spies to observe.  A fleet of B-52's were also hacked up and left in the sun at the boneyard for the same reason - and they are still there.

To take a step further back in time, we headed a couple of hours out of Tucson to Tombstone.  A former nineteenth century mining town and the location of one of the Old West's most famous gunfights - the showdown at the O.K. Corral, between Wyatt Earp, along with his brothers, and the Clanton and McLaury brothers - the "Cowboys".  The main street in the town has been restored back to how it would have stood in the late 1800's (albeit with souvenir T-shirt and fudge shops) and horse drawn waggons and cart creak up and down all day long.  Characters in period costume wander the streets and the famous gunfight is reenacted every day just yards from where it actually took place.  The Bird Cage Theatre, an old saloon, brothel and cabaret venue, boasts almost fifty visible bullet holes in its walls and bar.  Across the street, visitors can pick up a Colt 45 revolver and pump six slugs of lead* into a cowboy shaped target for just $3.  In Tombstone, the Old West is alive and well.  Yee haw!

*Actually blank rounds loaded with lead based paint "bullets", like a paintball gun that smokes.

Finally, before quitting town and heading for the hills of New Mexico, we took a scenic drive through the Saguaro National Park, home of the famous cacti  from which the park gets its name...

...these cacti are much larger than they appear in the cartoons!

Next stop - Roswell, New Mexico...

First rule of a U.S.A. road trip...

Gear up.

Only a fool goes driving off into the desert without the essentials.

Dancing dashboard hula girl and Elvis shades.

You absolutely do not want to look like a tourist.

U.S.A...The First Five Days

Well, they let us in, and after a few probing questions from the US Border Patrol over the length of our stay, we're now in the final country of our tour.  Fortunately, we're here for just over five months.  From Hollywood, Los Angeles to Tucson Arizona, via the Joshua Tree National Park, the first five days have been incredible...The USA is one of a kind for so many reasons.

Hey, it was two dollars a beer!  Hooters, Hollywood Boulevard, L.A.

Some of the stars on Hollywood Boulevard - it's hard to look where you're going for reading them all.

We met this chap wandering on Hollywood Boulevard.  Tony Stark or the best fancy dress costume EVER?

Like Camden by the sea - Venice Beach

We arrived in L.A. to three days of non-stop sunshine without a single cloud.

Philippe The Original - a hundred year old sandwich deli in Chinatown - as featured on Man vs Food

Perfectly moist, tender slices of beef, pork or turkey, marinated in gorgeous meaty juices and served in freshly baked French bread.  Ask for it "double dipped" and they'll dunk the whole sandwich in the same broth for a juicy plate of meaty paradise

Long queues weave around the dining room, dotted with office workers, L.A.P.D. officers, tourists and local regulars

Joshua Tree National Park - just a couple of hours from L.A. and you could easily think you were on the moon - who knew the desert could be so beautiful?

"On a dark desert highway...."

After a stunning sunset, choose the most kitsch motel you can find...

...and have a man bring a giant pizza to your door.

As a brief Synopsis of Australia:

Likes:  Firstly, the wildlife.  We saw so many weird and wonderful creatures just sat in car-parks and campsites, it would have been difficult not to have taken an interest.  Birds, mammals, insects and reptiles - all scurried, crawled, squeaked, squawked and slithered past our campervan - it was like being on another planet.  The kind of planet on which David Attenborough would be King.  

Also, the Aussies!  A lovely bunch of people - so laid back, easy-going and happy to lend a hand.  Maybe it's all the sunshine?  Australia is a country built for everyone to be outdoors - free barbecues and picnic areas in parks, roadside rest areas and beaches.  It was so nice to see kids rushing into the sea to surf or paddle board after school, rather than locking themselves inside with Playstations and Facebook to evade the cold and rain.  Have you noticed that everyone in England gets a whole lot friendlier when the sun comes out?  It's like that all the time there.

