Our Move to Corpus (in pictures) Part 6...Days 15-17

Once again, I've realized how much I suck at blogging, since I still haven't managed to finish posting about our move. So in the interest of another post I want to write, which I consider to be much more important than a trip re-cap. I am just going to quickly toss up pictures of the final days of our trip and then move on to my important, non-trip post.

Day 15 - August 9, 2011

(Another "Welcome to" sign that was taken on our way OUT of the state and not into it. We never saw a Colorado sign on our way in, so this was taken on the New Mexico border. But as usual, in the interest of trying to keep things in order, I'm putting this picture before all of our Colorado pictures, even though it was taken after we left the state.)

(Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado - probably one of the coolest National Parks I've ever been to. Its ancient history (history circa 1100-1300AD) right in the United States. I tend to forget that that kind of stuff exists because the country itself is so young.)

(Mesa Verde is a place where the National Park service has preserved a bunch of ancient cliff dwellings. I can't remember the exact number offhand, but the park has about 7 or 8 dwellings that you can tour, plus some smaller ones that you can see, but aren't accessible to the public. This was fascinating to me because these dwellings were literally on the sides of cliffs. I can't even imagine how people climbed in and out of them on a daily basis without dying. Each dwelling functioned as its own town, and they were really interesting to see! Visitors could sign up for guided tours of certain dwellings or tour a couple of them on your own. We took a guided tour of the Long House dwelling - and this picture is of the sign explaining what Long House was.)

(The view from the Long House cliff dwelling)

(another view from Long House)

(Long House cliff dwelling)

(Long House cliff dwelling)

(ancient drawings on the cliff walls - this was pretty interesting to me because these are actual handprints. It just made it seem more "real" to me. I was able to imagine people actually living there when I saw their handprints that have been on the cliff's walls for about 800 years.)

(Thomas by some of the old paintings. This is one of my favorite pictures of him so I had to include it :-).)

(me in the Long House cliff dwelling)

(Long House cliff dwelling)

(This is the most famous cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde - known as Cliff Palace - because it is the most preserved. Its also the one that everyone wants to tour, so we weren't able to get last minute tickets to take a guided tour of it. This picture was taken from an overlook. I'm jealous of the tour group in the picture!)

(Welcome to New Mexico! The final state that I checked off of my list of "states I've never seen" on this trip.)

Day 16 - August 10, 2011

(Roswell, New Mexico - since we were passing through the area, we couldn't resist the cheesiness of the town. We full advantage of the alien fun in the town.)

(Roswell's UFO Museum. I have to admit that Roswell is a very cheesy town. There are aliens everywhere to the point of it being funny and somewhat ridiculous. But this museum was actually really interesting. Its the one "serious" alien thing in the town. It tells the story about the actual Roswell crash, and the evidence and coverup that followed. I was interested in it because I never really knew the story of what happened here - other than the fact that something crashed in a farmer's field. This museum really gets you thinking though, because after looking at all of the evidence and reading all of the newspaper articles from the time, I'm actually pretty convinced that there really was an alien spaceship that crashed here....)

(inside the UFO museum)

(one of the many interesting facts in the museum that really make you question if the government is lying about what happened here...)

(more interesting facts about the coverup of the Roswell crash)

(a fun cartoon depicting the ridiculousness of the government's coverup. If you go to this museum and read all of the information, I'm honestly not sure how someone can think that this WASN'T a coverup of some kind. Maybe it wasn't really an alien spaceship that crashed, but something happened here that someone is trying very hard to coverup. It was all very interesting.)

(outside of the UFO museum. People leave their admittance stickers on the aliens outside when they leave.)

(Even the Coke machines in Roswell have aliens on them!)

(Alien Zone in Roswell - the place where one can fully embrace the cheesiness of the town....which we did.)

(Inside Alien Zone - they have scenes set up so that people can take pictures with aliens in the various different scenes. And yes, we stopped at Target for some random stuff and found $1 alien hats that we, of course, bought, to wear in the pictures we knew we'd be taking inside this Alien Zone place.)

(Thomas with an "illegal alien". I don't care who you are - you have to admit thats kind of funny.)

(eating lunch with an alien)

(Thomas in the outhouse with an alien)

(Motorcycle ride with an alien - this one was taken for my mom)

(Thomas, the pilot, piloting an alien spacecraft)

(beer with aliens)

(inside the UFO)

(Thomas fighting an alien)

(OK we're huge nerds obviously, but you kind of have to appreciate and laugh at the "ET phone home" scene here.)

