Mississippi

It was hilarious when a waitress in Mississippi said to us (veeeery slowly and with such a true Southern drawl!) "I like the way y'all talk" :-) the accents down here are awesome! We have both successfully modified our speech to S-L-O-W so that we are understood and so far we haven't encountered any problems.

Mississippi was a real education on the Civil War - we spent a lot of time at Vicksburg, which was the site of a pivotal battle in mid 1863 as the Union (north) was trying to take control of the Mississippi River (a lifeline for the South, and therefore the Confederates). It was the last remaining city on the river to fall to the Union, and this was only after a 47 day siege. We'll hit more Civil War 'stuff' when we are a bit further north and east.




Well, not quite like going home, but pretty cool to be in Mississippi!




Vicksburg National Military Park - the cannons are on the Union side and you can see the Confederate trenches beyond the Union's.

The USS Cairo - a Union gunboat that was sunk by the Confederates in Dec 1862 just near Vicksburg, and before the town was captured. It was raised in 1964, and it was amazing to see the relics that came up with the boat.

View of the Mississippi from the Vicksburg Cemetery - 17,000 Union soldiers are buried there, 13,000 of them are unknown with just numbers on the grave markers.

That Great Mississippi River

Louisiana

Lousiana was HOT!! We drove through some wild weather in Texas and thought we had escaped the worst by the time we arrived in Lousiana, only to be told that it was following us :-) Our first tent site actually had a little shed for us to put our tent under, so evidently they are prepared for the weather and know how to handle it :-) We loved checking out the amazing plantation homes along the Mississippi River, and had a great day in New Orleans exploring the French Quarter and chilling to some jazz at an open street cafe.



State No. 9 for this trip :-)





We hit some pretty strong wind in Lafayette! Fortunately this died down after about 1/2 an hour, and then the muggy heat returned.

The Great Mississippi River - very high, you can only see the tops of the trees here. We were standing on a 41' levee bank too! The river flows very fast.

Cottaway Home - this home was finished in 1859 after 4 years of construction, and miraculously survived the Civil War (rumour has it that an Army Lieutenant on a Union gunboat asked the ship's Captain to stop firing in the direction of the house, and even disembarked to make sure the "lady of the house" was okay!). There are 64 rooms in the house, 150 doors (all 11' each!), and ceilings of 15 1/2'. There were even flushing toilets, and running hot and cold water through all levels of the house - exceptionally advanced for the mid-1800's!

Oak Alley Plantation Home - 28 oak trees that are close to 300 years old line the approach to this amazing home.

New Orleans - people truly do just appear out of nowhere and start playing in the middle of the park! This was such a "New Orleans" moment.

Jackson Square, New Orleans. This is the site that the United States officially took control of Louisiana as part of the "Louisiana Purchase". We have had a great time learning lots of history as we've been travelling, and this piece of Louisiana history was pretty cool.

French Quarter, New Orleans

Great little band and a guest from the crowd jamming together

Texas

Ah, Texas. We may have only been there four nights but heard more "y'all"s than you can poke a stick at! We loved it :-) and the people are some of the friendliest we have ever met. It's a massive state - they proudly were their own country for 9 years before joining the USA back in the 1830's and 1840's) - and like so many other places we've been to, you could spend a long time here. We spent our time down south, visiting Big Bend National Park, San Antonio and Austin before driving through Houston on our way to Louisiana. Unfortunately we didn't see many longhorn cattle, but we did see plenty of lone stars and steaks!




On the drive to Big Bend National Park.....nothing like a good straight road to tell you where you're going :-)



Big Bend National Park (down in the south-west of Texas, bordering Mexico)

Big Bend

Big Bend

Santa Elena Canyon, Big Bend. This is a cool area, the canyon wall on the left is Mexico and the wall on the right is Texas. The Rio Grande river that cuts through the canyon also separates the two countries. Fairly tough terrain though, we didn't see any dodgy border crossings taking place here :-) About 10 miles out of the park, though, we did have to stop at the US border patrol so they could make sure we hadn't stowed any Mexicans in the bullet. We were just so excited that someone asked us to show them what was under the frame, they were suitably impressed with our travel arrangement!!

Just had to include this to show you that we have come a long way from eating in the car to escape the pouring rain! On our way out of Big Bend.

This is at our campground in San Antonio at night.....charging the computer and this frog suddenly appeared on the screen!! Hilarious :-)

An iconic and proud building for every Texan - the Alamo (San Antonio). We spent a few hours here and really learnt a lot about the history behind the Alamo, including a bit about Davy Crockett (who allegedly died here with a hundred or so others when the Alamo was stormed by the Mexicans on March 6, 1836) and James Bowie, who the bowie knife is most likely named after. The Texans lost the battle at the Alamo on that day, but the battle cry of "Remember The Alamo" sustained them for a crushing victory over the Mexicans 6 weeks later that lead to Texas becoming its own country for the next 9 years. Okay, enough history now!

San Antonio River Walk

The highlight of Austin for tourists is probably the live music scene. However, we arrived on the Monday of a long weekend and all the music joints were recovering from a very busy weekend! The other fun thing about Austin though is heading down to the river to watch 750,000-1,000,000 bats fly out at dusk in an amazing formation to hunt for insects. In an hour, 1 bat will consume at least 600 mosquitos each! Hopefully you can see the bats that are not only close up, but also the black spots in the distance....there are also squillions of bats!