Dislikes:  The cost of EVERYTHING*.  Australians are very well paid compared to the rest of the world, and it shows.  £6.50 for a beer in bar. £1.50 for a pepper/capsicum. £7 for two chicken breasts.  £1.50 for chocolate bar. £15 for a main meal in your average restaurant.  Heck, it was cheaper to buy four kangaroo burgers than it was to buy bread buns to put them in!  Had we not been self catering and living in a campervan (£80-£100 for your most basic motel room), we'd have been broke within days.  Arriving in the U.S. was like winning the lottery.  That beer became £1.60, the chocolate bar 60p and the motel room £35.  

*Special mention must be made to boxes (or goons) of Australian wine - £8.50 for four and a half bottles - it was cheaper than soft drinks so we got our money's worth out of those for sure.

I must also mention the weather.  Although it was a freak occurrence to have so much rain, even in the rainy season, it did mean for a rather different trip to the sun, sea, surf and sand adventure we had expected.

Favourite Day: 

Hiking around the Grand Canyon in the Blue Mountains.  It was like being in a movie set.  "Too beautiful to be real" I believe was the expression used.

Favourite Meal:  That first barbecued (kangaroo) burger on our first night in the van.  After almost six months of mostly Asian food (chicken, rice, noodles, chicken, noodles, rice..etc.), cooking those patties ourselves, smothering them with (real) cheese and barbecue sauce, then sandwiching them in (real) bread buns - it was heaven!  

Favourite Beer:  Despite the cost, we did treat ourselves on a few occasions.  Like the U.S., craft breweries are taking off Down Under.  Our favourite was Fat Yak, although James Squire's Nine Tales (amber ale) came a close second.  These beers make your average lager taste like lightly flavoured fizzy water.  Oh, and by the way, no one in Australia drinks Fosters - try some and you'll realise why.

Rain, rain and more.....oh, wait a second

Having been chased from the Sunshine Coast by yet more rain storms and flooding, we took shelter, once again, at our friends' house in Ipswich, just outside Brisbane.  The lovely Jody and Gavin looked after us so well for three thoroughly relaxing nights in their warm, dry home - a real bed never felt so good - 'I feel like I'm floating,' I kept saying to Rosie, the pair of us realising that the foam mattress cushions in the van might not be as comfy as we'd first thought.  We were shown the sights of (rainy) Brisbane, entertained with television (a rare treat for us), Xbox games and their excitable dogs, Baxter and Flo, while being fed and watered thoroughly, before they released us back into the world and onto the road.

After our disappointingly soggy visit to the Sunshine Coast (one of Australia's top beach destinations), we were excited to be heading down to the Gold Coast (another area for world class beaches), leaving flood warnings and torrential downpours behind us.  Having driven beneath blue skies for several hours, a warm sunny day was just ending as we rolled along the coast road and through the area's picturesque seaside towns.  We arrived at our campsite, pulled out the table and chairs and sat in the bronze glow of the late afternoon sun with a glass of red wine each.  'This is more like it,' I said to Rosie, picturing nothing ahead but a week of sun, sand and surf.  What followed was three days of uninterrupted, never-ending, skin-wrinkling, ground squelching, everything's-wet-and-nothing-will-dry, hammering on the van roof 'til we go mad...RAIN...with 100% air humidity levels included. It began that night and did not stop.  While the radio issued yet more severe weather and flood warnings (just a month after the same coastline suffered the worst floods on record), we were forgetting what sun and blue sky looked like.  Scrap the itinerary, scrap the plans for surfing, forget the beach-side barbecuing, put the sunscreen away, and let's get the hell out of here.  And so we drove.  South.  Back to Sydney, a city we didn't think we'd see again until the morning of our flight out of Australia when we'd planned to simply drop the van off and leave.

