Another early start today, we got ready and packed the trailer to head off. Drove most of the day and arrived in Mesa Verde National Park late in the afternoon, None of us knew what to expect in this National Park, we’d never heard of it before. We walked along the trail down a hill until we reached a lookout point. From here we could see a large valley and in the valley walls a small city made out of stone had been built into the cliff. It didn’t look real from the view up on the lookout point it was a spectacular sight. We waited here until the tour guide came, we had just made it for the last tour of the day. She took us down ladders to the stone city and we sat ... read more

After a few hours sleep it was time to get up and get ready for another drive. It was quite a long drive but most of us were asleep the entire drive, I don’t know how Jon does all this driving. We went straight to Carlsbad Caverns National Park and arrived in the middle of the afternoon. None of us were brave enough to take the stairs so we all took the lift down to these amazing caves far underground and walked the mile long trail around the bottom. They were very impressive but at the same time it wasn’t something I had never seen before, I’d been in plenty of caves before, this one was just massive. After we emerged from the caves most of us were starving and went straight for the café to ... read more

We got up this morning and a few of us made our way by bus to the centre of Austin to have a look around. We thought it would take longer to get into the city so we actually missed our stop and ended up at the Austin University. We wondered around, totally out of place until we found a bus that took us into the city. We got off near an old political building which was very impressive, we had a brief look around inside and when we came out on the other side we continued through the park and into the city centre. We walked down the street looking for any op-shops so we could buy a used suit for our mystery night in Las Vegas that Jon was planning. But it was so ... read more

We were each given a key to get into either one of the rooms where we were staying and after waking up and packing the van, Jon was collecting them. However we were missing one, we’d looked everywhere inside and unpacked all our luggage but we had no idea where it was. Eventually we gave up looking, Jon wasn’t happy but we had a massive drive today and couldn’t hang around any longer. We drove until mid afternoon then stopped to take a boat ride on the bayou and have lunch. We ate lunch, sandwiches again, then jumped aboard the boat with a crazy guy called Cajun Jack, he was hilarious. Not long after we’d been on the boat it started pouring down, absolutely throwing it down, but the boat tour went on. By the time ... read more

This morning after we got ready and ate breakfast we quickly cleaned the van and trailer as it was getting pretty filthy then set off to New Orleans. We arrived mid afternoon and went straight to the hotel to drop off our stuff. Tonight we were staying altogether in a large house like room which was made up of two separate quarters. We ran around choosing our beds and bringing our gear in before it was time to catch a boat down the Mississippi river. We walked down to the pier, bought tickets and before long we were sailing down the river getting amazing views of the city of New Orleans. Some areas of New Orleans were still looking a little rough and run down due to hurricane Katrina, even though that was two years ago. ... read more