The End

The last week of the trip has all been a blur. I squeezed Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam into my stops, then returned to Slab City for one more night of free camping. I made the rounds once again in San Diego and LA. Today I head back to Pacifica and I think this is a good place to stop the blog.
Final Finger Counter: 0. Thank you America.
Final License Plate Counter: Lost track. But probably about 55 or so.
I wanted to say thanks to everyone who read the blog. This trip was amazing, and writing this blog helped me absorb what was happening. The adventure of daily living continues.

Delays, delays

So by the time I got back to Bandelier on Saturday evening my oil light was on. Every mechanic I've ever been to has told me under no circumstances should I ever let the oil get too low in this van. So I waited out Sat and Sunday night at Bandelier. I don't really like having to repeat stops, but I had no choice. There's no place to get your oil changed on Sunday. All in all, Bandelier is a pretty nice place to be stuck for a couple of days.
I found a Jiffy Lube first thing this morning and got back on track. I did make an effort today to see some hot air balloons in Albuquerque, but it's Monday morning so I guess nobody's flying today. Oh well.

The Great Sand Dunes

I spent the last two nights at the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. Not only do I love this park, but I also love the whole San Luis Valley. It was one of the most beautiful and interesting places I've been to. A great national park, mountains, farms, monasteries and UFO lookout towers. I could spend a week there.
I hiked to the tallest dune in North America. 750 ft. And hiking up sand is no easy task. I'm still shaking sand out of my shoes. The view from the top was absolutely worth it. When I left this morning I had to drive extra carefully because there were so many deer next to the road.
Today I'm checking out Taos. By tomorrow I expect to be in Arizona again.

Denver

So much to do when you're in a city. It's been great having Kolleen guide me to all the cool places. We saw a couple of breweries, although Coors wasn't giving tours the day we were there.
We also went to a couple of awesome book stores, checked out Boulder, which is a really fun town, and wandered around town for a while. We also had Colorado-style pizza, which I learned is really really good pizza with a super thick crust. When you get down to just the crust you put honey on it and eat it. My favorite meal though, was Tuesday night when Kolleen's aunt made us enchiladas. It was so great to have a home-cooked meal again! It's also been great staying in a house instead of a van for once.
That brings me to the point where I think I'm ready to head back west. Money's getting a bit low, I'm running out of stuff to see along the Mexican boarder and it's too cold to go much farther north. BUT, that doesn't mean I've run out of stuff to do. There's still much more to see on the way back, so I intend to keep writing.

It's COLD!

After learning that Kolleen will be out of town next weekend, I did a mad dash up to Denver to visit mid-week. On the way I got a great view of the Rockies. So amazing! West coasters: if you think the Sierras are big, you have no idea. I camped one night at a little state park that was sunny and not too cold during the day. But when I woke up the next morning snow was starting to fall so I got the heck off the mountain fast! Snow comes pretty fast when it wants to.
It's certainly a colder country up here, but for the next couple of nights I have a warm house to stay in. Many thanks to Mary and Kevin Davis for letting me stay!

Plates

It's been brought to my attention that I've been neglecting my License Plate Counter, so here it goes:
Chihuahua, Mexico
Quebec, Alberta
Kentucky, Oklahoma, Kansas
That's all I can remeber for now

Bandelier

Ever heard of Bandelier National Monument? Me neither. But I found it on a map and camped there for two nights. It's a beautiful park. There are cliff dwellings, archeological sites, they have Pueblo people there doing pottery demonstrations and lots of wilderness. I did a hike past two waterfalls to the Rio Grande that was so beautiful! All the trees there were changing from green to yellow. It was one of my favorite hikes so far.
I'm now getting ready to do some urban hiking. My next three days will bring me to Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Taos. There's a hot air balloon festival going on in Albuquerque this weekend that I'm looking forward to. I talked to this older guy at Bandelier who said there are only two things in life you have to do: ride in a hot air balloon and go to Alaska. He was dead serious too.

