Day 18 – Destination: California!

We’ll keep this post short and sweet: WE MADE IT!! (Yes, on the 18^th, two days ago). After a long 10-hour drive through rocky Nevada and the fruit fields of California, we arrived in San Francisco! In the car, we added up all the hours we have spent in the car over the past two and a half weeks, and we determined that we have driven approximately 72 hours in 18 days. That is a lot of car time. But pretty awesome.

We are SO excited to be here. It is sweet and bittersweet at the same time – Ashley has finally reached her new home, and it’s time to unpack and unwind. But it is definitely strange not to be planning our next stop or our next adventure. As for the postcard task, we have had a blast over the past 18 days meeting random people and handing out postcards. We can say that doing this simple task has made our trip 100 times more meaningful and memorable. It has allowed us to strike up conversations with gas station employees, local musicians, avid football fans, tourists and natives alike (and even some non-English speakers). We have heard stories about their beloved towns, families, and have received insider tips on local places to eat and explore. While a few people were skeptical of our request, it was generally met with excitement, with many people actually thanking us for giving them a card. People became much more interested in what we were doing and our story when we showed interest in them and their story.

Not to get preachy or sappy on you all, but we’ve learned some valuable lessons on this trip. In today’s world of Facebook, twitter, and electronics galore, our technology has connected us in ways never before possible, but at the same time it has isolated us and made the old form of talking to people face to face and snail mail practically obsolete. You can Google someone’s name and learn everything on their resume, but you will never hear how proud they are of their six kids or how they plan to spend Christmas at the bottom of the Great Canyon.

In the beginning of the trip, we couldn’t wait to start getting postcards back, but ultimately we’ve realized that the true joy in this social experiment is not necessarily what people chose to write on the cards, but rather what they chose to tell us in person. Exploring European churches, visiting Machu Pichu, or seeing the Galapagos Islands would have been an experience of a life time, but these are no better than exploring the French Quarter of New Orleans, visiting the Civil Rights museum in Memphis, or standing in awe at the Grand Canyon (or at least that’s what we tell ourselves…). While all of these were amazing sites, when we think about our trip, we’ll laugh the most when we remember that the first postcard we gave away was to a German couple who didn’t speak English, the musician in Nashville who gave us a copy of his CD to give to the next postcard recipient, or the kind man who fixed our car in the Grand Canyon for free.

As for the post card update, we have gotten 18 back so far. We figure a few more will trickle in…and in total we gave out between 85 and 90ish. So far that's not a terrible response rate, but we hope we still get some more. They have been funny, but nothing too earth-shattering. Several of the cards we got back were the ones that had random questions on the front like “What is your greatest fear?” or “Do you like coke or Pepsi better? Why?” or had MadLibs. The unfortunate part about these was that people filled these out but didn’t actually write anything else in addition. The people who wrote letters were all really nice. Here are a few:

Howdy,

How is the other SF? I met Meredyth on the plaza and she asked if I would mail this card. Yes. (from Santa Fe)

Dear Ashley,

You are our bright future. Enjoy life, be well, be happy, have great adventures, and much love. (from Santa Fe)

Hello again from the New Orleans French Quarter! I hope you two enjoyed your journey across the country! Thanks for stopping by!

Dear Ladies, I hope your journey has brought you lots of wonderful memories – cross country drives have always provided them for me – come back to New Orleans when you can stay a while. All the best.

I live in the 8^th ward of New Orleans. They’re practically similar (she said at the top she was from Ketchikan, Alaska). Both are practically islands in the 1760s inhabited by renegades and good hearted pirates, not those __(unintelligible word here)__ slave trading ones but here It was mostly Indians and feathers not dots.

My name is Michele and I’m from Tillatoba, MS. If you can come back thru stop and see us. Be careful on your road trip.

Nice meeting you. Hope you enjoyed your time in Memphis and the barbeque. Have a great trip to Vietnam!

We also go the post card from the German couple at our first stop!!!! Haven’t translated it yet but that is pretty awesome.

