Deirdre gets some tattoos……

Just sit down, make a cup of camomile tea and get a paper bag to breathe into and let me explain. We’re at the end of an exciting week in Moab Utah, Mountain Bike Mecca and Adventure Capital of the Known Universe. When we checked into our hotel, the clerk proudly told us that Moab has a brand new trauma centre as there are so many ways to hurt yourself in Moab. So we signed up for a mountain bike tour and asked if we could do some of the easier trails. Our guide took us on a trail named “Lazy-EZ” – who said Americans don’t do irony? During the ride I decided that the best way to negotiate a short steep rocky descent was to dispense with the bike altogether and fly over the top instead. In-flight, I watched a short documentary about gravity (in 4D) which had a smashing ending. So now I am sporting a wonderful range of bruises, grazes and scratches known locally as “Moab Tattoos”. These are temporary and I won’t regret them when I get old. No serious damage, thankfully. Luckily I was wearing my Big Girl Pants so I was able to get back on and keep riding.

Having said all that, Moab is a fantastic place in a superb location. The town nestles in a bowl of green on the edge of the Colorado River, surrounded by spectacular cliffs. Arches National Park is right on the doorstep, and is full of dramatic red rock cliffs, towers and would you believe rock arches. The weird part is that the backdrop to this amazing desert environment (reminiscent of the Olgas, or Kimberley region) is a snow-capped mountain range. We did lots of short day walks and took so many photos of arches we can hardly tell which is which.  I will speak the unspeakable heresy and say that Arches NP is far more impressive than the Grand Canyon! (time to get that paper bag again).

We did a canyoneering trip which involved some hiking and 2 abseils, one down a slot canyon and the other next to a rock arch. Some groups abseil off the arch but our guide was having none of it as he considers it far too dangerous (quite right too).  We had a fun afternoon, and it’s just magical to do these activities in such a spectacular location.  

Next day we hired bikes and took a shuttle to the trail head for some independent riding of the trails we did the other day. I accidently put on my Sooky-La-La pants this time, and found I had completely lost my nerve (maybe it was bruised the other day?). After a bit of a wet meltdown (that was me, not Mike), we selected a trail that was much more like what I am used to riding in Broken Hill so we ended up having a good fun ride without any more trauma. The good thing about doing a less technical trail was that we got to enjoy the magnificent scenery without becoming part of it.

The other national park in the vicinity of Moab is Canyonlands, a kind of mini-Grand Canyon. We got up this morning at 4 am so we could get to Mesa Arch for sunrise which is The Thing To Do. I can’t believe that lots of other people had exactly the same idea! It was like the Pitt Street Mall during the post-Christmas sales. There was a group of people on a photography workshop who pushed and shoved  and jostled to get the best spots, so they could all take exactly the same photo with their expensive cameras that they didn’t know how to use. Bl****y tourists!   

Back in Moab it is the April Action Car Show this weekend, so the place is insane. The mix of sub-cultures is very interesting. The usual Moabite is a lean, chilled out outdoorsman whose main issue is deciding which adventure sport to do today.  Now town has been invaded by loud fat rednecks with loud fat motorbikes and cars. Mind you, there are some entertaining sights, such as Darth Vader riding down the street on a mountain bike with its seat and handle bars extended so it was about 8 feet off the ground. As you do.

Moab wisdom:

Most Emergency Room admissions start with the phrase “Hey guys, watch this”.

Chinese restaurant menu item (which we avoided)- Pu Pu Platter. 

P.S. if you want to see the pictures at a larger scale, try double clicking those you wish to see. It should give you a larger image. For those who are still learning blog speak, anything in orange can be clicked on to get more stuff.

Run away, I hear banjos!

From New Mexico we journeyed northward into Colorado and straight into the jaws of banjo hell. We arrived in the cute mountain town of Durango to stay at the beautiful historic Strater Hotel. Unbeknownst to us, our visit coincided with the start of the annual “Bluegrass Meltdown”, with our hotel being Ground Zero.  The hotel was full of men with pony tails and sandals playing all manner of bluegrass instruments in little groups all over the place. If you stood in a spot where you could hear more than one band at time, it just did your head in. As far as I could tell, they played the same riff over and over and over again without variation, probably kept going until some-one’s dog died (or am I getting mixed up with country music?) We felt like extras on the set of Deliverance.   Our room was on the fourth floor so we thought that would be far enough away. Ha! A group decided that the area outside the lift, just a few metres from our room, was the perfect place for a late-night hoe-down. At 11 pm I finally had to go out (looking a picture of loveliness in my jim-jams) and savage them. 

Apart from this, the town of Durango is quite lovely nestled below the San Juan Mountains which still have snow on the peaks. Our main reason for being there was to take the Silverton Railway, a steam train into the mountains. Because it is too early in the season, the train didn’t go all the way up the mountain to Silverton, but stopped a bit more than halfway at Cascade Canyon.   The train trip followed the Animas River through steep gorges and forest, and was a very scenic journey. In the early part of the trip the tracks were lined with prairie dog burrows, with many respectfully standing to attention as the train passed. Mike wanted to get some photos of them, so I told him to gopher it.

On our second day, we went to Mesa Verde which is a national park full of ancient Pueblo Indian cliff dwellings. We did a guided tour of the Balcony House which involved climbing giant ladders and squeezing through tunnels. Amazing how they built these structures! We also did a tour of the Cliff Palace which is a much larger group of buildings, with Ranger Jo who was absolutely hilarious and brought the tour to life.

