"It's only 40 miles away so we might as well take a detour"

Further to my last post in which I kept you all enraptured with my geekiness, I thought I would explain that we do know where we are sleeping each night (and most stops are more than one night) but we tend to decide en route any activities on the day we do them or sometimes the night before. The 500+ mile stints have caused us to lose a bit of perspective on distances, though. Somewhere that we have just read about in a pamphlet or been recommended by a local is suddenly "just down the road" when it is less than 50 miles away. Sometimes it has worked out:

Chimayo

This little place in New Mexico is apparently the "Lourdes of America". Chimayo has holy dirt which you rub on places that hurt and it gets fixed.  Not sure how I feel about charging $2 for holy water or $3.50 for holy dirt but I'm sure the chapel needed a new roof or something. It was very nice little place though. Very relaxing and on holy days they do reenactments which look very good if you are into that sort of thing. So if you are in the area it's worth popping in.  G says the espresso there was terrible and the coffee shop owner tried to sell him a wood carving for $4500.

Four Corners Monument.

So there is one place in the USA where 4 states meet (for those not familiar with the US check out a map and all the straight borders between states): The Four Corners Monument:

C - "We'll pop over to Four Corners for dinner."
G - "Why are we going again?"
C- "Well we can be in four states at once, there is a thing on the ground"
G- "And this is a thing that people do, is it?"

Well it certainly was a thing. It is situated on Navajo land and is a monument on the ground.

I do think it is quite cool. But not $5 per person cool and we didn't get a dinner either (the overpriced indian fry bread trailer was closed). But we were in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado all at the same time (but although it is the recognised monument, it is apparently 2000 ft out according to official surveyors).

So sometimes the result of these 80 mile detours is that I have to be quiet for at least 10 minutes whilst G has his Grumpy McGrump Grump face on.
 
(We had Pizza and then he was happy again.) 

On the dusty road

So we have now done over 3500 miles in the Jeep (AKA The Donkey). To give you some context Liverpool to New York is approx 3300 miles.

We wanted to experience the diverse landscapes and history of this country (we are in state number 8 now). The routes helpfully identify scenic overlooks, historical markers and lots of other things which we pull over to digest and click away. Lots of the "pull-overs" are linked with each other, telling a story as we drive with the result that we are learning an awful lot about this country.

Throughout Idaho, Montana and Wyoming we followed the story of the Nez Perce Tribe who did not want to give up their ancestral lands and move to a reservation. In 1877 they were pursued for over 1100 miles by the US army as they tried to get to sanctuary in Canada. After a 5 day battle they surrendered a mere 40 miles from the Canadian border.

We have also been following the adventures of Lewis and Clark (No not the one with Mr Cain). Captain Lewis and 2nd Lt Clark were commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to take a group of Army volunteers to map and explore the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. So map and explore they did for over 2 years and were the first Americans to see Yellowstone and Montana. It really brings home how "young" parts of this country are and how vastly different its history is to our own.

So, to demonstrate that driving is part of the adventure too:

And a few of the views from the overlooks or just the side of the road:

Incidentally, the longest we have gone without seeing another car is is 60 miles/50 minutes (and that was at 4 in the afternoon).  It's a big place, that America.

Musings- this is what happens when you get me up in the morning

Everything I had heard or read about Vancouver for the last decade or so meant that I was very much expecting a clean, green and socially aware city.  Whilst here I have learnt that the city has pledged to try to be the worlds greenest city by 2020.
Buses are electric, restaurants and events have bike valets (when we went to foodcartfest it was free). Events try to be zero impact and have staff manning the recycling bins sorting your rubbish.
Our tour of Granville Island showed that becoming green is led from the top and has filtered down. This bit of water -False Creek- was utterly polluted and it is only since the late 90's that a lot of the wildlife has been restored and only then in the last couple of years that it has been clean enough to paddle in. A brilliant achievement.

A solution to planning restrictions: call your house a boat and float it next to where you want to be.

However, Vancouver was not the clean city I was expecting. It had an awful lot of litter, particularly in the public spaces. It also has a large number of homeless people. I read in the paper yesterday that the mayor had failed to meet his target to reduce the number of homeless in the city. By way of comparison: Vancouver has a pop of 600k+ and Liverpool 400k+ yet the homeless figure in Vancouver (1700+) is disproportionately larger than that of Liverpool. Homelessness is of course an issue everywhere, it just took me somewhat by surprise in Vancouver because of my expectations around the city. I fully understand that to tackle the issue we need to deal with the causes, particularly assisting those with mental health issues who don't have anyone to fight for them. Maybe it is easier to donate time and money to things like cancer charities, perhaps because someone we love has experienced it or perhaps even because we think we will experience it, whereas homelessness is something that we don't have to think about? I am certainly more aware because of my friend Rachel which has impacted on my behaviour. G and I wondered what conversations the families visiting the Gastown area were having with their children as there were numerous people approaching everyone asking for money. I don't remember ever having such conversation with my parents, and I am not sure I even saw a homeless person till I went to university. Hopefully this brilliant city of Vancouver might come up with something.

We started talking about this trip in the summer of 2013 and we started saving New Year 2014. As some of you know because we are hitting everywhere peak time we chose to lose the spontaneity with booking most of our accommodation. Although we are of course on a budget this is not a budget backpacker-type trip.  I have felt the need to keep good karma and I have struggled with first world guilt on occasions while booking things (boy I sound like bloody hard work, don't I?) with the result that we have donated the equivalent of 3% of the whole cost of our trip to various causes. We know we are very lucky and privileged to be able to take 10 months off to go on this adventure.

I shall leave you with some photos from Vancouver: