Poltergeist - Memories from the South Pacific

I woke up this morning, Halloween of all days, with a funny memory in my head. It's nice to wake up with a smile. I thought I'd share it with you all. This is not really following with our road trip but more of a throwback to our sailing days. Full of long lost pictures! Enjoy!! 

Rumbling volcano of Mount Yasur in the background. Loved the island of Tanna, Vanuatu. 2011

Texas - Part Two - Yup... still hot as heck!

We headed up the highway from Austin to Arlington for Six Flags Over Texas. The first park in the Six Flags "collection". We we're excited but were also dreading the heat and sticky mess the day would leave us in.

This is gonna be AMAZING!! Six Flags Over Texas, Arlington, Texas, USA

Arlington is a funny little spot nestled between Fort Worth and Dallas, where it houses a large overflow of stadiums and industrial parks that continue to grow and expand in Texas. Space isn't exactly at a premium here, where you can just build out instead of building up. Arlington is home to AT&T stadium, home of the NFL team, the Dallas Cowboys (boooo) and Globe Life Park, home of the baseball team, the Texas Rangers. It also is home to the American Chapter of MENSA, a large GM assembly plant and the International Bowling Campus (which I didn't even know was a thing...) This includes the American Bowling Congress (wait... what??), the International Bowling Museum and the International Bowling Hall of Fame... yes seriously. There. You learned something today. Well done.

Texas - Toasty ... Far too toasty

Taking the not-so-main highway through New Mexico, en route to Texas, was fairly rough. Like really bumpy. There was literally a line in the road when we crossed over into Texas and the road was instantly 1000 times better. So there's that...

The landscape through New Mexico and Texas was dotted with snake-like pipelines, refineries spurting their ever glowing flames, giant trucks taking oil to where ever, sad looking cows and dust. Lots of dust. The silhouette of the forever churning oil wells against the perfect blue sky just kept going until the horizon eventually gave way to the curvature of the earth and even then... the flat land kept going. I'm sure of it. It's everything I dreamed this part of the country could be. It was also really freaking hot! Which you'll find is a reoccurring theme from most of our trip, but Texas takes the cake. The 110°+ temperatures mixed with high humidity made things fairly miserable. It was so hot that the median on the interstate spontaneously burst into flames! I'm serious! Here's a picture!

Spontaneous fire in the median on the Interstate in Texas...

Carlsbad Caverns - What a "Batty" place!

**SIDE NOTE TO START: Well hello again!! Now that we're back in Seattle and our trip is done (sadface) I'll have time to sit down and write. My goal is to pop out a blog post every other day. No promises... but I'll add extra pictures because I love you and you're all awesome! Enjoy!!**

After sweating our butts off in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Carlsbad, New Mexico, we woke up early and raced out to Carlsbad Caverns National Park before the Visitors Center opened. This National Park works a bit differently as it's really just the caves. There aren't many trails above ground to hike on and really... I'm not sure you'd want to. The environment is hostile with malicious looking cacti and terrain littered with steep drops, cracks in the earth and loose, dry soil and rocks giving way at any moment make the way perilous. Throw poisonous snakes, scorpions and tarantulas into the mix and I think I'm good on the not walking around part!

Entrance to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, White City, New Mexico, US

Oh Hello! - yes we're still alive

So... we've been busy. I'm sorry we haven't been in touch.

Yes, we're still alive.
Yes, we're still traveling.
Yes, we're still loving it.
And no, we don't want to stop.

We're currently in Nova Scotia en route to Sydney to catch the ferry to Newfoundland.

We’ve gone from the West Coast and taken the long way round to get to the Eastern most part of North America. It's wonderful to be home again after 2.5 years away and there's so much to see, so many to visit and so much to catch up on. It'll be a whirlwind for sure and worth every moment.

We have many tales to tell but we've been going flat out all day, every day. We're a little over a month behind on the blog. Please forgive us. We'll work on updating things as soon as we get a breather. Just wanted to check in and let you all know we're doing great and haven't forgotten about you!

Till next time - fair winds my friends!

Marsha and Geoff

Mesa Verde - A stumble through time

We've been lucky enough to travel to many places around the globe. We've seen the ruins in Rome and Athens. We've wandered through the walled cities in Croatia and explored the massive Hindu and Buddhist temples in Indonesia. And I've gazed upon the pyramids and temples in both Egypt and Mexico. But we were in for a completely different experience at Mesa Verde National Park.

Mesa Verde protects and preserves some of the best Ancestral Puebloan archeological sites in the world. The Ancient Pueblo peoples farmed up on top of the mesa and as they grew in size they needed more land to grow on so they needed to move from on top of the mesa to... well... somewhere else that was close by. So they chose to build their villages and homes into the cliffs. The park itself has over 4,300 archeological sites, including over 600 cliff dwellings. We were lucky enough to explore 3 of these.

Long House, Mesa Verde National Park, CO

Canyonlands and Colorado

After our time in Arches National Park, we were ready for something new. Utah has been good to us and we didn't get to see everything but it's time to move on. Our goal for the day was to make it to Cortez, Colorado. A whole new state! But before crossing the state-line we needed to check out one last National Park, Canyonlands.

Canyonlands is not the most accessible National Park and it will probably be kept that way. Many roads in the park are unpaved and there are next to no services inside the park. If you're into backcountry hiking and camping, this is the National Park for you. The park itself is split into 4 districts that are not connected: Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze and the rivers, Green and Colorado. We chose to check out the Needles portion.

Chillin in chilly AC of the van. Canyonlands National Park, Utah