New Mexico

There isn't that much that happens in New Mexico....but we still found some good stuff to look at while we drove through on our way to Texas from Arizona. Weather was quite warm but we managed to hit a lot of rain and storms as you can see from the photos. The highlight of New Mexico for us was certainly the White Dunes National Monument, which is down in the south and was an amazing collection of sand dunes that come from gypsum leaching into nearby sandstone mountains and this white white sand collects in dunes very randomly. Very very dry there, and nearby is where they tested the atomic bombs that were later dropped on Japan.










White Dunes National Monument

White Dunes National Monument

Cool storm clouds heading into Las Cruces, New Mexico

Possibly our favourite tent site so far, we even had a kick of the footy here!!

Arizona

We had a great time in Arizona, spending two days at the Grand Canyon and travelling from the North Rim to the South Rim of the Canyon. The South Rim is much more popular (and accessible), and receives around 4.5 million visitors each year, whereas the North Rim only has 500,000 visitors a year. The South is quite spectacular, but we really enjoyed spending time at the North and experiencing the Canyon from a different perspective. The drive from one rim to the other was great as well, it was pretty cool to see the Canyon that is carved so deeply down into the earth, and to then see the cliffs rising up from the earth.



We actually crossed through Arizona on our way to Nevada from California, and met the same people at both the Arizona and Nevada border crossings! Meant we could take pictures for each other, the self-take got a break :-)


Grand Canyon from the North Rim. The Bright Angel Canyon is the large canyon in the middle of the picture. There are later pics of the same canyon from the South Rim.

On the drive from the North Rim to the South Rim, we passed these amazingly red cliffs (Vermillion Cliffs) and stopped for lunch. We still haven't found many open grassy areas to kick the footy, but we are diligently carrying the Sherrin with us and look forward to putting it to use!

Vermillion Cliffs National Monument

The Colorado River, looking a lot calmer than it does at the Level 10 rapids down in the Canyon. This was from the Navajo Nation, on the road from the North to the South Rim.

On the Bright Angel Trail in the South Rim. The Bright Angel Canyon is straight ahead. There were many warnings about hiking down into the Canyon, and it is impossible (well, not very sensible!) to go down to the river and back in the one day. We were happy to hike along at our own leisure :-) going up certainly was more difficult than going down!

On the Bright Angel Canyon trail

Looking back down to the Bright Angel Canyon trail - compare this one to the photo earlier and you can see that we were down a fair way.

Our shoes and legs after our hike....we were filthy!! The trail we hiked was incredibly dry and was very powder-like in its texture.....and also very red!

Further around the South Rim, looking into the Grand Canyon. It truly is an awesome sight, and definitely deserves the hype that it gets.

Utah

Utah looks like an absolutely amazing state. There is so much to see there and we were only able to touch the surface, but we really enjoyed what we saw. Zion National Park had some amazing rock formations, with brilliant colours, and we also got a small taste of what Bryce Canyon would look like from our campsite. If there is a next time, I think we could spend a good two weeks exploring this part of the States!


Racking up the border photos



Zion National Park

Zion National Park

The view we woke up to at our campsite

Nevada

Nevada means one thing to most people.....Vegas, baby!! We spent 3 days in Las Vegas, and unfortunately for Nevada that's all that we were able to spend in this very hot state. We did lots of walking and checked out the many casinos...which were packed at every hour of the day and night.



The compulsory border crossing photo!



Our night on the tear :-)

View of Las Vegas Blvd from the south looking north.

California - South

California - South part II was LA to Vegas via the Joshua Tree National Park, and the start of some very hot weather!! The Joshua Trees were awesome, and the rock formations there were incredible. In Spring the trees send up one single bloom and it's amazing how unusual the makeup of the trees are. Like so many places we have seen, it's hard to capture it all in pictures but we're trying!



Joshua Trees and rocks




A Joshua Tree close up

Ben the mountain goat

The sign says "No Swimming" - my face says "What the?! Where would I swim here??!!" There was once a dam here but given the very hot temperatures, and 2-5 inches of rain a year, it's pretty much dried up!

Cholla Cactus Garden - some of the prickliest little things we've ever come across!

Route 66, baby!!! Classic shot of the bullet and one of the most famous landmarks in the States

The second part of our California adventure has included Yosemite, more of the Californian coast, and Disneyland.
Yosemite was simply amazing, the scenery was jaw-dropping and the weather, FINALLY, was fabulous :-) We did a big hike on our first day to the top of the Yosemite Falls and had spectacular views on the way up, and right at the very top down into the Valley. On day two we went to Glacier Point, on the opposite side of the Valley to the Falls, and had excellent views of the Valley from a different perspective. Yosemite truly has been a highlight of our trip so far.


The Bullet busting through some rocks this time!




Lower Yosemite Falls

View down to Yosemite Village and the Valley from the top of Yosemite Falls

View from Yosemite Point (beyond the top of Yosemite Falls) down into the Valley, including the very dominant Half Dome

Looking over to Yosemite Falls from Glacier Point

Looking further around the Valley from Glacier Point, with Half Dome on the right

Mirror Lake

Heading down Highway 1 in California, towards LA

Lunch in the sun!! We have had great weather since hitting Yosemite :-)

Stinky elephant seals - the beach was covered in them!

A Disneyland moose! Hoping it's not the only one we see :-)

Standing outside the "It's A Small World" ride, Disneyland

Joining the Mad Hatter for his tea party :-)

Even big kids have fun at Disneyland!