As for California, we both adore it and Ashley is already obsessed. The last two days have been incredible. Yesterday (the first full day) was spent visiting Muir Woods (Meredyth had never been) and then Ashley’s aunt took us to this amazing locally-sourced dinner benefit event. It was at this house with an exquisite garden going down this hill with an amphitheater at the bottom (the house used to be owned by the Hawken half of Smith & Hawken). There was an amazing organic meal followed by a lecture/ discussion about the importance of local, healthy, organic food for school lunches. It was an inspiring evening, complete with live music, interesting people, fabulous food, great weather, and at a stunning location.

Today we explored Berkeley, another must-see on Mere’s list. Ashley renewed her love for Berkeley and Meredyth fell in love with it too! Maybe for future grad school…?

After Berkeley, we went to glean at Star Route farm. It was a gorgeous day and the farm was in Bolinas, a stunning location near Stinson beach. There were about 30 people there and in a little over an hour and a half of work, we harvested 53 boxes of romaine and chard! Each box is worth about $40 so this saved the school district receiving the food heaps of money! Plus, this healthy, organic, amazing food with be part of lunch for about 4,600 students this week. All the gleaned food (perfectly amazing food that would have been plowed under otherwise) is donated. The only bad part about this was that it got dark before we could finish so tomorrow probably twice as much food will just go to waste when they plow the fields. When there are so many people (not only in the Bay Area, but around the country and around the world) who don't have the opportunity to eat healthy food every day, it is a shame to see it go to waste simply because it didn't meet industry standards of what looks good enough to sell. The food we were gleaning from the fields wasn't bad - it just had a few torn leaves, or was oddly wrinkled, or had a hole or two. It is still perfectly nutritious and for the most part still absolutely beautiful (especially the rainbow chard we picked!). It is really, really cool that Marin Organic has been organizing these weekly harvesting opportunities to take advantage of this extra food. Everyone we met was wonderful and kind and passionate about what they do, and it just furthered our love for the area. Obviously, Ashley is more than excited to be here as this is exactly what she was hoping for. The food was beautiful and tasted amazing (we got to snack some out in the fields!). Looking at all the stunning colors of the rainbow chard even made Ashley think that it would make a good wedding bouquet. Talk about a California girl…we both agreed she will fit in here just fine.

On our way home, we stopped at the beautiful Stinson Beach because we had to touch the Pacific ocean. It was chilly but refreshing - Ashley even found a sand dollar! It was a perfect way to end the trip. Meredyth is off tomorrow morning to go to Seattle to visit her sister, and after that have a few more adventures before heading to Malaysia. But she will definitely be back to California, if not to live to visit Ashley who will be completely immersed in her local food eating, green smoothie drinking, biking, layer-wearing lifestyle.

Thank you so much for following our blog – it has been a blast to write and we hope it has been equally entertaining. It has definitely provided us with good motivation to record all our adventures.

Miles to go: 0!!

Total Post Cards Given Out: 85 – 90ish

Post Cards Received: 18

States Traveled: VA, MD, WV, PA, OH, KY, TN, MS, LA, TX, NM, CO, UT, AZ, NV, CA

Here are some of our favorite pictures throughout the trip... Enjoy!

Driving to NM

On the road to Taos

Santa Fe...mainly Canyon Road with the Art Galleries

The Gorge

Sunset from India's

The Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado

View from a distance

Meredyth Rolling down the crater

We Summited! (not sure why this won't unhpyerlink)

On the drive through Colorado...this doesn't do it justice

Ashley is in FOUR states at once (she's always been a multi-tasker)!

Driving through AZ

The Grand Canyon

Sunset

Crazy Squirrel

Pondering the meaning of life

Vegas!

PACIFIC OCEAN! It sure feels good to be alive.

Day 17 – What happens in Vegas… well, I guess we’ll tell you.

We woke up to another beautiful day in Arizona, and after checking out of our hotel, we made our way into Grand Canyon national park yet again – except this time, we weren’t going to go hike and see the beautiful vistas. We were going to visit the mechanic.

