Camp America... San Antonio to Monument Valley

So here we were in San Antonio, having rescued the abandoned plates and cutlery and gone on our way. After a brief (and briefly dull) visit to the Alamo, which I know is of huge historical significance to Texans but is essentially a stone monument full of sweaty tourists with a grass surround, Bree was feeling pretty low about missing her beloved overseas so we decided to forgo any sort of cultural experience for a day in an air-conditioned mall. Bliss - best decision ever.

We immediately hunted down the American version of Primark, 'Shasa', and set to work blowing our carefully plotted budgets on outfits 'for Vegas'. Since my capsule wardrobe contains little in the way of classy, unstained clothing, I purchased an entire outfit plus accessories and shoes for the princely sum of $70-odd. However, not content with this, I fell desperately in love with a pair of high top plimsolls with a Jimmy Saville-inspired keyboard design printed down the side. I put them on immediately, and when strolling down the Riverwalk into MadDog's 'British Pub' for a root beer, was immediately complimented by a passing waiter on my delicate footwear tastes and given the beer for free. I like to think it was my innate feminine charm but since I'm pretty short on that I think the boots had it. Who knew Jimmy Saville was such a style icon du jour?

Anyway, enough shopping and pub talk, onto the main event - The Great Flood of 2012. It was nothing short of epic or biblical.

We set up the tents as usual, but instead of the usual clear blue sky and dry heat, our little campsite was shadowed by a looming and angry grey cloud, like the race referee out of Super MarioKart. There was every intention of going off to the pool and leaving dinner until a bit later, but our ambitious plans were thwarted by a sudden, if predictable, vicious downpour. Fortunately for us, we had cleverly set a gazebo up over our cooking station in preparation for such an eventuality. This allowed us to get soaking wet from the side only as gale force winds flapped all the water that had collected on top of the gazebo straight into our food. We eyed the tents nervously - they weren't the most weather proof and the rain had begun to collect into large and ominous pools around our feet, and more worryingly, the base of the tents. However, this did not stop the biting ants from having a good old gnaw on our feet and we were all stuck in that ambivalent mood somewhere between crying with despair and crying with laughter at how hilariously awful the situation was. This was miserably compounded by the fact that the Aussies and Julie had cleverly booked themselves dinner in town and thus avoided the sheer horrendousness of the whole thing.

Having sensed the hysteria of ten angry women brewing on the horizon, Brandon managed to get the campground manager to concede to letting us sleep in the recreation room. Like dejected refugees, we piled into the room as other people sat watching TV. Surprisingly, they did not look happy to see us, while we dumped wet rollmats, bags and sleeping equipment out onto the floor and proceeded to lie down. I should mention here that they were midway through a gripping drama serial about date rape, and it was about 8.30pm.

With much groaning and moodiness, the teenage contingent shuffled off to their respective RVs and cabins and we were left lying in the dark. I took a book from the shelf provided and proceeded to settle in for the night, earplugs in and head torch on.  It was going to be a long night - and it was, with the added bonus of a 5am wakeup call for the collapsing of tents and packing of the trailer. At the time of writing, we had six or so hours left in the bus before we were to arrive at Carlsbad Caverns, and some hot, wet tents to unpack. Yay.

Just to break away from the narrative here - when I do my updates I am typing up copy I have written, nay, scrawled into a small notebook. I have the following addendum to the above:

Amongst other things I have learned on this complex and wonderful journey (puke), such as how to put up and collapse a wet tent within the space of five minutes (can just about be done sans hangover) and how to dry travel towels in wet weather before packing them away (toilet hand dryer), I have learned something a bit sad about myself - I am pretty judgemental about other cultures' ways of doing things. As we were trawling the mall, Bree told me a story about how, in China, a desperate mother allowed her child to urinate in the middle of a crowded shopping centre and then just walked off, without so much as a by your leave. Apparently, this is something that happens on a fairly regular basis and nobody really bats an eyelid. My initial reaction was one of disgust and outrage. How is that normal... how is that even allowed?! To my Westerner's fairly sanitised perspective it sounds like something that should have a Public Order Offense slapped on it, but then I have been brought up to, generally, hide any overt bodily functions from the public eye. Some people haven't. It's all part of what makes the world go round I suppose. N.B. I will not be planning to piss in any malls in China, just to reassure you all.

The other thing I should consider changing about myself is laying off the Starbucks. It can't be good for my guts.

Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, a national park which comprises an incredible show cave, was great even after a pretty much continuous 8 hour drive. Unfortunately, the weather was shit so we had to go down the less than exciting elevator shaft rather than the usual cave entrance. The cavern itself was stunning, with stalagmites and tites jostling for space amongst what used to be a bit of coral-filled sea. I was pleased to note there was a section called 'Fairyland' which will only be amusing to a certain Sarah Hale (I hope you're reading) and that the small stalagmites were given the less than scientific moniker of 'popcorn'. After negotiating the winding paths in the cavern, we trudged heavily back in the pissing rain to our campsite, stopping for pizzas on the way as we couldn't face another depressing night cooking in a downpour. Four slices of America's finest takeaway later, the rain eased off but we spoke earnestly about the possibility of getting a hotel room for the night. Of course, this was impossible, so we begrudgingly put the loathed tents back up. They were beginning to smell distinctly suspect. We decided to make the best of it, and jumped into the (indoor) pool with gusto, did a few lengths, got bored, and went back to drinking beer. The grouchy camp owner caught me sneaking beer into the rec room and snarled as I was about to walk past the door 'you get rid of that liquor or get out'. I rather felt like replying that, had I the choice, I would love to leave her crappy campground for, say, a room at the nearest Hilton, but thought better of it and walked back to my tent, checked she had left, then walked straight back into the rec room again. I felt like James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, truly.

We packed up the next morning and left for Roswell UFO Museum, which housed what has to be the world's lamest spinning UFO display. I stuck around for ten whole minutes hoping to capture the spin on video, went to the loo, and discovered I had missed most of it. I do have about five seconds of crap footage which should give you a good idea of how it looked in full flight.

More interesting than the museum was the Mexican bakery next door. I had a Mexican pumpkin pastry, which I managed to purchase successfully after attempting to give the cashier an Australian dollar in error. Ah the trials of having four different denominations of currency in your change purse, eh.

A visit to my favourite place, WalMart, later, I had a replacement SD card and some bite cream all for a low, low price, and we were on our way to Santa Fe, and to a gorgeous campground just outside the city, all built on the top of what appeared to be a mountain desert. We had a couple of nights here, so relishing the prospect of not having to pull the tents down the next day, most of the gang got horribly drunk on 'Skinny Girl', which appears to be some sort of vodka cranberry rubbish. I decided to give my liver a rest for the night by drinking only two beers, and Brandon and Scott cooked us what has to be the best steak, asparagus and sweet potato meal I have ever eaten. There are some great photos of Brandon tenderising the steak on Facebook, and once I have a decent net connection I'll add them on here (probably).

Using, not for the only time on this trip, a plastic cup as a makeshift speaker, we sang to 'Come As You Are', while Daddy B got horribly drunk on about four beers. It was magical.

The next day we went down to Santa Fe itself. It's a lovely place, all built in the Mexican style - all terracotta coloured buildings and beautiful churches. I was pleased to see that the Post Offices in America are just as shit as ours, as I waited in a queue for about 40 minutes to then be told to fill in a form with 12 triplicates & was then asked if I was trafficking illegal drugs via a padded fluorescent envelope covered in streamers and blue stars.

After this exciting interlude, Bree and I wandered to Tia Sophia for lunch and ate well - I had huevos rancheros, an egg, kidney bean and chilli based dish which made my stomach do odd things but tasted great. I had this with sopiapillas, which I have never had before. These are they:

http://whatscookingamerica.net/CynthiaPineda/Sopapillas/Sopapillas.htm

We wandered around St Francis Cathedral, walked the streets for a bit and then went to Loretto Chapel, with its 'miraculous floating staircase'. This was a bit of a disappointment as the whole thing was clearly a tourist trap for idiots, and I had well and truly been suckered in. What used to be a lovely Roman Catholic church was now a religion Disneyland, with music and information piped loudly through speakers and too many people pushing around and taking photos of what was basically a spiral staircase with no central support. If you want to know more, check this out...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretto_Chapel

That night, things picked up considerably with the introduction of The Blue Corn Cafe & Brewery, where I enjoyed yet another calorific and delicious meal in the form of green chile stew - pork, posole, green chili and potatoes. Bree had a palette of different beers, some of which she was kind enough to lend me, and they washed the whole thing down very well. I think a deep fried chocolate tortilla which Julieanne and I shared topped the whole thing off, and I rolled home with a smile on my face.

Onward, with speed, to Taos, New Mexico, where Poppa B told us a story about the Rio Grande, the gorge / river that separates the U.S. from Mexico. Many people attempt to cross the gorge from Mexico in order to seek work / better living conditions in the U.S. only to be sent back, but one woman swam the gorge while in labour and successfully made it across, only for her son to be born in the U.S. and therefore gain automatic citizenship. She got sent back to Mexico, but he has remained in the U.S. The things people do for their kids eh!

We hung around in Taos while a few of the group went to Taos Pueblo, a community of Native Americans who have lived there for around 1000 years and are still going strong. We were to visit a pueblo at Monument Valley so I decided to give it a miss and live vicariously through the others.

