Parks And Recreation

After leaving Austin we have been on an almost two week long roadtrip, I have been too tired to update, but here come's a summary as brief as I can make it, fasten your seatbelts! It's been a lot of driving for Anna, I don't know how many miles, but five States, three different timezones plus daylight savings made things even harder to keep track of especially seeing as Arizona doesn't observe such comformities. Our first day we drove through middle of nowhere Texas with tiny empty towns where almost every business seems to have closed down. We found a motel which hadn't been shut in one of these towns called Post and set off again next morning. When we got into New Mexico the landscape changed into a more rocky desert which looks perfect for cooking crystal meth in an RV or settling a drug deal gone bad, at least that's all that I could think of. That night we slept in Walter White's (Surely everyone has heard of Breaking Bad by now?) hometown of Albuquerque, which seems to have flourished due to being on the historic route 66 with motels, diners and fastfood joints lining the main strip now called Central Avenue. We continued getting our kicks the following morning taking some detours into painted deserts and petrified forests before entering Arizona and getting some sleep in Flagstaff. Flagstaff is also on the route but it's main claim to fame is it's proximity to one of the seven natural wonders of the world, The Grand Canyon.

I visited the Grand Canyon as a child almost 15 years ago, but I was still gobsmacked once we reached the edge of the gorge. We spent the whole day walking around the rim, staring in awe at each new angle, view and shade of red the canyon could offer. We slept in a small town consisting of one motel, a petrol station and Bedrock City: the life project of a Flintstones fan who has now passed away. His wife continues to run the campground and theme park, unfortunately we couldn't sleep here but the morning after we had breakfast and paid the five dollar entrance to see the park. It is always sad to see dreams that have gone downhill, but nowhere epitomises this sadness as much as a desolate themepark I think.

The cartoon village complete with dinosaur slides and replicas of Fred and Barney's houses which may at one time have been the dream of every child to visit was now completely empty and run down, the location in the middle of the desert made the sadness if possible even more obvious. So much time and money must have gone into building this and I hope it can stay open forever, I urge everyone visiting Grand Canyon to pay it a visit as it is a special place!
After this crushed dream we drove to an example of the exact opposite which proves you can make something out of nothing, the capital of insane dreams, Las Vegas. I wish I could tell you all what happened here, but you know the saying right?

We stayed three nights in Sin City and then drove into California through the lowest point and one of the warmest places in the U.S, Death Valley. We made our resting point at a motel in Bakersfield before heading up to Sequoia National Park the following morning. This is where the mighty Sequoia Trees grow and it was incredible to drive through the giant forests. These are the largest trees on the planet, not the highest but in volume they are massive with bark as thick as three feet, the oldest ones are over 3000 years old and the largest specimen, General Sherman is believed to gain the weight of a 60 foot tall tree every year! The park offered some great views with one of the countries highest mountains, Mount Whitney as it's backdrop. We drove out of the park in pitchblack darkness due to perhaps staying a bit longer than planned and got to a very dodgy motel in Fresno late at night. Things didn't get better as Anna was getting eaten alive by bedbugs so we had to find a new accommodation at midnight. The second motel was better and we got a couple of hours sleep before once again setting off, this time for Yosemite National Park. We had two full days here, driving around the beautiful scenery the first and then spending the second hiking some gorgeous forest trails past waterfalls with amazing vistas of the slick mountain domes and jagged peaks all around you.
Today my legs are killing me and it is also the last leg of our roadtrip as we will soon set off on the final stretch taking us to the Pacific Coast and San Francisco!