Before we got to India’s house in Taos, we accidentally made a wrong turn down a dirt road that was essentially potholes and rocks. Since this fateful wrong turn, Ashley’s brakes have been making this low growling crunching noise every time we hit the brakes. Even with our brain powers combined, sometimes Ashley and I don’t make the best decisions, so we basically pretended this noise wasn’t actually happening until we got to the Grand Canyon and decided we better do something about it. The closest garage to our hotel was actually in the National Park, so we made our way through the tour buses and visitor’s centers to the park mechanic building.

After waiting nervously for about 45 minutes, we were told by the main mechanic that the car was fine, that he couldn’t find any rocks under the car, and that the only problem was that the rotator needed to be turned sometime in the near future. He told us good luck on the rest of our trip, and they didn’t charge us anything. We were so thankful that the car was safe to drive, and were thankful to learn a valuable lesson: when your car makes an excruciating low scraping roar when you hit the brakes, DON’T PRETEND IT’S NOT HAPPENING! FIX IT! So we did. And we were lucky enough to have a mechanic with our best interests at heart who was more genuinely interested in our well being than in making a buck.

And onto Las Vegas we ventured! The drive was pretty dull – a lot of red rocky mountains, not much vegetation, and hot dry air. We did pass over the Hoover Dam, which apparently is a big deal. At one point a guard also asked us if we had any ammunition or explosives in our car (which is also apparently a big deal). It’s a really good thing Ashley had her mom ship out all her ammunition and explosives. Otherwise we would’ve been SOL, and we would have missed out on Vegas…

Speaking of Vegas, Ashley might have a gambling problem. The first thing we did upon arriving in Sin City was go to a casino. Upon DOUBLING our money (from $1 to $2… completely legitimate winnings), Meredyth conservatively wanted to cash out, whereas Ashley insisted on using our winnings to gamble some more. Meredyth was slightly alarmed, and vowed to keep an eye on Ashley for the rest of the evening.

We arrived at Angela’s (Angela and her family are longtime friends of Ashley’s since she was little) apartment and made a plan for the evening. Angela and her boyfriend Scott took us out to the Vegas strip to see the sights. We wandered through the Bellagio, saw the famous fountain show, strolled through Caesar’s Palace and its mall (the most visited mall in the US), and went to dinner at Max Brenner’s new restaurant, which features all things chocolate (needless to say, Meredyth was in heaven). Then, of course, we satiated Ashley’s new-found gambling addition by returning to the Bellagio Casino. We stuck to the low-cost (and thus, low return) slot machines, but we had a blast spinning the reels and changing machines every 30 seconds. Ashley drained $20 at the slots, and Meredyth restrained herself to an $8 loss. Deciding to forgo the club scene, we ended up heading home around 1am… and though it certainly wasn’t an evening straight out of The Hangover, we still had a blast. Angela and Scott were wonderful hosts, and we were thrilled to see the sights and sounds.

The Strip.

Apparently there is a magical forest inside the Bellagio Hotel.

Dinner at Max Brenner's.

DAY 16: This Canyon is, like, really big

After a well-needed night of rest at the Grand Canyon Plaza Resort (read: this place had a pool, and as a result, decided to call themselves a “resort”… very cunning…), we hopped in the car and made our way to the Park. After a brief stop at the Visitor’s Center to get our bearings, we ventured into the great unknown of the canyon. We decided to take the Bright Angel trail, which is a three-mile descent into the Canyon, and three miles back up. The trail was beautiful – we descended nearly 2,000 feet, passing all sorts of rock formations, wildlife (including POSSESSED squirrels, some eagles, and a beautiful blue jay), trees and cacti, and of course interesting people. We noticed a lot of people were speaking French – really, almost every group we passed. We were trying to figure out why this was the case (French holiday? Something abut Canada?) but still haven’t figured it out. IT was funny to watch a group of Australians freak out over seeing some squirrels for the first time too, considering Australia doesn’t have these lovely creatures running around everywhere like we do. The canyon squirrels were weirdly different from Virginia ones though… they were more pear-shaped, were spotted, and definitely weren’t afraid to come up and crawl on your feet or get an inch away from your face if they saw you eating. They also made a horrible screeching sound. We prefer the East Coast variety…

