Chimayo and Bandelier NM

Today was a great day!
The morning was nice and calm.  Nothing exciting.  Jason whipped us up a little breakfast and we hit the road for Chimayo.  We took a long scenic drive that gave us a great mountain view.  We arrived at Chimayo which is a very famous holy site.  http://www.elsantuariodechimayo.us/
We visited the spots and enjoyed the beauty of the place.  The main church was very beautiful and interesting.  It started to rain, so we hit a few more places and then headed to the car.  We decided to have lunch and wait out the rain.  We went to a Mexican restaurant and we all ate way too much!  It was delicious.  We rolled ourselves back out to the car and started our 40 min drive to Bandelier National Monument.  We hiked the main loop which was about 3 miles.  We got to see amazing cliff dwellings dating back 11,000 years ago.  We also spotted several petroglyphs along the soft cliff rock.  We got to climb up and into several cliff dwellings.  This was a really cool experience!  We then hiked over to the large Alcove House.  This was a ceremony site WAY up in the cliff.  We had to climb several sets of stairs and four tall wooden ladders to get to up there. It was 140 feet of ladders.  This was so much fun!  The crooked wooden ladders made the experience even better!
Once we made it up to the large room, we sat down for a bit and enjoyed the amazing view.  There was a huge Kiva up at the top. http://www.nps.gov/band/index.htm
We hiked back down and took a wonderful hike through the wooded area to get back to the visitor's center.
We drove back to Taos and decided to take some showers and have a little snack.  We then headed to the local movie theater and got our minds blown by the new Jurassic Park Movie.
Another great hike today!  Brad and I had big, stupid smiles on our faces all day because this is what we truly love to do!

-Chelsea

One of four ladders

Bug

The Gorge

One of many roads traveled

Day 3 in Taos

Day 3 was a blast!
We started the morning by enjoying some delicious pastries that we had picked up at Michael's diner yesterday.  We then got ready to head out for the day.
The first stop was EarthShip Biotecture.  This is a community of homes built totally off the grid using recycled garbage such as tires, glass bottles and cans.  So Cool!!!!!  Jason had done the academy opportunity just this last fall where he spent 6 weeks building and learning about them. So he was full of information about these amazing homes.  He took us around and showed us how everything worked.  You really need to see this for yourself!  http://earthship.com/
After leaving the EarthShips, we headed out for the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.  Awesome view!  We walked the bridge and enjoyed the cool experience.
After leaving the Gorge, we drove to the trail head for our hot springs hike.  Upon pulling into the parking lot, we saw an old Volvo wagon with a plane strapped to the roof.  The plane was bigger than the Volvo and we luckily got to meet the man who owned this.  His name was "Dog Man" and he was an extremely interesting man.  He was abducted by aliens in 1958 and he plans to have a golden spaceship on the roof of his house. But until he gets his gold spaceship he will put the plane on the roof as a placeholder. He plans on making international news, NOT NATIONAL NEWS, but international news when he gets it.  He once had lunch with Al Gore and Bill Clinton and told them not to do NAFTA.  He also predicted everything that has happened in the last 40 years.  He even knew that 911 was going to happen!! He told us stories of the drugs he did when he was in Vietnam and how he has his own dog breed.  He offered us pot various times that we obviously turned down.  We calculated that Dog Man was about 68 years old and spends all of his days hanging out in that parking lot and the hot springs. After these wonderful conversations, we started our hike down to the hot springs.  This was a beautiful hike down the gorge to the river.  It was so nice to get back into hiking.  It was a rocky hike down, but not too steep.  It took us about 20 minutes to get to the base and we found the hot springs right next to the beautifully flowing river.  The really hot hot spring had flooded because of the rain, but the cooler spring was just fine.  We hopped in and relaxed for about an hour.  This was great.  We decided to head back up the gorge just in time.  There was about 6 people that were heading down the gorge as we were getting out.  The trip back up the gorge was a bit harder, but getting a good hike in felt so great!
After leaving the springs, we talked to Dog Man for a little bit longer before heading to Taos Mesa Brewing.  We relaxed outside with great beers and great food. We were all starving and in need of some good beer.  There was a man performing that played music and played his trumpet over it.  He was pretty great.  We stayed there for awhile and then decided to head to KTAOS for a few more drinks.  This place was so cool!  It was one of the town's radio station that is also a bar and grill.  There is a bunch of big glass windows surrounding the DJ so you can see them while on the air.  We sat outside for a big and looked at the amazing view.  It started t rain so we moved inside, but still had a great view!
Today was a great day!!!  Tomorrow is Chimayo Church and Bandelier National Monument!!

