Day 16

A fantastic breakfast of fresh fruit and yoghurt (eggs and sausage for Matthew) and we were off into town again. Clouded by the fact he likes the Bon Jovi song so much, Matthew states, ‘I could live here’. Hmm, not so sure about that. However, the adobe buildings and slow pace made it one of the most relaxing and prettiest places we’ve been so far. After finally purchasing some stamps - you may get postcards now - we headed back on the road. A stop in Walmart to purchase camping equipment turned into a 2 hour trek around the store - they are massive! As New Mexico turned into Arizona, words can’t describe the views from the car. Exactly like a landscape from a Western film - amazing!
Canyon de Chelly was the next stop. We arrived as the sun was just about saying goodnight and were greeted by vampire mosquitoes. Horrible, nasty, evil things. As soon as we stepped out of the car, they were everywhere: eating us through clothing, in our hair. As you can imagine there was a lot of arm flapping and girly screaming - mainly from Matthew. We ran to the room and gratuitously applied insect repellent before heading for a crap meal. "We’ll have the native lamb stew," we thought. I don’t think the recipe was 100% original; tinned tomatoes and tinned sweetcorn seemed to be the main ingredients!
Time to do some laundry. Repelling the mosquitoes, we confidently strode across the grass to the guest laundry room. Hundreds of low swooping bats and Katie Bamford’s mentioning that bats in the US have rabies left Lynne alone as Matt ran away screaming. Oh well, laundry can be done tomorrow!