We were lucky that the trail wasn’t that crowded (we think the Canyon probably is the busiest during the summer), and that it wasn’t too rocky. We even passed a few mules (which Meredyth learned come from breeding a horse and a donkey… is she the only one who never knew this?)! We took approximately six bajillion pictures.

We meet a really cool older couple who were hiking all the way to the Colorado river at the bottom of the canyon (a 10-12 hour hike – one way!). We learned that they had just moved to Arizona from Vermont, and had lived in a lot of different places before that (including San Francisco!). They told us that they had always chosen where to live by just moving there – on a whim – and then looking for practical elements like a job or a place to live. They also told us they were planning to spend Christmas at the bottom of the canyon camping. We were definitely inspired by their sense of adventure, and they definitely approved of Ashley moving to San Francisco just because it had always been a dream of hers. We hope that when we are 60 years old, we still have their sense of adventure.

The hike back up the canyon was definitely challenging, but we ended up finishing the whole hike in a little over four hours (we were pretty proud of ourselves considering the ranger said it could take six hours). Then we walked some of what is called the Rim Trail, which basically winds along the top rim of the Canyon. There is a really convenient shuttle bus that picks you up and drops you off all along the Rim Trail at different stops, so if you get tired you can just shuttle to the next overlook. We alternated between walking and shuttling. One of the shuttles we sat across from a group of 3 older couples who were all traveling together from Erie, PA. One of the couples recently moved to Colorado and the other two made the drive from PA. They were hilarious and seemed to just be giving each other a hard time and having a blast. Two of the couples had been friends since they were kids and the other couple lived in the same neighborhood as the other two. We gave each couple a post card and talked about our trip as well. We are looking forward to taking trips with our husbands/ kids and each other in the future as well! Eventually we found a perch on a rock ledge to watch the sunset from.

The colors really were spectacular – it was especially cool to watch the sunlight slowly creep away from the tops of the canyon, turning the red terracotta ridges to a deep purple almost instantly. It was beautiful.

After a quick pizza dinner (our go-to meal during this trip), we went back to our room, stretched our legs, and crashed.

Here are our recommendations if you’re ever going to come to the Canyon:

- Get up early to hike. It gets pretty hot pretty fast in the canyon, so starting any time after 10am probably wouldn’t be the best idea.

- Stay at the Grand Canyon Plaza Resort. All jokes aside about how it was anything but a resort, the rooms were really nice, we got a pretty good deal, and it is only about three miles from the Park’s visitor’s center. Plus, they have free breakfast (you know how we love our free stuff).

- Definitely leave time to see all the scenic overlooks along the Rim Trail. Though we are glad we took the time to hike in the canyon, hiking in for too long only allows you limited views. The canyon is just so big that it would be a shame only to see one view of it. The shuttle makes seeing it from a bunch of angles pretty easily.

- Wear normal hiking clothing, or else people like us will mock you. Some of the fashion statements we saw while hiking down the canyon were quite a sight: women toting fancy leather Gucci purses, people wearing miniskirts, bathing suit tops, long jeans and flip flops, and a variety of hideous hats. Forget taking pictures of the canyon – someone needs to document the fashion disasters of Arizona tourists.

Miles to go: 846

Total Post Cards Given Out: Who knows

Post Cards Received: 8

States Traveled: VA, MD, WV, PA, OH, KY, TN, MS, LA, TX, NM, CO, UT, AZ

Day 15: Flexibility is Key

Due to internet issues, we again had to post two and again without pictures. Once we have proper internet, we're going to go back and post all our favorite pictures to their corresponding blogs fyi...

