This is going to take forever...

I'm home!! And really need to update. Again apologies for typos, I've found even more when re-reading. It won't get any better because I'm still struggling to get used to using my laptop again! Go get a cup of tea and I'll pick up where I left off right until the end of my wonderful American Adventures...

We hit Monument Valley in the Navajo Lands late afternoon and everyone else did a jeep tour straight away but I chilled out at the visitor centre, learnt some facts in the museum and sat outside looking at the skyline before heading back to the van and sketching for a while as the sun set. It was good to have some time alone because I'd been surrounded by people day and night for the better part of a month. They all arrived back happy but really sandy and in need of a shower; which we had to queue for at the campsite because they were about to close.

The Navajo people are believers in Spirits and guardians of the land and they treat it with great respect. The music they create with mainly wind instruments suits the surroundings perfectly. Some of their men also played a key role in WW2 in the Pacific, passing messages in their native tongue between US forces thus giving the Americans an unbreakable code to the opposition.

Next morning most of the group got up and hopped the fence to walk down the road and watch the sunrise over the great rocks. As always, it made me sit steadfast in the truth that creation was no accident.
On the road leaving Monument Valley we stopped for a photo opportunity on the road that features in Forrest Gump when he finally stops running. Naturally, we ran too! Photos will appear when everyone else is home and uploading their pictures.

After a day in the van we arrived in Sante Fe for a quick look around the quaint town with all its galleries before setting up camp in the rain then eating an awesome dinner by Jess's group of homemade burgers!
I wasn't totally with it that day and felt tired and pretty homesick. After dropping the wash bowl and then a stack of plates I had to walk away for a while. I didn't want to go home at all I just wanted my loved ones there too enjoy it with me. There's not a lot you can do but pull it together and carry on, or in my case just get a hug and go to bed after you've been heard singing a Disney duet in the shower!

The next day we finally, finally went to the secret spot Kait had been keeping from us for days. She'd heard about it from a friend and we were only the second trek group to ever go. It was called the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, NM. And it's exactly as it sounds. We jumped and dived in for ages, had lunch and got back in the van. Its was beautiful there.
The rest of the day included a drive on the most endless looking road I've ever seen, it just kept going. We nearly ran out of gas... but thankfully we made it into Roswell with our tin foil hats in tact and went to a McDonald's shaped spaceship - and funnily enough no one looked at us weird at all, alien town...
That night we set up camp in White City just down the road from Carlsbad Caverns which we explored the next morning for a few hours. We also found that Zoe had been up half the night chasing raccoons and skunks that got into the trailer and ate our bread and Taz's pringles!
The caverns were discovered by a young Jim White while he was out exploring and saw a massive smoke cloud which he realised was bats when the cloud started to break up. He knew for that many bats to be coming out of the ground it must be a huge hole so he searched for the opening and found the natural cavern entrance that you can go into today. The caverns blew my mind. Parts of it were like a cathedral with the long stalactites hanging high from the ceiling. At the base of the elevator down there there was even a gift shop and bathrooms, it was surreal.

Back on the road that afternoon we made it to Fort Davis, Texas where Kait gave us a bear/mountain lion/javelina pigs warning talk just in case we came across one. That night there were pigs surrounding all our tents but thankfully I didn't know til morning! For the evening a few of us drove up to the McDonald Observatory and heard a talk on the different stars and black holes in our universe, where we are in it and what makes a star collapse then be reborn. We got to look through a few telescopes outside but it was pretty cloudy so we couldn't see as much. But one of the slides in the presentation stood out to me for the next few days. The Ring Nebula, a star that if you if seen it before could say it looks pretty familiar to a certain Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone NP, Wyoming. Again, I saw my creator Gods hand at work. No accidents.

And something I almost forgot! On the way to the observatory we saw a sunset that I don't have enough words to describe. Like the sky was on fire. It didn't matter that the sky was cloudy after that sunset.

Next, our adventure took us to San Antonio for Labour Day Weekend. It was hot! We spruced ourselves up as much as we could at the KOA and went to the Midnight Rodeo bar where we learned to dance with the cowboys, I'm not bad at it! But I did drop my phone in a toilet as it fell out of my pocket when we got back - bye bye photos. Sad times.

After an incident the next morning including an air vent and my dress I was given the name 'Marilyn Bumroe'... very embarrassing. We watched a movie on the Alamo then went to see The Alamo itself. I walked down to Market Square with Jess over the river and we entered a Mexican world for 20 minutes before heading back to the campsite where I listened to a guy called Josh Glenn play his acoustic for a while. I'd been gone so long that when I got back the camp was empty, they'd gone out to grab dinner when they couldn't find me and all turned up with Mcdonalds and a burger for me! Well fed, laughing a lot and extremely hot I went to bed with no need of a sleeping bag the whole night.

I'll leave it there for now, maybe continue with Lafayette tomorrow - need to go and catch up with friends and dish out some presents :)

x