WEEK 19 - DURANGO, COLORDO TO MT RUSHMORE - thursday 2 and friday 3 september 2010

thursday today and we awoke to another lovely crisp morning, so nice to wake up and its cool, not a sauna outside! [although everyone thought i was weird for wearing a dress in 17 degrees, but its sunny, and it will warm up :)

we headed down to the main local shops and got amazing coffee from the durango coffee shop with josh, maude and mark.

we headed back to the hostel to pack up and say goodbye to everyone, they are all so nice, and we left with promises to visit each other one day :)

joseph has headed down to do our laundry, while i sit here at the hostel and work on the blog and back up all my photos. then we are off to mt rushmore. its a 13 hour drive there, so we will be sleeping in the car again [yay!]

oh and i took some photos of the hostel we stayed in the Homedown Hostel. it is awesome. if you ever come to stay in Durango, this is definately the best place to stay! 10 out of 10!

at 12.30 we finally hit the road, joseph has returned with our clean washing and snacks for the roadtrip. the route we are taking is through the mountains in colorado [forgotten what they are called], but we are driving east on the US550, then north on the I70 to Denver, and sleep somewhere at a truck stop in Denver.

Check out the scenery of our drive, and jsut imagine driving at 7500ft elevation, with a terrain like a huge Kaimai Ranges that goes on for two sets of 2-3 hours!

we reached the truck stop, grabbed some subway for dinner, then decided to drive another  90km north to a quieter truck stop, and slept there. 

we bought a powerpoint charger for the car, so we can charge the laptop, batteries and ipods while we are on our 10 day road trip in the middle of nowhere, its so cool! its going to come in very handy at home i think! :)

friday today and we awoke to a VERY crisp morning! its only 2 degrees inside the car bbbbrrrrrrr!!!!!! we are now experiencing NZ temperatures at night, so you guys can feel a bit better that we are feeling a tiny bit of NZ winter :) the days are hating up to aroudn 30 degrees with a nice fresh breeze, so its alot more bearable than the muggy east coast!

we stopped at a gas station for our morning coffee to go with our cheerios, then hit the road! we are driving north on the I25, and we reached Mt Rushmore at around 1.30pm.

Its free to visit the monument, but $10 to park, but its a really nice flash new car park, so its ok. We went in and i started photographing our way up the path that leads you to the big giant heads, and this guy stops me and says, ‘you can get a better view if you go up closer’. really? wow, thanks, i didnt realise. oh well, at least he was trying to be nice! [do any other photographers get that? you stick your camera infront of your face, whether it be socially or whilst your working, and suddenly everyones your art director! lol]

anyway, the random man was right, of course it looks better up close, so heres a few pics for you

then we hit the Presidential Trail, and walked around the monument below,there are signs that tell you stuff about each president. there was also a free tour guide that was speaking when we got to the roosevelt stop, and he was telling everyone the history of how he became president, its really interesting, you should google it!

then i decided to give myself a chllenge. how many different ways can i take the same photo? so here is mt rushmore from every angle i could be bothered to find [im sure theres more, but im feeling a bit lazy :) ]

at the end of the trail theres the art house place, that shows you the technique of how they created the faces in the rocks with dynamite and drills. so amazing. these guys are hanging off the side of a cliff with only one bar or rope thingy holding them, eeee!

we then headed back to teh car to go grab a very late lunch, yum, dine in pizza hut, shouldnt be eating it, but i took an anti-sore tummy pill before i ate it and it seemed to work! yum yum, disgusting fatty food :) next stop, starbucks. why? free wifi! weve got a contract with T-mobile for calls, texts and internet that we can tether to the laptop, so that we can have internet everywhere we go, since i am still keeping in touch with my lovely clients, but it is such CRAPPY coverage, that we have had no signal since austin! not impressed! and we cant switch phone companies, because T-mobile is the only company that has open ended contracts with a sim card. anyway, we chilled there for an hour or two, i updated my blog, and sent a bunch of emails and skyped a few people, joseph did the same on his iphone. next stop, find a shower, since our last one was on thursday morning, and its now friday night, and baby wipe ‘showers’ at the truck stops only do so much! we went to the local YMCA and we were able to use their showers, soooo nice! then we cruised off onto the I90 to find a truck stop/rest stop to sleep in.