We got up at 6:30am to get an early start to a long day of driving and exploring. The drive from NM to the Grand Canyon is really only about 9.5 hours, but one of Mere’s dreams since she was little has been to see enormous sand dunes. So a few days ago, Ashley was talking on the phone to her cousin Heather and mentioned this. Heather informed us that there are, in fact, amazing sand dunes at The Great Sand Dune National Park in Colorado and that it may not be too far off our path. With this information, there was no way that adding an extra two hours to the trip was enough to deter us from making this dream of Mere’s come true!

Some information about the Great Sand Dune National Park in Colorado:

- These are the largest sand dunes in all of North America

- The dunes cover 330 square miles

- The sand at the dunes primarily originated from the San Juan Mountains which are over 65 miles west of the dunes

- Originally, there was a lake that eventually dried up. The sand from the lake as well as nearby mountains was moved by the wind and settled where it is now. There are two main creeks that run on either sides of the dunes in the mountains and these keep the sand contained to the dune area.

- The dunes are between 12,000 to one million years old, research is ongoing

We arrived at the park a little after 9:00am and we were certainly not disappointed - it was definitely well worth the two-hour detour! We had planned to only spend an hour there and ended up staying until noon, but it was really hard to drag ourselves away. We hiked to the second highest peak in the park (which was the highest peak most people were hiking), which was 650 feet from the bottom. The highest peak in the park is 750 feet tall! The view was out of this world and the pictures don’t do it justice. It was a hard hike and took almost three times as long to climb up as it did to clime down. At one point, there was this “dune crater” (a very scientific term that we coined right now) and Mere decided to roll down it like a log. She felt a little nauseous after but was glad she did it anyway. It is about 10 hours later and she still has sand in her ears. At the peak, we met another German couple (he was originally from Montana, they were on vacation for five weeks visiting the states, she was German) that was very friendly and took our picture. The only thing that would have made the trip to the park better was if we had boards to ride down the dunes as a few others were doing. It looked like a blast - next time we will make this a priority.

We determined this park is well worth a visit for anyone coming to the area. In fact, we have decided that a great vacation would be to go to Santa Fe, Taos, and then the Great Sand Dune National Park because they are each only a couple hours apart and all three are amazing places with so much to do. It was also great going to the dunes this time of year because it was definitely hot by the time we got to the top, but not uncomfortable. We were told that the sand can heat up to 104 degrees (sneakers are a must, even though they got completely filled with sand)! By the time we were leaving there was a huge elementary school group that had arrived, and we determined that this would probably be the best field trip ever.

Our one complaint at the sand dunes was that both the ranger inside the visitor center and the person we paid at the gate were less than amused when we tried to give them post cards. The man inside said it was his last day and wouldn’t take a postcard (lamest reason ever); the man outside at the gate reluctantly took one and said he was going to give it to his nine year old daughter…. so that could be cool.

Our next stop was the four corners, which was conveniently on our route. We thought it was about an hour away from the dunes… boy were we mistaken. It was 5 and a half hours away… probably the longest five hours ever. We looked at our trusty GPS (who we have referred to at various points as “Gips”, “G-Unit”, or “Garmina”) about 6 times just to make sure we were on the right track. Fortunately, the drive there was the most stunning drive either of us has ever been on. Colorado is absolutely extraordinary, particularly on this one stretch that was about an hour or two long. Each turn was even more breathtaking than the last – so much so that the scenery almost looked fake. We stopped at one overlook and were blown away by the view. We determined that CO would be perfect if it had a coast. We met two nice men at the overlook, and when we asked them to take our picture, they took approximately ten.

