Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Leg 3,4,5

Update 5/15/06

Well we left Bill and Kris’s house in Norman with the car “fixed” and drove about 500 miles to Cimarron Canyon state park, about 30 miles east of Taos, New Mexico. We got in pretty late and set up camp with the headlights and slept very soundly with the stream flowing by.

The next morning the car was running really rough and had no acceleration at all. We stopped in a little town just a few miles away and I changed the secondary spin on fuel filter and that helped a great deal, but it was my last spare. I also changed it in Tennessee at my father’s house. We went into Taos NM and shopped around and some neat little shops and had Sunday brunch. We then went to Taos Pueblo out north of town, consisting of all reconstructed and restored buildings of the Pueblo Indians. We continued out south of town and proceeded to Santa Fe NM. It was raining really hard so we didn’t explore much, but did find some much needed oil. We continued on west to Chaco Canyon, a place that I have always wanted to go. The road to Chaco was aweful, but once your in the park it’s awesome. The place is exactly as I had always read and there aren’t many people there, probably discouraged by the road. That night it was so windy that we couldn’t use my new Snow Peak stove. I went to dismantle it and the can stuck open instantly freezing my finger. I thought for sure I was going to need some medical attention the next day but luckily that wasn’t the case as I was able to get it under warm water pretty fast. And then the wind kept Ash up all night.

The next day we hiked around Chaco and drove around a bit, but we didn’t have long because we needed to get to Mesa Verde and then on into Utah. We ate lunch in Colorado and then spent a very rainy day traveling around Mesa Verde down close to the four corners. We left late in the evening and drove most of the night to Hanksville, Utah. It’s a small town outside of Capital Reef National Park. We got in really late and all of the hotels were booked so we luckily found a campsite for $12 and ate there the next morning.

We spent the morning exploring Capital Reef and then onto Bryce Canyon National Park. It is the longest 112 miles I’ve ever gone. We set up camp and made a good Indian dinner, with a six-pack of Polygamy Porter. There is a sunset point that if any of you make it here, you have to see, it’s awesome.

The next morning we made coffee and went on a short hike around the rim trail at Bryce. Now we are leaving and going on to Parawan Utah to stay with College of Charleston’s Geology Field studies. I hope to get some footage for Tim, my boss for some promo videos for the college.

I’ll update soon.

Stay tuned: Next Parawan, Utah then through Las Vegas to Death Valley and hopefull land in Monterey California and stay in San Fran.

The hardest part about the trip is not being able to filter oil properly. We just don’t have the time and the temperature is just too cold to filter it in any reasonable amount of time.

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