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Chris & Kates BIG Adventure
Hello everyone,
Firstly i'd like to say CONGRATULATIONS to Mr and Mrs Wilson who have become the proud parents to a very handsome Callum Wilson x.
We have finished our soccer camps in Springfield, it was good to have a base for 6 weeks and we met loads of lovely people. We managed to get to a little place called Florence in Northampton before we left. A very hippy town, needless to say the trend continued with there being 5 women to 1 man, with the "7 sister" all girl colleges around it was only to be expected. We stayed in a great place called " The Knoll" an 1800 manor house that had been owned by the same family for the last 45years. No t.v's, peace and quiet, bone china tea sets, 17 acres of land, big wooden stair cases and roll top baths, we had a great time, saw a Cajun band, ate Morocan and Tibetan food great fun.
Then we left and got our flight to San Diego. We are staying in a place called Ocean Beach, the oldest hippy beach left in California, and hippy it is, food markets, music, clothes stores, awesome antique shops with some real wacky stuff in. We are staying with Zach a really great guy that Chris went hiking with in Napal. We kindly lent us his pick up truck and off we went to the Grand Canyon with sleeping bags in the back and a stove. Well need i say anymore, for me this was the best week of our trip so far. I have never seen scenery like this. Just pure Arizona desert, flat, barron, dry lifeless land all around us, it was quite a daunting place to be. We drove up Route 66 the old highway and found ourselves feeding donkeys in the mountains. Oatman was an almost untouched tiny cowboy town with a bar and a sign that said "Welcome to Oatman and Thankyou for visiting Oatman" all on the same sign, very funny. Then we got to the Canyon and no amount of National Geographical photos, or documentaries could prepare us for the shear size, colours, sounds, or shapes that this place had. It was awesome, billions of years of different layers of rocks, the earth had literally split in two, incrediable. We opened up the back of our truck, cracked open some red wine and watched the sunset, the canyon completely changed its colours and became a mass of shapes in the darkness. We camped out that night, made our pasta and veg on the stove and slept on our blow up mattress, and yes there were plenty on huge black hairy spiders crawling around. Up at 5.30am we drove to the watch tower, climbed to the edge of the mountain and watched the sunrise. The canyon completely came to life. The sun crept around the curves of the mountain, and from dark purple and blues it was alive with oranges, yellows, and reds. I am not a particulary religious person but when you see something like that it does make you think. Funny that while we were watching that, Chris's new nephew was being born, definatly the start of a new day. We managed to do a 4 hour hike down the mountain. It is a completley different place when you are amongst it all. We could feel the lack of oxygen at the top 6,000 feet above sea level so as we got further down it go alot easier. The trip back up was not so pleasent, but with deep breaths and pigeon steps we made it back up.
Once we had got everything together we started our trip towards the " Devils playground" viva Las Vegas. We got a $50p/n room in the Imperial Palace. With all good intentions of seeing all the hotels and shows unfortunatly we got "stuck" in a bar from 1pm - 10pm and only just made it out by a nice policeman guiding us back to our room, i had no idea where abouts our room was in the maze of 7000 rooms, 4 casinos and untold restaurants, great night. We ate in the Bellagio, saw the fountains, won $1.50 on the slots machines, did a little shopping and soaked up the crazy atmosphere, there was nothing to want for, it is all there on a plate for you to have, it just depends on how much of it you want. After 2 days and pampering ourselves we headed out of Vegas back to San Diego. It seemed a long drive home but after a visit to a very randon 1950's Peggy Sue diner in the middle of the desert we were off again. This place was wicked a real old fashoned diner, dressed up waitresses, pictures of Elvis and wax work figures all over the place, very sureal. So now we are back in San Diego. I hope you have enjoyed our travel diary as much as i have enjouyed writing it and sharing the experience with everyone. We have gots loads of photos that we are in the process of updating so you can see what we saw. Well thats it for now, take care and lots of love, Kate and Chris xxx
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