Racking up the miles

The lack of updates recently has been due to the lack of anything major to report, it's been mostly driving, driving, driving over the past few days. We did have a free day in Tucson on the 31st of July so in the morning made the most of our National Park pass by visiting the Saguaro National Park situated just on the edge of Tucson. In short it's a desert home for a forest of cactus'. We hiked a small trail and drove the purpose built loop through the park. I channelled the spirit of the late Steve Irwin at one point and slammed on the brakes when I spied a snake side-winding its way across the road ahead. I jumped out and followed it into the shrub but it managed to get away and unfortunately I couldn’t find or take any photos of it. It was black and moved incredibly quickly, from reading the parks website it seems it was a non-venomous snake known as a 'coachwhip'. We did see a fair amount of lizards but they are so adept at camouflage they are difficult to make out in photos as they blend in so well with their surroundings.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool and then went out for dinner and a movie. We have actually seen two films I haven’t mentioned yet. The first was Inception; incredible but almost too clever  for its own good (I think Nolan’s ‘The Prestige’ is still his best film outside of the Batman series) and Salt; totally unbelievable and full of plot holes but as a summer action flick it does what it says on the tin.

The month of August greeted us with a 320 mile drive from Tucson to El Paso where we really didn’t do a lot (it’s literally right on the border of the US and Mexico and isn’t the nicest city we have stayed in). The only thing worth noting is I managed to find a replacement suitcase. Which is good since I was having to carry it around like a log as both zips had recently broken and using the trolley would have been a bit of a disaster. We got an early night as we had our longest drive of the trip the following day. Monday August 2nd we drove 550 miles from El Paso to San Antonio, it took us most of the day and by the time we arrived we were both just about sick of sitting in a car. Thankfully we have three nights here before we set off again. So far we have covered nearly 4,000 miles, just another 3,000 to go!

Today we hit up another themepark, Six Flags Fiesta Texas. The weather was gorgeous today, 98 and not a cloud in the sky, so we also made use of the adjoining water park that is included in the admission price. After a few hours on the lazy river were starting to build up a healthy tan...well I am anyway, Jenny is a few different shades ranging from snow white to bright red! The forecast for the next week is continued clear skies and hot suns, which is not only a nice break from the occasional thunderstorm we have been encountering, but also good news as we have rearranged our skydive! We are jumping on Friday from Houston, with a company called Sky Dive Nasa! I expect there’ll be an update before then but make sure to check back on the weekend to find out if our chutes opened...