Cortez, Colorado to Taos, New Mexico

This morning was another early start for MinkeyMo and his companions. This time they went to visit Mesa Verde National Park - the home of the Ancestral Puebloans. These people built their homes under the overhangs on the cliffs at the top of the mesa. Quite something.

Square tower

Cliff palace

After much ooh-ing and aah-ing, our simian cohort headed back out onto the road, this time for a mammoth stretch of beautiful road finishing in Taos, where Marcus was waiting with beer and chicken. Yay for Marcus!

Rural Colorado

This morning started off with a visit to Bryce Canyon. What an astonishing place. Years of erosion have left pillars of coloured limestone which the people in the area believed were bad people and animals turned to stone by Coyote.

Leaving Bryce, our intrepid travellers had a last-minute change of plan and headed up All-American Route 12 from Tropic to somewhere else. What a spectacular road. Who knew southern Utah was so interesting (from a scenic point of view)? MinkeyMo, for one, did not.

Desert

Desert

Unexpected Alpine forest

Desert

Desert with yellow flowers

Desert

Desert with mesas and buttes

The desert was obviously not invited over the state line to Colorado and things began to look somewhat greener.

Colorado bean farmland

After an extremely long day of driving, MinkeyMo reached Cortez and collapsed into a glass of beer.

MinkeyMo left Fallon bright and early (for reals this time) and headed off on Route 50, America's loneliest road. It was pretty lonely.

Driving was definitely shared.

Then the gang turned on to Route 21 across southern Utah, which was even lonelier.

But at the end of the day, the travellers were rewarded with the spectacular Red Canyon and a yummy pizza in Tropic.

MinkeyMo left Berkeley fresh and early on Sunday after a final breakfast at the Claremont Diner. The goal: the thriving metropolis of Fallon, Nevada. Gateway to Route 50, the "Loneliest Road in America". The trip was uneventful except for a stop to admire Lake Tahoe, which is well worth admiring.

Lake Tahoe is famous for its clear water.

At the entrance the South African wildflowers were definitely in bloom:

South African wildflowers in the Berkeley Botanic Gardens

From there, it was on to the Japanese Garden section to catch up with the newts. They were there, doing their newty things but so was a stripy water snake!

Water snake in the Berkeley Botanic Gardens

MinkeyMo checked out the California poppies that you're not allowed to pick apparently, as they're the State flower. Or something.

MinkeyMo checking out the California poppies

You may be wondering why we haven't seen a lot of MinkeyMo recently. D and G certainly were. While D and G wandered around the gardens, resting frequently due to hills, they managed to unearth the answer!

D and G didn't catch her name, unfortunately. They are pretty socially inept, really. They are looking forward to seeing more of MinkeyMo's special lady friend in the future though.

Of course, this was the day that the rain really showed up. Still, how bad could it be? There were boardwalks and big trees to keep the rain off, surely?

Luckily D and G had bought fetching ponchos the previous day, so they got to model them for MinkeyMo who was curled up happily in a nice warm, dry camera bag.

Here's a river, with redwoods. And rain.

River and redwoods in the rain

Here are some redwoods and D in her snappy poncho:

Redwoods towering over D

It's hard to get an idea of how big these trees were in a photo, especially one as rubbish as the one above, but believe MinkeyMo when he says there were some HUGE trees.

Seeing that the weather was really miserable and wet and cold and raining, D and G decided to walk four miles through the woods. Naturally. MinkeyMo retired to the dry camera bag and did not come out until much later.

D and G had a wonderful walk, stopping by the shop on the way out to buy new socks to replace the utterly waterlogged ones they were wearing. Luckily they had both brought spare shoes in case, so eventually their feet dried out, even if their boots were soaked.

It was lunchtime. MinkeyMo wanted to explore Sausalito and maybe get a bit to eat. He saw many restaurants and places to stop, but one thing he did not find was parking. So over the Golden Gate Bridge they all went into San Francisco to see what there was there. The estimable Lonely Planet recommended "Za" as a great pizza place (and one G could find in the car as it was on Hyde street.)

What the Lonely Planet forgot to mention was that in San Francisco, in order to park anywhere, you need to reserve a spot about a decade in advance. After absolute ages, G decided the familiar environs of Rockridge might be more rewarding for the by now starving and somewhat fragile expedition. So this time it was the Bay Bridge that they drove over to a great lunch at the reasonable hour of 4 in the afternoon.

Despite the rain, MinkeyMo thought it was absolutely awesome to have been able to see the redwoods and is planning a return during a drier weekend.

Spring disagreed. It rained mostly, with a few patches of sunshine. Thankfully not very much rain fell on the walk through the Tule Elk reserve, so there was a chance to see the California wildflowers starting to show themselves.

Looking over flowers to the Pacific

Then after about half an hour of walking, MinkeyMo got to see the Elk doing their elky thing!

Elk lying about

Elk standing about

They weren't the most exciting to watch, but it was the first time MinkeyMo had ever seen them, so that was pretty neat.

There were more wildflowers just starting to peek out, as well as many Turkey Buzzards flitting about. Luckily the flowers don't move as fast as the Buzzards, so G was able to get a photo of the plantlife, at least.

Wild flowers, hardly moving

MinkeyMo decided that having seen Elk, buzzards, flowers and LBBs (little brown birds) everywhere, it was time to head off to the other end of the park to check out some more locals. This time, it was elephant seals who were putting in their usual Spring appearance.

Elephant seals lying around

There were a lot of seals. Lying around. Not doing anything much. But still... Elephant seals! Cool!

MinkeyMo checks out the view of the river Cam from his window

The rooms were decked out in all the usual, tables, chairs, lamps, tea and coffee chest that used to be the Pepys family bible box back in the 1600's. You know, the standard rubbish these colleges have lying about.

MinkeyMo checks out the tea and coffee box

There was also a rather nicely carved chair, if a bit old-fashioned, having been created around 1677

MinkeyMo inspects a carved wooden chair from 1677

Of course, the best part of it all was falling out of the front door of Magdalene and directly into The Pickerel.

The Thames and a bit of the London Eye

... and fought through the school tours to check out Big Ben...

Big Ben. In case you didn't know.

... and then he did a walkabout of Westminster Cathedral, which was really interesting.

Later that evening, after a super-quick but awesome meal at a Persian restaurant MinkeyMo got treated to an evening at the Royal Albert Hall in a private box and all! He even got to hear the 1812 Overture complete with cannon-fire.

MinkeyMo, after the performance, takes in the Royal Albert Hall from his private box

MinkeyMo has decided that he really likes London Town.