Robbert in the US!: november 2012

The Roadtrip Stats

For those interested here are the statistics of the trip:

Total Miles Driven: 3093.6

Day 1: 272
Day 2: 263
Day 3: 164
Day 4: 247
Day 5: 103
Day 6: 284
Day 7: 222
Day 8: 48
Day 9: 369
Day 10: 65
Day 11: 282
Day 12: 203
Day 13: 480
Day 14: 64
Day 15: 27 (drop off of Jeroen at airport)
Total States Visited
7 (California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas)

Total National Parks/Monuments Visited
6 (Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Mesa Verde, Bandelier, White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns)

Total Main Cities Visited
5 (Los Angeles, CA; Las Vegas, NV; Denver, CO; Santa Fe, NM; Dallas, TX)

Most Nights At One Hotel Chain
4 (Motel 6; last four nights)

Time Zones Crossed
3 (Pacific, Mountain, Central)

Times Fallen Asleep Behind The Steering Wheel
2 (just joking ;) )

Cameras Used For The Photos On The Blog
1 (iPhone 4s)

And there it is.... Texas!!!

Today the home stretch to Plano, TX. Also the longest day of driving: almost 500 miles.

But home is still many hours away....

Lunch stop at Big Apple Deli in Snyder, TX

The sink in the bathroom. Original. :-)

The coffee shop next door

And then we realized we had entered another time zone and lost an hour because of the "earlier" sunset, which created fantastic skies:

We will stay at a motel for the coming two days to explore Dallas tomorrow (Tuesday). Jeroen leaves on Wednesday morning and after dropping him of at the airport I will go to my new apartment to pick up the key and have the movers deliver my household goods...

Carlsbad Caverns

We also added a visit to the Caverns at Carlsbad, NM. I have seen caves in my life but this one was definitely impressive because the main room is so huge!

"The Chinese Theater"

White Sands National Monument

A lot of gypsum...

Robbert & Jeroen

My feet

Any guess where we are and what this is?

Alamogordo - Lunch

Typical wall art at the Brown Bag Deli in Alamogordo.

Award winning pigs

Santa Fe - Alamogordo

The drive is getting more and more monotone (read: boring :-) )

4 hours with a lot of "straight ahead"

Quick coffee stop at a local place in Corona, NM

Santa Fe, NM

After Bandelier we drove to Santa Fe to enjoy the State Capital in the afternoon. Some impressions of the art in Santa Fe below.

Espanola - Bandelier National Monument

We stayed overnight in Espanola, NM. The dinner place we found on Yelp did not exist anymore (now a cash advance place), so we ended op at Chili's. After dinner we tried to find a place to have a drink, but the only thing open was a very smokey casino. So we decided to buy some drinks at the gas station.

The next day we went to Bandelier National Monument. A place where, just like in Mesa Verde NP, cliff dwellings and petroglyphs have been found. Very interesting.

The Ancestral Pueblo people lived in homes built of carved blocks of volcanic tuff. On the photo the remains of a village.

See the houses on the left hand side?

Jeroen checking out a "home"

The little holes in the wall indicate how many floors (roofs) there used to be.

New Mexico!

Today was a long driving day (7 hours of driving). We took the scenic route but still we could not avoid taking a quick nap in the car. We entered New Mexico and before going to our motel in Espanola, we visited the sanctuary in Chimayo which is seen as the "Lourdes of the US". In a little room in the back of the church there is a whole in the floor with dirt that is considered to have healing power.

El Sanctuario de Chimayo

"Holy Dirt"

Denver, CO

Denver is a great city. My visit started with the the concert of Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan. They happened to have the concert the night of arrival and I could not resist going :-)