6 Months, 2 Newlyweds, 1 RV

We are currently at Bottomless Lakes State Park just outside of Roswell, New Mexico.  Today we drove into Roswell to see the UFO museum and other alien paraphernalia.  The museums car park was full, so we drove down the main street (called Main St, this is something we have learnt, most main streets of towns are called Main St) and ended up at a Super Walmart.  I love Walmarts.  We bought some more food, and some basics we needed like a potato masher, knife and cutting board.  We found these laundry 3 in 1 sheets that you put in the washing machine with your dirty clothes, and then transfer it into the dryer with your clothes for fabric softener, so we bought them, seems a lot less mess than using liquid or powder.  We still have not done any laundry, however we will when we get to New Orleans.  Lets hope we have enough underwear to make it there :)  We also bought some frozen meals, things like riblets with mashed potato, corn and a brownie, for like $2 each.  And we bought some Peach Margarita drinks.  Walmart has everything - except winter clothes (something I can not find over here yet, and wish I had some tracksuit pants for the cold nights, especially when we don't have power hooked up, therefore no option of heating).
We then had one of the rib meals for lunch, they are quite tasty.  They will make for easy meals, put them either into the oven or microwave.
After lunch we went to the Roswell information center, and then to the UFO museum.  The museum was really interesting, a LOT of newspaper articles and sworn statements about the Roswell crash and UFOs in general.  I could of probably spent a whole day there, they show different movies throughout the day.  Kade and I are on opposing beliefs of what really happened, I think UFO crash, Kade things it was a weather balloon or similar.  We then walked back to the RV and learnt that Sonic is not a walk in fast food place, drive through only. 
We didn't have accommodation booked for tonight, we thought we would head out to Bottomless Lakes State Park, around 13 miles outside of Roswell and see if there was any sites available.  I was going to book online but they were charging a $10 online booking fee so we just rocked up.  We have the most beautiful lake facing site, for $14 a night.  This is the cheapest place have stayed at, and the most nicest, in regards to scenery.  There is space for around 30 RVs, and only around 10 here.  We have water and power, and there are clean facilities.  Its really quiet, and the sky just looks huge.
Tomorrow we will leave and head over to hopefully Dallas, Texas.  It is around 500 miles away, or 10 hours driving with stops.  After that we will then head to close to New Orleans, and then hit New Orleans around midday on Good Friday. 

The campground we are at is beautiful.  There are gravel paths everywhere with grass next to each site.  Jack rabbits and road runners come out to play. 
Today we went to Carlsbad Caverns and as Kade keeps telling me its from a Simpson's episode, we also went to the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens.  The caverns were amazing, full of stalactites and stalagmites.  The Living Zoo gave a representation of the south west desert, with cacti and trees, and the animals are all rescued animals that were injured or abandoned.  I drove today, for around 15 minutes back to the campgrounds, and I am now I am getting used to it and will be able to help Kade with the driving stints now. 
We had ribs and potato salad for dinner, back at the camp grounds.  We are now just watching TV, and I am about to fall asleep. 
We head to Roswell tomorrow, to see the UFO museum and hopefully an alien or two :)  After that we head though Texas to New Orleans, for 4 nights over Easter.  We arrive on the 2nd and leave on the 6th.  On the way through we will probably just stay at gas stations, as we are just heading through.  Therefore we will most likely not have the internet or be able to post on the blog until Friday over here, when we arrive in New Orleans.

Anyhow, I will sign off now, and head to bed. A big few days are coming up.


 

