Either way, here is another update and we'll try and be better at it in future!
6th and 7th June...
We spend many fun hours driving down some of the longest, straightest roads even seen by man. The Romans thought they were the kings of the straight roads- they had clearly never met an American when they jumped to this conclusion, because my goodness me these roads are INSANE.
(If you're wondering why I chose this particular moment to get out the minibus and take a photo of the bit of road which looks exactly the same as every other bit of road for the following 500 miles- it's because that bit there is where Forrest Gump stops running, in the awesome film Forrest Gump).
Anyway here's us in Monument Valley. We were taken on a jeep tour by a Navajo guide called Travis.
As you can see it really was a very beautiful reservation- very sandy and hot too!
Travis showed us some really interesting features too. The ancient people that used to live in these deserts (right through to the Grand Canyon) were a tribe called the Anasazi people, and they left their mark while they lived in these areas:
I'm sure we made our mark too...
The aptly named Totem Pole...
Then we all joined some other tour groups, and had a ncie sit down meal. I'm pretty sure none of us have ever had such a dramatic backdrop for an evening meal as we did that night.
The light faded away very fast, and then we moved location to have a good old campfire- Navajo style (which involved lots of singing, dancing, story-telling, and flute playing).
We sat around feeling pretty content with life really- full stomachs, perfect outside temperature, cold drinks...
Then a few moments after this photo was taken, all the girls were persuaded to get up and pick a random guy they didn't know. We (very recultantly!!) did as told and Alice and Gillian ended up with a couple of Germans and Bessie with another Brit. It's a long story, but cutting it short- we all got married and did some embarrassing dancing in a circle. We also all got adopted into the Navajo tribe which is nice.
SO. Next stop was Santa Fe, which is dubbed as being the oldest city in America which is rather cool.
We ate at a Mexican place (naturally, since we were in the state of New Mexcio) that evening and wandered around into a few bars and listened to a bit of live music (performed by real cowboys!)
The next morning before all packing ourselves back into the minibus, we got to have another look around quaint little Santa Fe in the daylight.
We tried on $1,000 cowboy hats:
And then Gillian and Sas went all out with the suede jackets too:
After leaving the shop, we bumped into Kelly and Dave who told us that they'd just been to the market and apparently Ashton Kutcher had left just minutes before! Needless to say, being a bunch of highly irrational people, we walked speedily over to the market and started being on Ashton Kutcher lookout. We'd been told he was wearing white shorts and a white t-shirt. Yeah it sounds stalkerish- IT WAS! Failing to find him (but succeeding to get Leanne and Debs in on the excitement), we hung around in a park for a while. Some man came over to us all and asked if we were in the film- we said no (highly flattered) but enquired about this film- assuming it was no co-incidence that Ashton Kutcher was around if there was something being filmed there in Santa Fe. Turns out a film called Odd Thomas was currently being filmed, and we saw one of the restaurants which was being used as one of the sets, but that was about the most dramatic thing we saw that morning.
Moving on from movie stars to aliens, we stopped off at Roswell on the way to Lubbock, Texas.
Because we're all cool and have no qualms about how we present ourselves in public (in other people's countries), we all wore copious amounts of foil on our heads to prevent alien invasion of our brains (standard). Unfortunately our incredible British wit was lost on some of the passing Americans, who wound down their windows to helpfully inform us that aliens aren't real.
We did get quite a few people grinning at us as they drove past though, so I reckon we've done our bit for cheering up the world.
Okay so that's all for now. Just so I don't forget and can easily remember where to start of for next time, we need to update you all on: Lubbock and Austin in Texas, and then New Orleans in Louisiana (which is here we are now- and all I can say in the short amount of time I currently have before I really need to get packing, is that New Orleans is freakin' AWESOME). Next stop Memphis, Tennessee!
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