Then, five and a half hours later, we arrived at the four corners. Ashley had been particularly excited about this. Unfortunately, as much as the sand dunes exceeded our expectations, we were utterly underwhelmed by the four corners. First off, it was $3 (the same price as the sand dunes), which was basically to just take a picture in the middle of nowhere. It was kind of cool to be in four places at once (we wish we could do this all the time) but aside from that novelty, we were a little disappointed. The area itself looked a little deserted… there were a lot of empty buildings and closed food huts – everything just looked a little desolate. Ah well, at least we can say we’ve been…and know we don’t have to go back again. Another disappointment was that Meredyth really needed to use the bathroom but to her dismay, all they had were wooden stalls with port-a-potty toilets in them with black holes to the middle of the earth. This caused Meredyth to determine that there should be a revolving toilet on the four corners so you can simultaneously pee on all four states at once. Now that would be worth paying $3 for…this may be our ticket out of here…

We continued our never-ending drive and by the time the time changed again (so we were in four places at once AND time traveled all in one day… not too shabby), we were pretty loopy to say the least. Meredyth stopped to get a salad at Burger King and when we went in, we were shocked to see that the BK was complete with an educational monument to Native American history – an education center. Picture a kiosk with a computer and a small exhibit, right next to the ketchup and napkins table. Random? Yes. The computer website was open to the exhibit’s homepage and Meredyth promptly opened our blog instead (they really should have it locked so no one can change that…good thing she has mad skillz….to pay billz).

Please note: This post is being written from the car and is completely reflective of our limited mental capacity and the delirious state we are currently in. We still have over 2 hours of driving…and it’s already 7:30 pacific time. FML. Good thing we love each other.

(Many) Observations from our epic drive/ day:

- We met 2 little boys at the sand dunes park and their names were Will and Jack (and the dad lived in Woodbridge, VA!). Dad (Ashley’s Dad) – I thought of you. They also gave us a bottle of water because we were probably the only people on the hike sans water.

- In CO we passed a school bus and the driver was an old man wearing a cowboy hat and the kids were getting dropped off by the bus to a tractor.

- We started talking about how people can change their name when they move to new places, start college, etc, and no one would ever know that they just took on a new identity. This spurred the question: how long would it take Ashley to get a job if she changed her name to Boobie McCormack? We practiced introducing ourselves to each other with a straight face. No shocker, Meredyth was able to introduce herself as “Boobie” easier than Ashley. Task for readers: Practice this and tell us if you are able to accomplish this with a straight face. Good luck.

- We were trying to catch up on the news (because we are both news junkies but have been completely out of the loop the last couple weeks) so we listened to NPR this morning. We learned about the Delaware primary and that women are for the first time earning more PhDs then men, but are still being grossly underpaid at Universities. Totally depressing. To continue our trend of finding out what is going on in the world outside of this fabulous, unnamed CRV, at a gas station stop we tried to pick up a NYT or Washington Post. Instead, we left with a Cosmopolitian magazine, which as always never failed to provide us with new and interesting information. For example, did you know that if a man makes less money than his wife or is dependant on her for income, he is 5 times more likely to cheat on her? We didn’t either. Lets just say that if we’re the primary breadwinners in our families, we hope this is not always true. We learned many other fun facts as well, but we won’t bore you with those now.

- It was interesting because Ashley noticed that the horse crossing signs (not sure if it was in NM or CO) are different than in VA – here they just have horses instead of a person riding a horse. Does this mean horses roam free?

- At one point we were reflecting on how we just blindly follow the GPS – we could be going anywhere and we’d never know. Sometimes we wish that iwe were still back in the days of paper maps. But it would probably take us a lot longer to get places.

- We are totally bummed that gas is greatly increasing in price, so long $2.40 gas, hello $3.00 gas. This is what Ashley gets for saying that they should increase gas prices to discourage people from driving so much. That has come back to kick us in the ass.

- Even if we wanted to, particularly in CO or when we are going up inclines, we couldn’t speed because Ashley’s car has the pick up of a 90-year-old grandma. Maybe Ashley’s mom did this to prevent her lead foot from getting us in trouble…we will never know.

