part one

It’s been a long time coming, 

In two months it will be a year since we left for this trip. It was during a time where so many amazing life changing things were happening. 

I was very nervous when we first left for the trip. It was a long drive to St.Louis and I was worried that the trip wouldn’t be as amazing as I had imagined it being.We watched the sun rise behind the gateway arch and then had breakfast at an Ihop. Everyone was talking about a snowstorm that was on the way and how lucky we were to be leaving. It was my turn to drive, I drove from St. Louis to the end of Oklahoma. It was a very dull drive and I struggled with staying awake. 

We switched drivers and soon we were in Texas and the sun was starting to set. The wind was strong and the typical tumble weeds were being blown across the highway. My nervousness left me and I was excited again. We had watched the sunrise in St.Louis and watched it set in Texas. 

This trip was purposely planned vaguely so it would be more like an adventure. We found a rest stop in Amarillo and began to set up our sleeping bags in the back of the car. The wind never ceased and it was very cold. I barely slept and when the sun came up, it was hard to crawl out of the sleeping bag and into the cold. We had breakfast at a Mcdonalds that was attached to a truck stop. 

We had lots of places that we wanted to see and only a week to do it all. Most of the places we had planned to go to, we only saw a photo or two of so I started to doubt that going to the Palo Duro Canyon would be worth it. It was a good drive off  the highway and we had to get to New Mexico that day too.

 We decided to go anyway and we arrived before the park opened. We took some photos of a small canyon just outside the park and we were the first in. It was still very cold, but we parked the car and ran down the first trail and I was standing in front of a huge canyon surrounded by frosted trees and the sun was just barely over the edge of the canyon. As we explored more of the canyon, going down winding roads and jumping out into the cold, I was convinced that this was going to be the highlight of the trip, that nothing else would be this beautiful or fill me up with so much happiness.

 We came across wild donkey and packs of coyote while driving. The dirt was red and most of the ground was covered in cacti. Did I really wake up in my own bed the morning before? I had brought mason jars for collecting. We filled one up with a bit of dirt and I also grabbed a small tumbleweed. I felt so inspired and full when taking photos. I’ve never felt so passionate about photography before. 

We left the canyon full of happiness and excitement for New Mexico.  We had one more stop before we left Texas. We pulled onto Route 66 and drove to Cadillac ranch.  It felt much colder there, but we wanted to spray paint some of the cars. Afterwards,  We drove straight to Sandia Peak in New Mexico. 

Mountains began to appear and grew as we got closer to the peak. We bought tickets for the tram which took us 10,000 feet up the mountain. At the top, I was colder than ever as we walked across the bridge and looked out over the snowy mountain top. We met a couple that had been hiking for about 7 hours up the mountain. The other side of the mountain was a beautiful ski resort covered in tall pine trees. There was a small restaurant that overlooked the ski resort so we went inside to grab a drink and warm up. The bartender suggested that we go to a place called El Pinto for dinner. 

We took the tram back down and went to El Pinto. It was a beautiful restaurant and our waitress was sweet and gave us free samples and no one was having as much fun as we were. We had fit so many adventures into one day. None of them were rushed and we enjoyed all of it to its fullest. We wanted to spend the night in Arizona so we got back in the car in the dark and drove to Flagstaff Arizona. As we got closer to Flagstaff altitude sickness hit me hard. It was like being hungover and having the flu at the same time. Once in Flagstaff we decided to get a hotel to avoid feeling sick the next day. We decided to sleep in the next day but I was too eager for more adventures to sleep.