    

Day Number 2 in Taos

Thursday morning we woke up when Jason was headed to work.  Katie, Brad and I left in search of food.  We ended up walking down to Michael's diner.  We had a delicious breakfast that contained a lot of green chili sauce!  We then hopped in the car and headed to the Taos Pueblo.  This was such a great experience.  We had an amazing tour guide who was full of knowledge- KATIE!  We visited the church, cemetery and the home of the people.  We also did a little shopping and had Indian fry bread.  This was my first time having fry bread and it was great!  I have a feeling we will have a lot more fry bread in our near future.  The people we met and came across were so welcoming and nice.   We had several conversations and learned so much.  If you are ever down in Taos, you should really check it out! http://taospueblo.com/
After leaving the Pueblo, we headed to Arroyo Seco to visit Jason at work.  He is working at an architecture firm there.  We stopped at the Taos Cow to have some lunch and AMAZING ice cream.  They had a lavender ice cream that was surprisingly great.  We hung out for a bit in the cool village and decided we were going to go back to the house for awhile and wait for Jason to get off work.  This plan was changed as we started to go explore the canyon road.  We started driving the road just to see where it went and we ended up going all the way up!  The scenic drive led us through Carson National Forest.  It was a beautiful drive!  We followed a stream all the way up and ended at the Taos ski resort.  On the way back down, we decided to stop and enjoy the stream for a little while.  We stuck our feet in and it was the coldest water I have ever felt!  We headed back down the mountain and met up with Jason and went to the Taos Ale House.  We enjoyed some beers and some laughs. We then headed to the plaza to watch the blues band play.  The plaza was a great open space with shops surrounding it.  It was a lot of fun to watch so many people enjoying the music and each other.
We spotted a balcony spot at the near by restaurant that had a great view of the band.  We decided to go have some drinks and food.  It was a wonderful evening of blues, booze and friends.
Stumbling back home, we decided to stop for one more drink at the Historic Taos Inn.
What a fun day with fun people!!
XoXo- Chelsea

    

Day One

Brad and I left the house this morning for another big trip.  42 days this time and we could not be more excited to hit the open road again. We have been talking for the last year about how amazing our last trip was and we were so excited to do it again.  Our first stop was to visit our good friends Jason and Katie.  They were our first stop on last years trip also!  Jason had gotten a job in Taos, NM this past year so we now had a new location for our first stop. The best part was that Katie had just moved to Taos to be with Jason. 

We left the house at 5:30 am and set out for Taos. We had a 13 hour drive ahead of us. This will be the longest drive of the whole trip. The van ran beautifully!! We were extremely pleased by this. We were cruising through Kansas and Colorado. We then hit a mountain pass that was pretty brutal, but we made it. We did go a solid 25 mph the whole way up, but we did not mind enjoying the amazing mountain view for a little longer :) 

The mountain driving was slow but breathtaking. We crossed into New Mexico and saw wild horses and goats. 

We finally arrived at Jason and Katie's place. It was refreshing the see those two. We went out for dinner at Eske's brewery and pub. We ordered flights of beer and had an amazing dinner. We sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather and the great company. We had several laughs and a wonderful time. 

We are at it again!

We are at it again! This morning Brad and I spent 4 hours planning our next big trip.  We worked out 30 stops backed full of adventure.  It will be a 42 day trip this time covering Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming and South Dakota.  3,260 miles!!!  We are staying a little closer to home this time, but I have a feeling it will just as memorable as our first time around. 
Some big stops that we are super excited for include Mesa Verde, Rocky Mountain National Park and Badlands.  We will also be seeing some of our amazing friends and wonderful family members.
Needless to say we are super excited and have asked each other several times today if we could leave tomorrow :)

Brad is still crossing off things on his van to-do list, but we are optimistic that the list will be complete before June 10th!

<3

Four Page Itinerary 

The Transmission Rebuild

The winter in Nebraska is difficult. The cold winters make camping not a great way to spend the weekends. The van's transmission had been giving us problems since we bought it. Last summer on our big trip we fought it almost daily. So because of it being winter and it needed to happen, we rebuilt the transmission. It was a cold winter day when I decided I should pull it. I was thinking I should get it out before it got too cold.

We got it out and started the taking it apart. I cleaned the transmission as much as I could before painting it. It was filthy. I scraped over a inch of grease and dirt off the top.

It was so dirty. I bet just by cleaning it the thing weighs 5 pounds less.

All painted.

The cooling fins on the torque converter Were completely caked full of filth.

Rebuit the differential while I was at it.

Brand new axles. Old ones were not horrible. But I figured it was the best time to do it.

The brain of it all rebuilt.

Put on its first major test.

After driving it. I have to say: I should have rebuilt this transmission long ago. So many small problems I had with the van is fixed. Can't wait to put the next 165000 miles on the van.

Stay tuned this summer is going to be a fun one!

Brad

Catch Up and Planing!!

Well everyone, its been awhile. We have been back to real life working, school,working more. We still think about this trip we had everyday. It was an amazing time.

Chelsea has been Teaching and coaching girls basketball. I have been working, going to school and brewing beer. We went out to Denver twice this summer after our big trip. We went out for Riotfest, saw some great bands over the 3 day festival.We had a great time staying with my uncle and aunt.
A month later we went back for the Great American Beer fest. My friend Mitch worked at the competition so he got us the highly sought after tickets; I heard they sold out in less then a hour. There were 720 plus breweries to try! It was amazing time. We also went to 6 breweries while there: Odell brewing, Great divide brewing, Funkworks, Equinox Brewing, New Belgium brewing, and Epic brewing.

We are now getting planing started on where we want to go this next summer. Right now it looks like Colorado to Utah to New Mexico to Home.An my dad might join us of the Utah section! This trip will not be as long, expansive or expensive (hopefully) but we are still overly excited to go and see some more of the country. Hope you follow along as we continue are travels.

Thank you every one for following and commenting!
Brad