A long and boring drive later, highlights of which included a bonding chat with Daddy B about our dads being in bands, visiting a fishing tackle shop for a wee and stopping off at a cafe with a creepy house opposite, we were in Colorado and Bear Country. Our bear safety lecture consisted of being told to put all our food away from our tents, which wasn't reassuring given that a woman in Taos had told Ellen, Camilla and myself that she had heard of bears being able to smell toothpaste. Torn between throwing all my bathroom products into a bag away from the tent and not being arsed, I plumped for the latter and realised the next morning that I had slept with a pile of snack bars right next to my head. Doh.

Another bright and early start (4.45am...) and we were off to Mesa Verde National Park. We made friends with our fantastic ranger guide, Bill, and had a good old look around an ancestral Puebloan home. After countless warnings from Bill regarding the physical prowess needed for the walk, we all felt a bit smug once we discovered it only really involved walking up a ladder a couple of times, and squeezing through a doorway. It was a bit like an ancient version of Funhouse really, with Bill as Pat Sharp and minus the Twins.

Onward, onward, to Four Corners. This is the only place where four corners of states intersect with each other. These are Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. We spent a happy 15 mins or so taking photos of each limb in each Corner etc., but an enormous dusty storm loomed, and the smells being blown in our direction from the portaloos were less than savoury. We pressed on to Monument Valley and this is where things got rather brilliant. All of us had plumped for the optional activity of spending the night in a Navajo encampment, and getting a tour, talk, dinner and a dance show into the bargain. I will never forget it - what an incredible place! Despite my initial reservation for jumping photos I got well and truely roped in, and I'm sure you'll be able to see multiple versions of this on Facebook.

Our guide, Tim (likely not to be his real name I expect...), was keen to get us singing and talking Navajo, as we were jerked back and forth like eggs in particularly rickety box. We drove down red dust tracks into the heart of the Valley, noting various 'monuments' of interest on the way - these basically consisted of rocks that looked a bit like the following:

Mittens
A dragon
An eagle
George Washington

This is by no means any sort of exhaustive list, there were loads, but this is what I wrote down...

We saw wall art (petroglyphics) which were chiselled into the rock and sealed with horse urine, ensuring that they remained to this day despite the high risk of erosion. We were also introduced to the Navajo concept of different 'worlds'. The idea is that each world existed, had its time of power (humankind's time of power being now), did something wrong, and then was taken over by a different world. This is how I understood it and is an incredibly rudimentary explanation that I am sure someone more qualified than myself can expand upon, but here are the different worlds as explained by Tim:

1st World - Insects
2nd World - Birds and creatures with wings
3rd World - Dinosaurs
4th World - Our human ancestors
5th World - Modern day humans

We had a quiet moment of reflection as Tim played a flute (possibly the funniest sentence to read back so far), and we were all told to think of a loved one and close our eyes. He played a soothing tune and we were all dead silent, the sound of the flute echoing eerily off of the monuments. He then told us that the way we felt during that moment was how he felt about the land, which I have to say was a pretty good way of explaining things. Good old Tim.

After this moment things heated up with the addition of Navajo tacos (yum) and some traditional dancing, led by Jordan (not the pneumatic ex-page 3 Jordan, sadly) who took us all on a group dance where we all let go and got very silly indeed. I believe our camp pulled out some classic Cotton Eye Joe moves which seemed a little ironic considering the setting but hey ho.

It is worth mentioning at this point that we were introduced to a man who Brandon immediately clocked as a Mormon, and who took quite a fancy to Julieanne. He was leading a group of two Japanese tourists to Monument Valley, then across to the Grand Canyon and Vegas. We were to see him several times more on our trip as he appeared to creepily stalk us across the Western U.S.

Another early night and early morning, we were woken first by the sound of Camilla's iPhone 'nuclear alert' noise, swiftly followed by Tim playing some gentle flute music from his car, and rounded off with him honking the horn and barking 'Wakey Wakey!'.

The morning drive to see the sunset was nothing short of spectacular. At the 'totem pole' (not a euphemism), we watched as the sun turned the sky from an inky blue into a medley of burnt oranges, pinks and reds. We of course ruined this spiritual moment by busting out some jumping moves in the time honoured backpacker style, and Tim was only too keen to play photographer and give us all some posing ideas. It was wonderful but quite bizarre.

I purchased a jade coloured necklace at the end to remind me of the experience, which hopefully I won't lose or break between now and the end of the trip, though let's face it, it's bound to happen.

I suppose I ought to round off this post with some epic thought or deep reflection, but seeing as nobody wants to hear all that guff I'll just say I had a jolly good time, and stay tuned for the next episode, featuring the Grand Canyon, a funny diner on Route 66, Las Vegas and my favourite place in America (so far), San Francisco. And L.A. And a long and dull plane journey from L.A. to New Zealand that I am unlikely to write much about. Anyway, waffle waffle... that's How for now (Too tasteless? Too tasteless).