(alien street lights in downtown Roswell)

(Even the McDonald's in Roswell is shaped like a UFO)

(Almost immediately after leaving Roswell, we saw our first sign that Texas wasn't far away. Not my happiest moment.)

(Goodbye to New Mexico and hello again to my least favorite state :-(. I loved the "hasta la vista" on the New Mexico sign though :-).)

(aaaannd...we're back...for 3 years.)

Day 17 - August 11, 2011

(Our last stop before making it to Corpus Christi, was the teeny tiny little town of Big Spring, Texas. My dad was in the Air Force years ago and this is where he and my mom lived for a few years. My mom LOVES Texas. She's actually pretty obsessed with it and her entire house is decorated in Texas/southwest style. She has talked about Big Spring for my entire life, but its a REALLY small town, thats even smaller now that the Air Force base there is now closed. I've never had a chance, or a reason to go to west Texas before, so since we were driving through west Texas, we decided to take a slight detour to check out Big Spring. I wanted to see the town that I had been hearing about for my entire life.)

(I promised my mom I would look for her old apartment building when we were in Big Spring, and this is what we found. A concrete slab and an empty lot where she used to live. The town is pretty much a functioning ghost town. Its almost empty, and very run down.)

(an old abandoned hospital across the street from where my mom's old apartment used to be. It was a pretty creepy building that was apparently still in use when she lived there.)

(This definitely isn't the clearest picture but we pulled over on the side of the interstate to quickly snap this. After almost 3 weeks of traveling, we finally made it back to Corpus Christi - my least favorite place on earth. This is the view that greets you as you drive into the city. Its an oil refinery. Beautiful huh? The people of Corpus Christi think so because they refer to this city as "The Sparkling City", which just amuses us to no end, because the only thing that sparkles is the oil refinery. And I'm not sure why that is something to brag about...)


And that concludes our trip!

Our Move to Corpus (in pictures) Part 5...Days 12-14

Have I mentioned that Utah is beautiful? Unfortunately, we had to leave Utah on the 12th day of our trip, but we stopped at Bryce Canyon first. Personally, I think Red Canyon was prettier than Bryce Canyon, but Bryce was still pretty beautiful! I was truly amazed at the colors of the landscape in Utah. Its definitely a place I want to go back to one day. (I apologize in advance for the length of this post. Between the beauty of Utah, followed by a visit to the Grand Canyon, I found it really hard to weed through all of my pictures to just pick the best ones.)

Day 12 - August 6, 2011

(Bryce Canyon National Park - outside of Tropic, Utah)

(Natural Bridge - a rock formation in Bryce Canyon)

(Bryce Canyon National Park - it was absolutely beautiful!)

(more Bryce Canyon)

(and more Bryce Canyon)

(me at Bryce Canyon)

(another one of me at Bryce Canyon)

(looking out over Bryce Canyon)

(At Rainbow Point at Bryce Canyon. Its the highest elevation at the park [somewhere around 9,000 feet and the colors are spectacular...which you can't really tell from this picture])

(Welcome back to Arizona!)

(Vermillion Cliffs in Arizona - about 2 hours outside of the Grand Canyon)

(This part of the trip needs an explanation. When we left Bryce Canyon, we drove a scenic route in Arizona to the Grand Canyon. Along the way were points of interest to stop at - one being the Vermillion Cliffs in the previous picture. This place was called Cliff Dwellings, and since this is an area with hundreds of years of Native American history, we assumed that the Cliff Dwellings had something to do with them. We are also pretty close to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado at this point, and that entire park is all about the cliff dwellings there. This place, in Arizona, is right on the side of the road, so you can't miss it as you drive by. So of course we stopped...and found out that there is nothing here that is related to Native Americans, nor are these dwellings hundreds of years old. Instead, they exist because in the 1920s, some lady's car broke down and she spent the night here. She apparently realized that she could make something from these rocks, so she built small homes/dwellings out of the rocks and this eventually became a lodge and a tourist attraction. Now it just sits on the roadside, looking like an ancient cliff dwelling, and fooling anyone who checks it out! So all in all, not what we were expecting, but interesting nonetheless. )

(a complete view of the main house at Cliff Dwellings)

(Me, by the Cliff Dwellings - most of those large rocks were turned into small living spaces. If you look closely at this picture, wherever there is an opening to crawl through, in or under the rocks, is where the entrance to the dwelling was. And in the background, I'm pretty sure thats an edge of the Vermillion Cliffs.)