- We noticed that there are lots of songs about California – California Girls, California Dreaming, Hotel California, California (by Phantom Planet), California Girls (Beach Boys), Save Me San Francisco (Train), Heads Carolina, Tails California… so many…

- On the song note, some of our favorite songs to listen to on this trip: Magic by BOB, If You’re Wondering if I want you (I Want you Too) by Weezer (thanks Jenna and Brian!!), Taking the Long Way by the Dixie Chicks, Always Be My Baby by Mariah Carey, Eenie Meenie by Justin Beiber and Sean Kingston

- We miss the 70 mph speed limits. CO is a fan of the 65 mph.

- We adore roadside flowers – purple and yellow dominate.

- At one point in the drive, Ashley mentioned how she wished that we had one of those electronic maps (like they have on airplanes) that shows you how far you are on your trip and where you are on a map. Oh wait, that would be our GPS that we have been using the whole trip. All would agree that Ashley has said far more astute things in her lifetime than this comment.

- Brownies are always good the next day if underbaked – some people just don’t understand this. We are glad we both do.

- We decided you should never floss and drive.

- We often ask each other “what if you lived in that house?” Sometimes we are envious that we don’t, sometimes we are thankful.

- We have also asked ourselves several times “What would happen if we ran out of gas here, in this random place with no other cars and cell phone service.” We think we’d be SOL.

- Meredyth asked today, “Why do people sing along to song?” It is pretty hard not to, but why is this the case?

- Do horses appreciate their view? Bet they don’t as much as you would Lauren :).

- We also think it would be a good idea at Christmas time to wrap some of these massive boulders we have been passing with Christmas lights.

- It is amazing how much different topography we have driven through. If we aren’t too lazy and have decent Internet, we’ll post pictures we’ve taken throughout our drive today. If they aren’t here that is because we are lazy pieces of shit and want to leave it up to your imagination.

After we arrived at the Grand Canyon National Park in the pitch-black darkness (NO other cars were around…), we drove the 10 miles or so into the forest to find our hotel. Everything was going just fine until we smelled something funny and suddenly we were driving through a thick cloud of smoke. We couldn’t really see anything and definitely were FREAKING OUT considering that when we looked to our left we saw that THE FOREST WAS ABLAZE! Well, that is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but we saw at least 15 trees or so on fire across about a half-mile drive. Then we saw an ambulance drive by, and considering we were the only ones on the road we had seen so far, we were legitimately wishing we could click our heels and NOT be in the park anymore… But, being the troopers that we are, we kept driving, assuming that perhaps forest fires were normal in the canyon. We eventually made it to our hotel and no one acted like anything was wrong, so I guess everything will be fine for tomorrow(??). We’re just excited we didn’t decide to camp in the canyon these two upcoming nights.

If you have gotten to the end of this blog post and your eyes haven’t glazed over, you are amazing and definitely love us. We hope we have at least provided you with entertainment. Thanks for reading and not giving up on us.

Our take home from the day was that flexibility is key – being flexible on our route (and making it a little painfully long) was still worth seeing the sand dunes, as was our pit stop over look in Colorado. Sleep is for the weak. Can’t wait to be stunned by the Grand Canyon in the morning!!!

Miles to go: 846

Total Post Cards Given Out: ??

Post Cards Received: 8 (although one was from our friend Sarah so THANKS SO MUCH!!)

States Traveled: VA, MD, WV, PA, OH, KY, TN, MS, LA, TX, NM, CO, UT, AZ

Day 14: Toas

After such a fabulous day, it is impossible for us to not be in love with Taos. The only downside about our time in New Mexico is that there hasn’t been enough. But we think that we were able to cover a lot of ground in our short time.

We woke up after an INCREDIBLE sleep at India’s and wandered down to the town plaza. We checked out the cute shops in Taos, including an amazing greeting card store. As anyone can imagine, Meredyth basically had to pry Ashley away from this store because she could have spent the whole day there reading funny greeting cards. We were even pleasantly surprised to see that they even had coming out cards! How different is that?! In all Ashley’s numerous hours spent looking at cards, even she’s never come across these before.