Back in Durango it was Prom Night as well as Bluegrass. There were many beautifully dressed young girls in the street who looked very cold in their strapless dresses when the temperature was near freezing. Ah the joys of suffering for fashion. So in addition to our personal hoe-down band who only played until 10 pm outside our door, we were blessed with a rendition of Scotland the Brave on the bagpipes at 12.30 am in the street outside. Oh dearie me.

Some great quotes from Durango:

I dream of a world where chickens are free to cross the road without their motives being questioned.

If God wanted us to be vegetarians, he would have made broccoli more fun to shoot.

I saw a UFO but nobody believed me ….

Heading deeper and deeper into the wilds of New Mexico, we arrived into hot and dusty Carlsbad. The hotel clerk was being legalistic about the check in time of 3 pm, so nothing for it but to spend a heady afternoon in the Laundromat. What is an afternoon in the Laundromat without some tasty snacks?

Our reason for being in Carlsbad was to go to the Carlsbad Caverns, some enormous caves just south of town. We did a self-guided trail into the Big Room, which is the largest single cave chamber in North America, the size of 6.3 football fields. (The “Football Field” is the SI unit of measurement of large land areas, in the same way that the “Sydney Harbour” is the unit of measure for bodies of water). In the afternoon, we did a guided “adventure cave tour” to the dramatically named “Lower Cave”.  Apart from a couple of ladders and a small crawl, it was adventure for woosies, but still a fun afternoon.  However this is a cave system with an elevator and underground restrooms, so anything more is considered extreme adventure.

Our drive north to Santa Fe involved stopping in the town of Roswell, UFO Central. We stopped at the pretty lame but entirely necessary “UFO Museum and Research Centre” which majored on the “Roswell Incident of 1947” – a crash landing of an alien space ship and the finding of 4 alien bodies, or perhaps just the crash of a weather balloon, depending on the size of your conspiracy gland. The truth is out there……..

To Santa Fe and beyond. Santa Fe is the state capital of New Mexico, but a little like a hick country town. The centre of the city is really quiet and low key, with lots of interesting adobe buildings full of tacky souvenirs shops and wild west clothing – big hats, big belt buckles and lots of fringing.  The next day we took a trip out of town to Taos, and in particular the Taos Pueblo which has been occupied continuously by Pueblo Indians for 1000 years. By now the weather was getting really cold and it started to snow. Hard to believe we had heat and raised dust 2 days ago. At least I get to wear my entire wardrobe.

Today we went to the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument which is a little known area south of Santa Fe. It should be on the major sights trail cos it is a real gem! There’s a great little trail through a narrow slot canyon and then a short climb to a fantastic (but freezing) view. All through the canyon are these fantastic towers and spires that seem inspired by Dr Suess. With 4 cameras on the go, you can believe that it took us ages to do the trail, another great shot around every bend.

  

We took some pics on Route 66

After the heady excitement of Monument Valley, we headed to the glorious town of Chinle which is the gateway to Canyon de Chelly. Chinle is a very bleak, desolate place, leading me to decide that Chinle must be Navajo for “ not a tree in sight” or perhaps “home of people who don’t like gardening”.  By now it was absolutely freezing and it snowed overnight so that our sightseeing of the Canyon was a very cold affair indeed. Unfortunately we have been spoiled with spectacular sights in the first week, so Canyon de Chelly, although interesting, didn’t really measure up. Never mind, life can’t always be exciting for every moment.

Pueblo Indian ruins- "the White House"

Didn't we have a dust storm yesterday?

On to Holbrook via the Painted Desert / Petrified Forest, which was higher up on the Interesting Sights scale.  Holbrook is on Route 66 and is a mother-lode of nostalgia! We stayed at the Wigwam Motel for an in-tents time.  It was cheap, dated and tiny, but you can’t put a price on glorious kitsch. Even the bathroom mirror held fascination due to the quirky angle of the bathroom walls. Mike took a photo of the inside, but because I was still asleep he had to go around the room on tepee toes (ha, ha, ha!)

What's left of Route 66, now a strip of grass.

When did you last sleep in a Tepee?

The next morning the cultural experience continued with breakfast at Joe and Aggie’s café. A wood-panelled, vinyl and laminate-boothed emporium of kitsch. It came complete with a bunch of old guys, Hank, Chuck, Chip, Bud and the really old guy, Junior, who get together on Fridays to discuss ailments and funerals, and ailments which lead to funerals.  I ordered 2 hotcakes and had in mind something the size of McDonald’s breakfast hotcakes. What I got was 2 family sized pizza hotcakes, about an inch thick each. Holy Frijole!

Our journey continued, driving deeper into New Mexico and the land of huge pick-up trucks and lots of cammo clothing. Mike particularly enjoyed the handwritten sign in the men’s loo at one diner, saying “Don’t wipe boogers on the wall!” It alarms me that such a sign needs to be written.

We arrived in Alamagordo New Mexico, the nearest spot to White Sands National Monument. Alamogordo is also home to the White Sands Missile Range with active missile testing a couple of times a week. They don’t call New Mexico the Land of Enchantment for nothing.

White Sands National Monument is full of, you guessed it, white sand. Large dunes in fact, which are quite beautiful especially in the late afternoon sun.  We had a great time photographing the dunes,

 and after that, sand sledding down them.  Sand sledding is kind of a slow motion thrill, as the sand is pretty boggy so you don’t get up too much speed. Mike did his best beetle impression. 

  After filling up our shoes and clothes and ears and nose full of sand, it was time to go and empty it all out in the car and hotel room. I guessed the hotel is used to it.