Year 3 - done

Yup, its that time of year again - the third anniversary of our departure from the UK and start of life as nomads.Glad to say its still pretty much going to plan and we're going to keep going.

Highlights for me were the glaciers calving in Alaska, the aurora and the earthquake, the bears in BC and spending my first season skiing - even if the weather was warm and the snow a bit iffy at times, I had fun and its something I've wanted to do for a long, long time.

It was different being based in one place for 6 months, and its good to be back on the road again now, but its also a taste of how we may tackle other parts of the world where camping is not an option - have an apartment as a base and do trips out, or alternate 6 months backpacking and 6 months static.

The next 9 months is pretty much planned out - we are as far east as we will get this trip, so its now back west, meet up with Lee and family in a couple of weeks time, then and up the west coast through the fall and then we've booked another apartment in whistler for the winter. So far Knees & Clive and Kevin have committed to come out and see us next winter, and hopefully we'll see Gary & John again somehow depending on what is happening at Lloyds, and Blair and maybe Philip Harrison. Next summer we'll plan to head over to the the east coast, but details can be worked out this winter

Our 25th wedding anniversary...

... on 7th July was spent white water rafting :-) My uncle said that most normal people would have gone for a romantic meal and night out (thanks John), but since when have we ever been normal? Rafting on the Rio Grande was awesome. We did class 2 rapids in the morning, just to get used to how the raft moved and get us a bit wet. This was taken when we stopped for lunch

In the afternoon, we tackled class 3 rapids (apparently they go up to class 6!), which were enough for me. Here we are getting ready for the final big one, going...

going...

gone!

It was so much fun but I think Mark found it tame and would have liked bigger rapids. I've already told him if he wants to raft bigger rapids on the Colorado, I'll see him at the end...

Sandcastles at 7,000 ft

Great Sand Dunes is located in the San Luis Valley and covers and area of about 130 square miles. These huge sand dunes are the tallest in North America and are about 440,00 years old. They are quite amazing.

What we didn't expect was to see water flowing through them! Medano Creek runs down from the Sangre De Cristo Mountains behind the dunes.

Families were there at the creek with kids building sandcastles, paddling and splashing around. A great way to cool down on a hot day.

Some people were attempting to sled down the dunes, but it wasn't really damp enough for them to be able to slide properly. Too much like hard work, so after we sat at the top of the first dune and watched them for a while, we decided to go back down to the creek for a paddle instead :-)

Fun, food, fireworks, rocks, river and bombs

We’ve had Santa Fe booked since January as its one place that we’ve wanted to visit for some time. It was founded in 1610 and is the oldest capital city in the US and the oldest city in New Mexico. Sante Fe is also known as a ‘food lover’s paradise’ with over 400 restaurants and it didn’t disappoint. Mark has already commented on the types of chile and the food so I won’t go into it again. Suffice to say we had a great week and now it’s time to let our digestive systems get back to normality.

We did visit other places during the week, not just restaurants. We drove down to Albuquerque via the Turquoise Trail, a scenic byway that carves its way through picturesque rocks and juniper dotted hills, named for the rich turquoise deposits found in the area. We stopped in Madrid for coffee and cake, which was also where one of my favourite movies “Wild Hogs” was filmed. Maggie's Diner was built for the movie and is now a shop that sells memorabilia

Sandia Crest was a short detour off the trail, and at 10,700 feet, the views across the plain to Albuquerque were something to see

We also picked up Route 66 along the way

On July 4^th, there was a vintage car show around Santa Fe’s main plaza, bands playing in the plaza itself and lots of other stuff going on. The fireworks in the evening were really great and lasted for quite a while. The only drawback was that we had to stay so far back we didn’t get the reverberation in the chest when the really big ones went off. Still, it was nice of the city to do so much for me on my birthday J

San Miguel Church is the oldest church structure and was built c. 1610.

The Cathedral Basilica of St Francis of Assisi is just off the main plaza and was built between 1869 and 1886 (as you can see, the Spanish were busy!).

One day we visited Bandelier National monument which covers over 33,500 acres and preserves the homes and territory of the ancestral Puebloans. Most of the structures date from 1150 to 1600.

On the way back, we visited Los Alamos and learned more about the Manhattan Project and the first atomic bombs. The town was created to design the first nuclear weapons in 1943 and was known as ‘the town that never was’. It was under so much secrecy that all the scientists and their families as well as the military personnel lived at PO Box 1663, Santa Fe. Even the birth certificates of that time showed the PO box 1663 as their place of birth! All information about the town of Los Alamos was highly classified until the bombing of Hiroshima. 

We visited Taos Pueblo which is in the valley of a small tributary of the Rio Grande and is still occupied by the Red Willow people. Little has changed over the last 1,000 years and about 150 families still live in the ancient structures within the walls which have no electricity of plumbing. The homes are passed down from generation to generation to keep maintained.

On the way back from Taos, we crossed the Rio Grande gorge

We also had our 25^th wedding anniversary while we were in Santa Fe. We wanted to do something different so we went white water rafting on the Rio Grande. It was such a great day but really tiring – having fun is exhausting! We were lucky that it had rained so much over the previous couple of days (late afternoon thunderstorms most days) that the river was flowing really well. At one point, I completely disappeared under the waves – at least we all stayed in the raft. Photos will be posted at a later date.

We bid farewell to Santa Fe and New Mexico and now are in a small town called Del Norte in Colorado. Tomorrow we are going to visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park. The largest dune is over 750 feet (230m) and should be something to see. I don’t think I’m up to sledding down it though!

Holey crap - hose Batman

it was an interesting weather week in Santa Fe, with a massive electrical storm the night we arrived, and then thunderstorms at some time pretty much every day. Driving back from Los Alamos yesterday afternoon we actually got a broadcast alert on the cellphone for heavy rain and flash flooding, but the storm was already ahead of us, so when we got back to the campground there were a few piles of hail sitting around and a lot of leaves and other debris on the ground showing that we missed the best of it. I went to empty the black water waste tank this morning and found the sewer hose looking like swiss cheese, so it must have been a pretty brutal hailstorm. And before anyone comments, it wasn't what we were putting down the hose, as it also happen to a couple of other campers on the site.

Having said that, after a week of chile with every meal, including breakfasts, our digestive systems are rebelling a bit. Lister would be proud.

Santa Fe lived up to my hopes - good food, history and architecture from the Spanish conquistadors onwards, and Los Alamos was particularly good - it was interesting to compare the secrecy and controls they worked under with those at Bletchley Park, and there are parallels in the behaviour of both governments to Oppenheimer being suspected of being a communist  and Turing being gay.

A few days now chilling out by the Rio Grande in Colorado, as the last week has been pretty full on, then back on the tourist trail on Monday heading up to Colorado Springs

I'm so chilled...

‎...even the accordion in the mariachi band int pissing me off :-)

Welcome to Santa Fe

‎We've had this stop booked on our itinerary for several months as one of the places I really wanted to visit, primarily for the food. There is good and bad mexican food all over the us and generally we have avoided it as it's not really linked to the region we were in, but south Western is more subtle and regional to what grows there traditionally and it turns out that  new mexican is a subdivision within that, and then northern new mexican and santa fean are more local still. Turns out one of the best rated breakfast and lunch places on tripadvisor is right in front of our campground, so we took a crash course in the different styles and history from the owner, Chris, and to his recommendations for the breakfast burrito with carne adovada (slow stewed pork in red Chile) and quesadilla. Both were fantastic, and the jury is still out on the official NM question "red or green " Chile as both are good. Will just have to try some more.

Arrived last night in time for the best electrical storm we've seen since queensland. obscured my view of the venus-jupiter conjunction but ‎I can live with that - you can look at two dots in the sky for a few minutes before getting bored, but the storm kept us entertained for a couple of hours. And they are forecasting a fairly active monsoon season so hopefully we have more storms to come.