Welcome to the Wild Wild West.

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It's 10.37pm on a Tuesday night at the Comfort Inn hotel in Grants, New Mexico.
The last few days have been completely wild and like a dream, we have hiked so much uneven terrain, taken way too many pictures and lived like animals.
After coming from Yellowstone, entering Utah we were almost knocked out by the sheer force of the sun and the heat in the van, we had spent so much time trying to keep warm and now we were doing our best to keep cool, and with no air con it was some serious tropical breeze windows down type action going on. Town after small town we passed, each kind of eerie in their own way, we weren't sure if it was due to the recession or just people moving on but most seemed run down and desolate, with most shop fronts having old closed signs hung upon the windows and old houses slowly caving in.
As we neared Arches National park we started to become surrounded and immersed by the sheer size of rock faces that confronted us, glowing red in the sun the rocks took form of every shape imaginable.
When we drove up to the park our luck hit us again as there was no line up to gain access to this small and unique national park. Arches is by no means a large park, however it does have numerous tracks and trails, hiking and adventures on the river and over the terrain on what better way, 4x4.
Day one was kind of, well it was the shits. We had no place to stay, and the city of Moab had so many restrictions regarding camping it seemed impossible to stay anywhere without being caught and nowhere to stay to pay that had vacancy- we were to later realize this was due to the weekend being Memorial day weekend, great...so many tourists! It was also the start of the summer period and the first bout of warm weather the Canyon lands had seen since winter weather.
We parked in one of the hotel parking lots and we were luckily left alone to sleep, which was awesome as the drive between Yellowstone and Arches is approximately 8 hours continuous driving and utterly exhausting.
The next day we woke up early and set out for Sunrise over one of the many lookouts to cook breakfast- we must've looked rather odd pulling out our stove to cook but it was a breathtaking view and far better than the four white walls I usually look at in a house.
We drove off to the start point for the hike to Delicate Arch, perhaps the most famous Arch in the park and Utah's pride and joy, being the national monument and also on the drivers plates it's definitely a must see...unfortunately so did the million other people staying nearby- absolute chaos!
It was a 5km walk in total, up and back and I have to say, I think this is the only exercise some Americans had seen all year as there were some who were set to have a heart attack at any given moment. It was funny to see one woman at the top near the Arch claim that she had taken a picture just to prove to everybody back home that she made it alive and that she was to email it to everybody she knew. There were waay too many tour groups and people for us two but it's one of those things you have to see, and we went off the trail for half the walk in pure silence and watched the lizards scatter across the rocks and the sound of the wind brush against our cheeks.
The Arch is magnificent and extremely windy as it rests on a large rock mass high up.
After Delicate Arch we proceeded further down the the park to another hike and walked up the side of a rock face to get a view of the eastern side of the park, which had large thin rock like sheets and pieces of shale that cover the sand.
Late afternoon saw us go down to the town of Moab, a bustling town full of life and things to eat, see and do. We went into a dinosaur fossil shop, which seemed to be not very legitimate as the supposed dinosaur bones, for only $1 looked like the many rocks we had just hiked over.
We ended up going to the dollar store to check out some deals and pick up some food, then ate lunch by the local high school under the shade of lush trees, Bryce taking out the stove to cook up his spaghetti that looked like earthworms draw a few looks but it was so hot and we were so exhausted we didn't really care.
Nearby was a laundromat as well which had free Wi-Fi which was handy due to the fact we didn't need a code to access the internet, ah the beauty of being cheap!
Off to sleep that night after a twilight bike ride by the river (And not a long one either as the wind nearly blew us off our bikes, and my bike wasn't assembled properly- thanks walmart, ill be sure to ask you guys to fix it at the next walmart we stay at).
Settling in for the night in the Denny's carpark we went and got some food after the potatoes that took 1hour to cook on the shitty camp stove failed to satisfy us.
Well Bryce gets breakfast for dinner (What's better than that?!) And I got a plate full of veggies, which I guess shocked many other diners as I could see people constantly staring at my plate to the point they probably could've burnt a hole through the plate with their eyes.
That night was a lot more comfortable and we organized the van to sit back and watch the rest of The Prestige that we had started watching a few days prior, occasionally having to pause due to people coming and going in their cars, it was hard not to laugh when you could hear peoples conversations and funny noises.
After a great nights sleep we continued back into Arches for our final day for one last hike near Devils Arches, a series of arches with challenging hikes to access as well as easier routes. Well i'm glad Bryce is very much like myself and decided to go off trail to get some better views of the Arches and landscape, and again it paid off. Breathtaking views and climbs all over the large rocks and sandy desert. It was a perfect day.
After the hike we continued on our journey, stopping off at a large sand dune area you can go down on anything you can find to surf the sand...well we tried to anyway. We used the foam mat that we had been sleeping on to see if it would work however Bryce was right when he said there would be too much friction on the sand and it was an epic fail, and i'm sure funny to see unravel from ground zero with several tourists present.
Setting out on the road we made our way for New Mexico, passing through Colorado the colorful state, which had some truth in the fact it had some of the greenest grass we had ever laid eyes on and the bluest sky that contrasted off the green perfectly. A few more run down towns and a quick jump on route 66 we entered New Mexico which was quite an eye opener as it was way different to any other part of the states so far, and I guess you could say its the closest thing to Mexico without actually being in Mexico. Anyways we decided to get the stove out again and cook up some Mexican fajitas to mark our arrival in this rough desert place. Well I decide to cook up in the 'sand' which was little more than a smokescreen for the masses of thorns and prickles that lay beneath the fine layer of sand...wonderful. And I had thongs on, and I didn't realize all this until I lunged my hands in the sand...so painful. The thorns started to stab right through my thong and it was so painful, I quote Bryce "What did you expect hun, this is the desert its common sense" Well a few minutes later after we finish eating Bryce cops it on his hands...this is the desert. Off to stay the night where we are currently now in the town of Grants, A small town with not much to do, we couldn't bear another night in the van and decide to stay in a cheap motel...getting the lady behind the desk to drop the price from around $100 to $55, Bryce and I make the ultimate team. Its comfortable up here, there is a shower, T.V and of course...WiFi. Tomorrow we are off to Grants Ice caves and Volcano trek, before heading off to Albuquerque, home to conspiracy theories and crazy Mexicans.
xoxoxo

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