SandiB

Due to the fact that I am taking my iPad on my next trip and I am not able to upload photos from the iPad to this website, I sadly have to change to a new blog site. If you have come here to follow my France/Scotland 2011 trip, please go to sanditravel.blogspot.com and you will see the trip unfolding with all the photos attached :) Thanks everyone! ... read more

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 lunch and finally arrived in Santa Fe around 3:30 pm. We have a lovely hotel (our splurge night!) at a historic hotel just around the corner from the historic plaza and across the street from ... read more

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 at playing but it was just too hot! We then carried on to the Big Bend Lodge which is up in the mountains and facing out into the Chisos Basin. I hope the pictures do ... read more

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 Alamogordo we went to the Space History Museum which was very interesting. It has some very cool old rockets and it gives you the history of all space travel and rocket technology from all countries ... read more

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 I went for a nice stroll down Main Street in Durango. This is a beautiful town on the edge of the Rockies with stunning scenery and a real old west feel. When we got home, ... read more