After Texas.....

I know we're probably confusing you by posting things out of order (writings, pictures and videos all coming at you in different orders), but we started off by mainly wanting to type stuff... then after a while realised that we wanted to show you all some photos.... then after a while realised that we wanted to show you some of the video blogs.

So if you bear with us we'll TRY to catch up the texts, pics and vids all together by the time we leave this place. (we'll try!!)

Anyway... after Texas we headed up towards Colorado Springs, but this was way too much to do in one day so we ended up stopping overnight in Raton, New Mexico. We LOVED this part of the trip. Firstly, we ended up driving alongside one of those huge freight trains that seem to be endlessly criss-crossing this country. That was very cool to have this thing alongside us for a while. These trains are ridiculously long... they seem to go on forever! The landscape was very stark, but great to drive through. Very interesting and dramatic in parts. Deserty and scrub-like.

Raton, New Mexico was great... it had an old 1950's feel that we'd been hoping to see some of. There were old signs for hotels and other places that looked like they hadn't been changed in years... and we loved that. We walked around this town for a while, took some photos and vids, and camped overnight.

The next day we left for Colorado Springs. Cripple Creek to be precise. We planned to see the small ex-mining town (now mainly gambling) as we wanted to see a town that still had the layout of an old mining town with one main street... but we ended up not having the time to do this.

We camped in a site that was just a few miles from the town, and the drive to get there (right up in the mountains) was SCARY! Very thin roads... and very steep! We had visions of ending up like the end of the movie the Italian Job, with the coach hanging over the side of the road! But after a while we got to the campsite. (the drive WAS beautiful though... so we're not complaining now that we're safe. We're glad we did it!)

The campsite was right up in the hills, surrounded by nothing but mountains and glorious views. And dead silence. We bought some marshmallows (a kit, which came with sticks, chocolate and a list of campfire songs!) and even though it was really cold, we stayed up into the night toasting marshmallows on the campfire that we lit, under the stars.

It was one of the best (and coldest) times we've ever had. We kept looking at each other in between the giggles, saying "it doesn't get much better than this, does it?". We loved that night... even if we WERE frozen at the end of it!

The following morning we didn't really have time to go to the town of Cripple Creek, which was a shame, but we needed to get to Rapid City, to see Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse monument and Devil's Tower.

But you can read about those in the next post!

Darren