(me at the Cliff Dwellings)

(a good example of what the dwellings looked like. The huge rocks were there to begin with and then smaller rocks were used to create the rest of the home.)

(me inside the dwelling from the picture above)

(me in the entrance to another one of the dwellings - this one used rocks and wood to "finish" the house)


Day 13 - August 7, 2011

(The Grand Canyon...which really needs no explanation)

(me at the Grand Canyon!! I have to admit that while Arizona didn't impress me as a whole, the Grand Canyon was pretty darn impressive!)

(Thomas and me at the main viewpoint at the Grand Canyon. This is the only place that has railings, and the lack of railings in the rest of the park was terrifying to me!)

(The trail we hiked at the Grand Canyon. It goes down all the way to the Colorado River at the bottom, but we only hiked to a point called "Ohh Ahh Point" to watch the sunset. The name sounded really cheesy at first, but if you watch the sunset from there, its definitely a place to say "ohh and ahh"!)

(looking up the trail)

(This was an interesting part of the hike. Aside from the fact that there are signs everywhere telling people not to feed any wild animals, squirrels in general shouldn't really be as friendly as this one was. I grew up in an area where rabies is pretty prominent, so this actually freaked me out a little. Meanwhile, the guy in this picture with me isn't Thomas. Its a random guy from Switzerland that we ran into as we were hiking. It turns out that there are no squirrels in Switzerland [who knew?], so he thought this was the coolest thing in the entire world. Thomas said something along the lines of "umm why is that squirrel so friendly?" and Swiss guy responded with "Is that ACTUALLY a squirrel!?!?" It was pretty funny to hear. I guess squirrels are so common that it just seemed weird to see someone so excited to see one.)

(Once we saw how fat this squirrel was, we quickly realized that he wasn't a rabid squirrel. He was just a wild animal who had been fed by people over and over, and now he expects food from everyone. He even climbed on top of Thomas' bag, where he had granola bars, and chirped angrily at Thomas. Talk about a demanding little rodent!)

(And then I freaked out a little, because it jumped into my lap...which I wasn't expecting. Meanwhile, Mr. Swiss guy thought I was a complete nutcase for being scared of a squirrel.)

(So once we decided that it wasn't rabid, and once I got over my initial shock from it jumping into my lap, I decided that it was a cute squirrel and pet it in my lap, until it decided to jump down and chirp at us again, while trying to open the bag that Thomas had.)

(Mr. Swiss guy decided that since we weren't giving any food to the squirrel, he would give it some water. And the squirrel happily drank his water.)

(View of the Grand Canyon from the trail)

(me sitting on a huge rock on the trail, overlooking the Grand Canyon)

(me sitting on an edge...did I mention that there are no guard rails anywhere?)

(me looking tiny on the same ledge as the picture above...Thomas just walked further away to get a better perspective of where I was. This looks like a horrible drop down if I were to fall, but its nothing compared to where we ended up at the end of the hike. This was scary, but this isn't a at the very edge of the canyon. The trail that we were hiking looped around and went right underneath this point, so the ground isn't a mile away here. That picture is coming up.)

(another view from the trail)

(Moon over the Grand Canyon - just before sunset)

(The sun starting to set over the Grand Canyon)

(Sunset at the Grand Canyon)

(another view of the moon, from farther down the trail)

(Now we're at the really scary part with no railings. This is "Ohh Ahh" Point and its a beautiful view. However, its VERY windy here and there is a straight drop down to the bottom of the canyon here - which is about a mile down. So I found this little hole and cowered here because I had no intention of going any closer to the edge. Meanwhile, look behind me. There's Mr. Swiss guy again perched on the rock I'm cowering under. From where he is, there is NOTHING to catch him if he falls. At least I still had about 3 more feet before I would go plummeting off the edge. And the two random people sitting there had about 2 feet before they went plummeting off. But not Mr. Swiss guy. One misstep and he was going to die. He was seriously making me nervous. At one point he got up and walked back and forth across the edge of this rock...which isn't even a flat rock (meaning its tilted and not parallel to the ground)! Who in their right mind would just walk back and forth along that edge like that? I was seriously on the verge of hyperventilating in fear just watching him. We never did see him walk back up the trail...so I hope he didn't fall in. I wish I was joking...)