Well, Kade wrote the last post as I fell asleep after writing the first sentence :)
Kade is now asleep after driving all yesterday and half of today, so my turn again to post.
We got up and left Las Vegas with no issues, it was not too late so there wasn't that much traffic yet.  The plan was to drive to Carlsbad, New Mexico in two days.  The fastest route would of put us in an area where it got to -6 overnight, and as we didn't want to sleep in that cold, we went a slightly longer, roundabout route.  We planned around 10 hours of driving, sleeping at a gas station, and then 6 hours of driving today.  What we didn't plan on was driving right through a political convention for Sarah Palin, in her home town.  She was having a 'tea party'. For us it meant 2 hours of bumper to bumper traffic, just to cover 10 miles. At this stage, we were starting to run out of gas and getting a little worried.  We would of been OK, except for the traffic jam.  We made it to the next town and got gas, 65 gallons of it.  It takes around 5 minutes of constant pumping to fill up the RV.  By this time we were behind schedule but decided to keep going. As we were driving straight though, we didn't want to pay for a campsite to literally pull in at 11pm and out at 7, so we decided to stay at a Flying J, which is one of many different types of gas stations that cater for RV and trucks staying overnight in the car park, for free. They are 24hr stores, very safe and secure, we pulled in at what we thought was 11 but was really 12 as we passed a time line and didn't know, and went straight to bed.  We had gone through 4 states (Nevada, California, Arizona and New Mexico).  There were around 100 trucks and 20 other RVs.  We got up at what we thought was 8, but was really 9, got some drinks and back onto the road.  I got a 20 oz coffee for 1.59.  I love American prices :)
We drove for 6 hours today, and part of the trip took us up a mountain, though snow.  We made it to Carlsbad safely, to our campground and set up for the night, had dinner and now Kade is asleep.  Its 8.12pm here, on Sunday.
The sunsets are beautiful, the sky looks so big and blue.  We stay here for two nights, and we are visiting the Carlsbad Caverns tomorrow, then head to Roswell for a night, and then most likely over to Texas somewhere.  We are thinking New Orleans for Easter, and then to Orlando by the 12th April for our two weeks at Disney World.
Things are going great here, we are getting used to the RV and the hookups etc.  There is plenty of gas stations we can stay at if we can't find an RV park, so that takes that stress out.  Food is insanely cheap, we got enough for 2 weeks of lunches/dinners/snacks for $110.  Gas is more than I thought, but we are doing a LOT of driving right now to get to Orlando, after this it will be less.
Outlet shopping is great, Converse shoes for $20, brand name shirts for $10.

A few days since the last post, but we haven't had the internet lately.
So lets pick up where we left off...We went to Disneyland and spent 14 hours there.  We managed to get on the 6:40am shuttle from the RV park that picks up from a few other hotel locations. But once we got dropped off, we made our way over to the ticket booths to buy our tickets for a day at Disneyland.
Once we got our tickets and went through the front gates we then had to wait inside the park until 8am when the park officially opened everything. Whilst in line we overheard that the Matterhorn Mountain attraction was very popular and didn't have a fast pass option with it so we decided that that's what we would ride first. But before doing that we went to adventure land and got a fast pass for the Indiana Jones ride and then shot straight over to the Matterhorn, which we waited in line for for any 15 minutes and was quite a fun ride. After that we went and got another fast-pass ticket for splash mountain and then went on the Indiana Jones ride for which we had got the fast pass previously for. We spent the rest of the day at Disneyland following that formula of grab a fast pass then go on a ride and at the same time exploring the park as we went from ride to ride. Our favorite rides were space mountain, the haunted mansion, pirates of the Caribbean and well, pretty much we weren't disappointed with anything at Disneyland.
We stayed around for the start of the nightly Disneyland fireworks and then left early to beat the crowds which we did, and got a shuttle back to our rv park with no problems.
The day after Disneyland we set out back from where we started, the Apollo motor homes depot to sort out our storage compartment locks which did not work with any keys on the keyring that we were given. Turns out once we got back to the depot, we didn't have the correct key that locks up the storage compartments in the belly of our RV. With that problem solved we were back on the road heading for Lancaster, which is about an hour east of Los Angeles. We arrived there with no problems and stopped at the local supermarket to do a small grocery shop for the RV so we had some food and what not.
Once stocked up on the essentials, we headed over to the RV park in Lancaster and set up for the night and had our first home cooked  (or should we say, our first RV cooked?) meal, which was just steak and salad but was really good as we hadn't had anything but fast food since arriving in America.
Our stay in Lancaster was really enjoyable even though we didn't do much, its a nice place to be and it was nice and warm. We set out the next day for our first big day of driving, destination... Las Vegas!!! We rolled into town (I know sounds cool right?) at around 4pm and found our RV park quite easily and once we had parked and setup we went out to the strip and walked up and down it taking in all the sights and sounds and saw the fountain and all the different hotels and casino's and all saw all the advertisements for the various Vegas shows. We got back to our RV and went to bed, the next morning we went out and saw the Las Vegas boulevard in the daylight, we walked around for while and then went to a buffet lunch at the Paris Eiffel Tower hotel, which had so much food it was just amazing. After the buffet and figuring out if we had to tip or not (we did anyway) we bought a bus ticket and went to the outlet malls to do some shopping. Lets just say there are bargains to had at the Vegas outlet mall. Once we had finished shopping we caught the bus back up Las Vegas boulevard and got off at the Luxor Hotel/Casino which we didn't get to see the night before. The Luxor is the hotel/casino that looks like a big glass pyramid. After that we wandered along and saw the M&M's shop and the Coca-Cola shop and just as we got out of the coke shop, Kade heard the start of the song "One" by Metallica and then we had to immediately find where it was coming from. We didn't have to look far because just up from the coke place was the Hard Rock Cafe which was playing the song.  We then had to stay there until the song was over and once that was completed we were ready to go back to the RV. We got back onto the bus and headed back to our stop, now since we had been in Vegas for 2 days and were leaving the next day and had not done any gambling as yet, we decided that we couldn't leave Vegas without at least a little bit of gambling, so we put some money through a pokie (or a slot machine as they are known over here) and consequently lost it all. After the loss we drowned our sorrows in a jug (referred to as pitchers here) of Margarita stuff. After that we made our way back to the RV and had some dinner and are getting ready for a big two days of driving, and we aren't sure of the internet coming up so it may be a couple of days but stay tuned we will post as soon as we can.