Next, we went on an incredible horseback ride!!!! Definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Ashley rode Patches, a cute little paint and Meredyth road Santana, an appaloosa with definitely the appaloosa attitude. As we were driving into Taos, the idea hit us that riding would be an amazing way to see some of the spectacular flora and fauna of Taos that we would not be able to see on foot. So we called a couple places first thing in the morning and booked ourselves an hour long trail ride. It was just the two of us at this place about 10 miles outside of Taos. The lady who took us was pretty amusing – the typical horse person who called things like she saw them, and she greatly educated us about all the geology and history of the area, which we had many questions about. Once Meredyth got a little more comfortable steering with one hand, she had a fabulous time. Some of the interesting facts and thing we learned/ saw: there was lots of mica in the sand, which we learned is found in make up; there was amazing smelling sage brush everywhere; in the 70s, squatters were kicked out of the area we rode in and it became a national preserve. Jane and Janice – you and your girls should look into doing a ride out West in NM, CO, etc. It would be a blast.

After the ride, we went back into town and grabbed lunch at this café. On the way, we stopped at this little area that had a few shops and an old Puelbo church. One of the shops we went into was this little trading post. The old man inside talked to us for quite a while, informing us about lots of history. This particular trading post may not be the largest in the US, but it is the oldest. Also, he told us about how the US needs to rewrite their history books because settlements out there are way older than the Jamestown, Plymouth, and all the ones back East (way to go Karen for teaching Ashley bad US history…). He also showed us a picture of the “new baby” and, much to our surprise, proceeded to pull out a picture of a newborn leaf nose bat. He then told us how his youngest daughter is getting her PhD at UC Riverside studying microbiology and some other thing we had never heard of and she was doing research with these bats, among other things. She is looking for a cure for this disease that you can get from dust that kills you instantly. Good thing there are people looking for cures for these types of things. He also told us about how he was particularly proud of this daughter who was the youngest of his “six youngsters” and 6 months after she was born, her mom died of cancer. It is amazing what people tell you and how sometimes people just need someone to talk to. It was definitely an interesting pit stop. One of the greatest things about this trip is talking to and hearing little parts of random people’s lives. We talked for a while after this about how it is interesting what people decide to share with others, particular complete strangers.

Next, we wanted to go on this hike that Terri recommended up in the ski valley to William’s lake. Unfortunately it was getting late and she told us that it was too late to do it. We went up to look in awe at the ski valley anyway and it was stunning. We hiked about an hour of the trail but were not able to get all the way there because we were afraid the sun was going to set. Also, we wanted to see the gorge bridge! So we made our way out to the amazing gorge to walk out on the bridge that crosses it. We think we remember being told that this is the second tallest bridge in North America (but don’t quote us) and it was definitely a great end to the day’s adventures. It was a little crazy to stand above the gorge. We were in such awe over this gorge, we can only imagine how we are going to feel once we get to the Grand Canyon!

After such an epic day and knowing we would be getting up bright and early again the next day, we decided to grab something from the grocery store for dinner and food for the epic drive the next day. We did this and headed back to India’s to relax. Meredyth made some brownies that were quite…an experiment. But as always, they tasted great, although they got a little stuck to the tin foil. We are always astounded at how properly undercooking brownies (no, this is not an oxymoron) never fails to make them fabulous. But the best part of the evening was sitting in the hot tub talking about life and gazing at the Milky Way. Even though you would think we would run out of things to talk about after living together for the past five years and spending 15 days together, we don’t. Our biggest question was if/ how India would have us physically removed from her property if we never left. In other news, we saw several shooting stars. Being in the middle of nowhere, in complete darkness without light pollution has a special way of making us both speechless. There are few things more relaxing than looking at the stars. And few things that make you feel so peaceful and feel as though everything is and will forever be okay. It was the perfect end to our time in New Mexico.

- Miles to go: 1,250

- Total Post Cards Given Out: ??

- Post Cards Received: 2

- States Traveled: VA, MD, WV, PA, OH, KY, TN, MS, LA, TX, NM