Today was another long drive for us. We left Santa Fe at about 7:30 am and drove about an hour and a half to Taos, NM. When we arrived in Taos, we needed to get an oil change and a tire rotation and so we found a Jeep dealership who could do it right away! What luck! While they took the 45 minutes to do the car work we walked over to a nice little café and had a delicious breakfast. The timing was perfect....as soon as we were done eating, the car was ready. So we got the car and [View Full Entry]

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Today we had to sadly leave Rick in Alpine and start our journey back north. We had a long drive straight through to Santa Fe. As we wanted to get to Santa Fe early enough to be able to do some sight-seeing, we left Alpine early and hit the road. The drive was uneventful. We drove north through the Guadalupe Mountains and saw El Capitan, the highest point in Texas. We also drove right past Carlsbad Caverns but did not stop to visit as we have been there a couple of times before. We stopped in Roswell, NM for a nice [View Full Entry]

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Today was a very busy last day in Alpine. We got up and had a bite to eat and then headed over to the Alpine Golf Club to play a 9 hole round before it got too hot. Well, it was already hot when we got there! And, the humidity was high due to the rain that had fallen the previous 2 days. It was fun even though I got a sunburn....I thought it was too early to get burned! Luckily, it isn't too bad. After the golf round we had a drink on the patio and then headed about 45 [View Full Entry]

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Today we put our golf clubs in the Jeep and headed out of Alpine to drive the 108 miles (~160 km) down to the Big Bend National Park. It is a beautiful, mountainous park in the panhandle of west Texas. It also runs along the Rio Grande River and that river divides Mexico and the US in that area. The drive out was uneventful but the closer we got to the park, the more spectaular the landscape became. We drove first to Terlingua/Study Butte and had some lunch. Thre is a golf course in terlingua that we were going to look [View Full Entry]

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Today was a very relaxing and fun day in Alpine. I need to tell you the saga of our hotel room. Last Thursday, we were called by my father to tell us that the hotel we had reservations at was sold and would be closing on Monday (we arrived Sunday night). So we called my brother and asked him to find us another place to stay. Now, I had made our reservations back in January and I knew then that the town's hotels were filling up fast. Alpine is one of three gateways in this area to get down to the [View Full Entry]

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We had a long and rather boring drive scenery-wise today. The land was mostly flat desert though between Alamogordo and Artesia, NM we drove through the Linclon National Forest. This was very funny because as you are driving into the "mountains" and you see the nation forest sign all you are really seeing is sage and pinon trees and a whole lot of scrub brush. But, once you get into it, it really IS a forest! Like one we might see in Alberta! It was very beautiful and quite odd considering the general terrain that surrounds it. When we stopped in [View Full Entry]

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Well, we sadly left Durango and started once again on our journey south to Texas. It was a beautiful sunny day and we saw the temperatures climb from 15C in Durango at 9 am to 36C in Socorro at 6 pm! The drive was uneventful though we did see some astounding things. We had some extra time to stop today so when we saw the turn-off for Chaco Canyon, we just had to go there. It is a canyon that had a Puebloan culture (Chaco Culture) and there were about 6 or 7 different pueblos all within communicating distance of each [View Full Entry]

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We started our day with a round of 18 holes of golf. It was a bit cold when we started at 8 am but by the time we finished at 12:30 pm it was hot and we got a bit sunburned! The golf was fun if not exactly professional quality (in fact FAR from it!) but we had a blast! After golf we went to a lovely café and had a nice lunch and then Ken and Frank went to JC Penney to buy some pillowcases for the pillows we bought (we foolishly didn't bring ours from home!) and Ricci and [View Full Entry]

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We got a pretty early start to head back east through Zion, through the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona and on into Colorado. After a lovely breakfast of Southwest Eggs Benedict, we set out. The scenery was mostly uninspiring and flat but the roads were good and not very much traffic. We ran into a huge thunderstorm in Arizona and drove right through the middle of it. By the time we reached the Four Corners (the only oplace in the United States where 4 state boundaries touch, the sun was shining and it was hot! We stopped at The Four Corners [View Full Entry]

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Sorry it has taken me 2 days to get this in but after all we did on Wednesday, I was way too tired to blog that night! We got up and had a fantastic breakfast at the B&B - stuffed French toast...incredible! After breakfast at 9:30 we headed east through the national park to go to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. My dog, Dez, and I love to watch Dogtown (it is filmed at Best Friends) on the National Geographic channel and when I realised I was going to be in the area I just had to go and see the place. [View Full Entry]

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