With the plans for our final week in Australia sinking to the bottom of a flooded campsite in Queensland, we hopped over the border into New South Wales, onto the Pacific Highway, and followed the signs for Sydney.  As we drove, vast swathes of flooded landscape passed by.  Still pools of flood waters covered the earth like giant shards of a mirror scattered beneath a heavy sky.  After putting 500km of rain battered tarmac behind us, we left the highway in search of one of Australia's most famous watering holes, the Taylor's Arm Hotel.  Sitting at the end of 30km of dirt road, this place was made famous by the song, The Pub With No Beer, a ditty based on a poem written by a local when the place was cut off by flood waters.  With the offer of free overnight camping in the car park and a four course meal served with four accompanying craft beers, we could not refuse.  Unfortunately, and in line with our string of bad luck, on the day of our visit, the place was, of course, cut off by flood waters, with all routes in ending abruptly at wide sweeping torrents of overflowing rivers.  Trees, sign posts, bridges, and the all important dirt road, devoured.

     'Pub with no beer, g'day,' said the cheery man at the other end of the telephone.

     'Is there any way of getting to you?' I asked, my mouth parched, desperate for a well earned beer.

     'Not unless you've got a boat I'm afraid.'

At this point it wasn't even raining and still the weather was taking it's toll on us, ruining even our backup plans and pushing us to the edge of desperation.  We drove on, unsure of what to do or where we'd spend the night.

100km later, and with the glare of a full  moon following us through slowly dissipating rain clouds, we slumped into a service station beside the highway, filled up our empty tanks with a KFC variety bucket, and spent the night in the car park alongside campers, truckers and even a few folk asleep in their cars.  All of us, it seemed, delayed, obstructed or diverted by the floods.

After a heavy downpour over night, we awoke to another drizzly morning.  Would it ever end?  Our plan was simple, camp as close to Sydney as possible and spend the final week of our tour in and around the city, where we would surely find more to do than sit in the van while watching the rain.  Our first visit, over a month ago, was very short and very wet, leaving us with glancing, rain sodden memories of a potentially beautiful slice of cosmopolitan Australia.

In the few hours it took to get ourselves to Mona Vale, just north of Manly and a stones throw from Sydney, a miracle happened.  Starting with just a few patches of blue, a few scattered rays of light, the Australian sunshine slowly broke through and devoured the entire lid of grey above us.  Having lived beneath rain clouds for several weeks, the sight was truly uplifting.  By the time we arrived at our uber luxurious campsite (we splashed out, figuring that even if our luck ended and the rain returned, we'd at least have mains electricity, wifi and a comfortable camp kitchen), the sky was flawless - a brilliant blue canopy against the deep greens of the trees around us and the warm golden sand of the beach opposite - yes, we even have a sea view.

So here we are, a few days later, still in the sun, enjoying a glass of red wine after an entire day at the beach where I finally got the chance to surf - something I'd wanted to do since we arrived at the end of January.  I had an eight-foot-two board, a cloudless sky, 26 degree water and the entire beach to myself.

After an eight year break, he surfeth once more.

Yesterday we spent the day in a warm, dry Sydney, taking in all of the sights and getting all of the necessary photographs sans the deluges that forced us to keep the camera wrapped up in the rucksack on our first visit all those weeks ago.  After a picnic lunch in front of the opera house (a take-away cottage pie, no less), we stopped off at a few historic sights, wandered around the modern art museum, explored The Rocks (a cute, old-fashioned part of town from which the rest of Sydney grew) and enjoyed a classic Australian brew in Sydney's oldest pub.  The rest of the afternoon was spent admiring colonial Victorian architecture while hopping from bar to bar, sampling various craft beers in the early autumn sunshine which poured down from between the sky scrapers and threw long shadows of rushing commuters across the sidewalk.  Tossing our daily budget completely into the air (it has been a long, wet month), Rosie ended the day by suddenly dragging me into a darkened doorway, down a dim stairway lined with fake grass, mounted deer's heads and fairy lights, and into a secret, late-night cocktail bar set in the brick lined basement of a guitar shop.

So, it has been an interesting six weeks, lots of fun and lots of rain, but being able to leave Australia on such a high has been a huge relief.  In two days time we will be in Los Angeles...

Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

So cute!