Carlsbad Caverns

I gotta say, this is one of the coolest places I've been to so far. It's gonna be in the top 5. But a warning to everyone who sees the pictures: you can never get a cave picture to come out just right, so to really know what it looks like you just have to go see for yourself.
I was at this park for a couple of days. Actually, there's no camping there so I stayed at Guadalupe Mountains National Park about 45min down the road in Texas. I did the self-guided tour where you can see what they call 'the big room' and took lots of pictures. But the best part was one of the guided tours they offer. You have to pay extra, but it's totally worth it! I did one that went down to the lower cave and it was the scariest trail I've ever done! To get down there you first have to use a rope to get down a slippery bit of slick rock. Then you have to go through a series of three steel ladders which are often tilted to one side and very slippery! Once you get past that the tour gets a lot better, but man is it hard to get past that first part. One person on the tour never made it past the first ladder.
But there are so many cool formations to see in the lower cave. We also did a crawl through a small tunnel. I never thought I'd have the guts to squeeze myself through a tunnel 800 feet underground!
After that I had to go see the bats fly out of the cave. That was a really amazing thing to see. Thousands of bats just come streaming out and you can see them trailing off for miles into the distance.
The next day I noticed Babe had a leaky gas tank, so I had to get that taken care of. Not too bad, and it got done in an hour. I've been considering going to the gulf coast of Texas to camp on the beach there, but it's hurricane season right now and the forecast for that area says thunderstorms for the next ten days. I think I'll save that trip for later.
Instead I'm going to head towards Denver. So if you live in that town, and you used to be my roommate, expect a call.

White Sands

I spent my rainy day in Alamogordo checking out the town. I went to a Space History Museum and got to see all kinds of rockets and engines and cool things. They even had a former astronaut there talking about his experiences in space. He was really fun to listen to.
Apparently this part of the country is great for growing pistachios. There were pistachio farms everywhere! One of them also had wine tasting. Who'd of guessed? But I gotta say, the pistachios are probably better than the wine.
The next day the rain cleared up and I was able to check out White Sands. It's a really beautiful place. I climbed up some sand dunes and took a few pics before my camera battery died. Then I hit the road to Carlsbad.

Rain

I ended up spending only one night at the Gila Cliff Dwellings. I did everything the park had to offer in one afternoon. But far from being boring, the park was a very charming place. It was high up in the mountains around 8,000 feet with all different kinds of trees growing. There was a river running through the park and yellow and purple wildflowers all over the campground. I was pretty darn far away from the desert. On the down side, the temperature drops a lot at night when you're up that high, and the next morning it was soooo hard to get out of bed!
I drove to a state park in outside the town of Alamogordo. My plan was to stay for a couple nights and go check out White Sands National Park today. However, when I woke up this morning it was raining with high winds. I think I'll spend the day in town instead. It's looking like a good laundry day.
One thing I never expected about New Mexico is how green it is here. The parts I've been through are covered with green plant life. Grass thrives here better than most places in California. And if you can deal with wind, it's a beautiful state.
I ran into some more boarder patrol guys yesterday and made myself look like a fool. When you spend a lot of time driving, you sometimes forget where you are and where you're going. So when the BP guy asked me 'Where are you coming from' and 'Where are you going' it took me longer than it should have to respond. I had to look at my map to remember.

New Mexico

After the Canyonlands I went to a park called Canyon De Chelley National Park in northeastern Arizona. Pictures made it look pretty cool but when I got there I found there wasn't much I could do. The park is dead center in the Navajo Nation Reservation. Many Navajo people still live in the Canyon the way they did a hundred years ago. For this reason, access to the canyon is very restricted. To go down into it, you must make arrangements with a Navajo guide, which costs money. Also, to take pictures of buildings, people or anything belonging to the Navajo, it costs money. Camping, however, was totally free. So I pretty much just hung out and relaxed at my campsite. I needed it after all that hiking.
The next day I went to Albuquerque. I ment to leave earlier, but an older couple traveling in a Chevy Van talked my ear off for a good hour. They were very sweet people, but man they had a lot to say!
Driving into a metropolitan area was like a culture shock. I wasn't able to find any place to camp in the surrounding area. I've found in this state that they'll have signs from the freeway that say 'camping, next exit' but when you get there what they mean is RV's only. They wouldn't let me stay because my van has no electric hook-up.
So, I weant down all the way to Truth or Consequences, NM and found a nice little state park to stay at. The next day I explored the town, which is a nice tourist spot with lots of hot springs. I went to one of the hot springs spot and it was an unusual experience. It was at a little hotel in the middle of town. The person in the office was a tiny little old lady who couldn't hear a word I was saying. Eventually, I managed to convey that I wanted to take a soak, and she lead me to what looked like a shed in the parking area. It was not like any hot springs I've been to, but it was kinda cool. You close the shed door and get the whole thing to yourself. It's a little grotto with enough room for just about one or two people. I soaked for 30 min for the cost of $3. Not bad.
Truth or Consequences gives a strange vibe. I get the feeling it's the kind of place when Y2K came around, everyone ran out and bought lots of water, duct tape and amo.
When I was done I drove west to another state park called 'city of rocks.' It's a very cool place but the afternoon winds were intense! Also, there was a guy in the next campsite actively looking for rattlesnakes. When he found one he'd get a big pole out of his truck and try to pick it up. I sat in my campsite with my phone ready in case I needed to call 911. Thank god he didn't get bit.
Today, I'm heading for the Gila Cliff Dwellings to spend a couple nights.