(This is a bad picture of me, but its my proof that I eventually came out of my hole. Thomas convinced me to crawl up to this point and sit because the rock was actually perfectly shaped as a seat right here. So I got brave, crawled up here, froze in this position and only managed to turn my head slightly for this picture. Then I panicked about how I was going to get down. I honestly don't even remember how I got down. But there is nothing misleading about this picture. My right foot is about 6 inches away from a one mile drop into the canyon. And look at my hair...did I mention it was windy??)

(This is the view from the rock I'm sitting on in the picture above...but Thomas took this. I was too frozen to even snap a picture at this point.)

(sunset over the Grand Canyon - the end of our day here)

Day 14 - August 8, 2011

(Driving on historic Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona)

(Sunset Crater National Monument outside of Flagstaff, Arizona- did you know that there is a HUGE field of volcanoes across Arizona? I didn't...until this trip. Seeing a sign pointing towards a volcano got my attention, because we were in Arizona. When I think of Arizona I think of the Grand Canyon and Native Americans, not volcanoes. But it turns out that these volcanoes take up a pretty large area near the Grand Canyon. Who knew?)

(Every single one of those peaks in the distance is a volcano. Its called the San Fransisco Volcanic Field. How did I never know that this existed? These volcanoes aren't as ancient as you would think either. People were living in this area when some of them erupted. There are stories of entire Native American tribes picking up and moving their entire settlement because of a volcanic eruption. So they are several hundred years old, but since I had never heard of this before, I initially assumed they were ancient volcanoes - as in dinosaur age volcanoes, but I was wrong.)

(Sunset Crater - outside of Flagstaff, Arizona)

(I was truly amazed by this place. The park is named Sunset Crater National Monument, and it focuses mainly on that particular volcano. But even within the park, there are other volcanoes. This little red cone is one. If I was up on my volcano knowledge I would be able to tell you why this cone is red, while others aren't, but to be honest, I can't remember why. But still - its a volcano! In Arizona! Can you tell this was amazing to me? And those mountains behind the red cone are also volcanoes!)

(an old lava flow from Sunset Crater)

(That's Sunset Crater behind us)

(a lava squeeze up - again, I'm not up on my volcano knowledge, but the very unscientific definition of what this is, is an area where a lava layer cooled, then split apart as more lava squeezed up between the cooled, cracked lava.)

(me by a lava squeeze up)

(Me by a lava tube aka where lava used to flow through a hole in the ground. We saw these in Hawaii, but in Hawaii you could actually walk through them. That park was a bit more "wild" and not concerned about visitor safety. But here, this was as close as you could get to the lava tube. This one looked like it just went on and on forever.)

(Literally just down the road from Sunset Crater is Wupatki National Monument - Native American ruins.)

(Wupatki pueblo ruins - an 800 year old Native American settlement - I was fascinated by this place because I love American history, but my one complaint about the west is that history isn't that old. I tend to forget that there is history prior to this becoming America, and this was the first time I was able to see that history. Its kind of neat to think that America has only been a country for about 250 years. These ruins were from people who lived here 800 years ago!)

(inside the Wupatki ruins)

(Wukoki Pueblo ruins - another 800ish year old ruin)

(the back of the Wukoki ruins - I love how they used rock that was already there and just built on top of it.)

(me in the Wukoki Ruins)

(at the Wukoki ruins, overlooking the Arizona desert. To put this into perspective, there were volcanic rocks all over this area (which you'll see in the next picture). The Volcanic Field is right next to this. So basically, there's a huge volcanic field, right next to a huge desert. The landscape was just really interesting to me.)

(The Citadel Ruins - another Native American pueblo site near the Wupatki and Wukoki ruins. This one was interesting because it sat on top of a huge hill, which at one point was another volcano. Plus, the Native Americans who built this one used huge pieces of volcanic rock mixed in with their adobe bricks. I guess they took advantage of everything they could for building. This picture is of a building at the bottom of the hill, but the main site at the Citadel sat on top of the hill [I just don't have great pictures of it].)

(Driving to the Northeast of the Grand Canyon towards Colorado. This is a rainbow over the edge of the Painted Desert.)

(We didn't have the time to visit the Painted Desert, but we drove along the edge of it. It was pretty at the edge, so I can't imagine what it looks like once you're really in it.)

Next stop - Colorado! And another blog entry....