6-6 After a REALLY brief stop in the grand canyon we headed towards Bryce Canyon but took a "scenic" route through Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. The path was rugged to say the least. Inches of sand and huge hills. The only thing out there seemed to be little antelope, well that is except for the "one" person we saw the whole time. Chris had been biking for nearly 30 miles and started back towards his car but it was almost impossible to bike the path so was basically stranded. We were lucky enough to come by him and pick him up....he was grateful to say the least.

June 6th...departed phoenix arizona and went to the grand canyon....thanks to a great tip we started to find the "back" entrance into the park....due to a little misunderstanding we ended up a little of the trail and had to camp a night back country...which is where we got a picture of the mule deer...next morning we found our way to the grand canyon...first thing we saw was none other than a bus from the home town of Nate (meridian mississippi)...the rest of the grand canyon went as planned with amazing sites and all....

June 2 - June 6 was spent in the incredibly hot phoenix arizona...we were graciously housed by Faye and Jan...had a great time in phoenix playing a dice game called farkle...watching the nearly tame humming bird in their back yard...eating at IHOP with my extended family...going to a ballet (not pictured)....and finally going to a diamondbacks baseball game (happens that the philadelphia phillies were playing them and yes the phillies won! 4-3)

Phoenix Continued



 

June 1st...entering another two states...first we went through New Mexico for a brief time and then entered the desert of Arizona....the first night we spent in Arizona was spent in between Tuscon and Phoenix in a tent ....needless to say it was quite warm

Driving from Austin to El Paso was a very contemplative time consisting of a whole lot of nothing...i was anticipating huge ranches of longhorns but there was really no signs of life for hundreds of miles....just vast skies with huge puffy clouds....el paso was quite interesting, it is at some points less than a 1/4 mile from the mexican city of ciudad juarez....this was quite evident especially because i think that we were the only non hispanic people in the entire city....also there were many cars from the mexican province

Austin Continued.....the river that ran next to our hostel in austin was very interesting the city would open and close the dam and create tides on the river if you can see in the morning the dock was well out of the water and then at night it was completely submerged....also in austin is one of the worlds largest bat colonies in an urban setting, under this bridge there are nearly a million bats which live and they all fly out at the same time every night

Austin Texas...capital of the state of texas (interesting that the capital building is several feet larger then the national..always must be bigger in texas)....one of the funniest pictures of bush ever was hanging in the wall of governors in the capital building (he always is smirking!)....also saw the stadium which is home to the national champion texas longhorns!

Entering into the "country" of texas!...one of our first stickers on the truck "don't mess with texas"....never have seen a state road mile marker as large as we saw in texas and we went all the way across

New Orleans continued....some pictures of the more somber side of new orleans...notice the water marks on the houses...also the x's which were used by the rescue teams to keep track of damage and casualties....still much work to be done

New Orleans French Quarter (may 27)...looks like the saints will be back for the start of the 2006 NFL season, mmm beignets, amazing free jazz