Hi All,

We have an RV, as per our blog suggests.  But lets start at the beginning.  We woke up at 2.30 this morning American time, and proceeded to watch tv.  Its now 10pm, so we have been up for nearly 20 hours.  We are about to go to bed, to get up at 6am tomorrow, to catch the shuttle to Disneyland.  We had breakfast at 7, then got ready and walked to Apollo to pick up our RV.  We got it with around 2 hrs of instructions, and then headed off to get some supplies. When we went to lock the storage under the RV, we realised it wouldn't lock. So we called Apollo and they called Fleetwood, who called us, and then we called Apollo, long story short, its still not fixed but we will fix it hopefully on Wednesday before we leave this area.  We have the number for the locksmith if required.  If we have to, we will go back to Apollo on Wednesday before heading to Death Valley National Park.
Kade did an excellent job of driving today, no incidents to report, except high stress levels with LA traffic, while driving a big bus for the first time on the wrong side of the road.  Quite a steep learning curve, and the learning hasn't stopped there.  Lets just say we now know how to work the water heater for a shower.
As for everything else all in working order (we wont mention the door blind).
We got to the RV park at Anaheim near Disneyland and got directions to the local electronics store to buy an adapter, and then back to the RV park, where Kade did the best job ever at reversing the RV for the first time.  We managed to hook up to cable, electricity and water without a hitch, and didn't do much for the rest of the afternoon.  We saw the Disney fireworks from the RV tonight, and now are about to shower and go to bed.
Oh, we also cant get our point and shoot camera battery to charge for some reason, so may not have pics of Disney tomorrow, unless we get Kades phone to take them.
Until next time....

Just a quick note to let everyone know we have arrived safe and sound, made it through immigration and customs, and got to the hotel.  The flight went good, lots of movies etc and the food was decent.  We are about to go and eat dinner now, as its 6.30 on Sunday night. 
Later :)

As it has been pointed out numerous times over the past week, we (meaning I) haven't updated the blog in quite some time...
Here goes.
The hens and bucks party's went well.  Everyone arrived home safely, no one was missing anything.
Kade has resigned from work and his last day was the 1st March.
I am back at work this week casually to help them organise the Hall of Fame dinner which is on this Saturday night, before we fly out on Sunday.
We have got the first 3 nights accommodation booked for America, so we don't arrive and be like...so...where to now?
America is basically all booked, all we need to do now is print off the tickets/vouchers etc that we have been getting over the last few months for things like the RV, Comic Con and the hotels, photocopy passports etc. to leave here in case.
Our packing is done, we did a trial run for the week at the coast we had after the wedding.
And for the wedding...
Well, after falling sick the Saturday before with the flu, it was an interesting week.  We got everything done we needed to get done, and just hoped the rain would hold off.  Rain was predicted, and it apparently was poring rain in Brisbane.  We had the rehearsal the Friday before the wedding, and made wet weather plans (instead of walking out of the hall at the end, family would come up to us etc).
We made our way over to the bed and breakfast we stayed at the night before (we being most of the bridal party).  We had dinner, and then two of the boys headed to indoor cricket, and the other two back to one of their houses to grap a few things.  Us girls watched Love Actually (for the 1st time, it ended up on repeat for the 20 hours or so) and talked, waiting for boys to come back with scissors so we can make the centerpieces.  The centerpieces were finished at 12ish, and we all got a relatively early night (Harriet, my cousin, who is 12, went to bed earlier than that if any family is reading).  I got up at 6.30 the next day and spoke to Jama for an hour, before breakfast was ready - bacon, eggs, sausages, toast, spaghetti. Lots of food. And we ate most of it :)
The hairdressers arrived at 8.30, and they were there until 12.30, when the makeup artists arrived.  Both lots of people said how quite it was for a bridal party.  We were just not stressing - nothing to worry about it was all sorted :)

Flowers arrived at 1, as did the photographer.  As each new person arrived, they continued to tell us how wet it was in Brisbane and we were lucky it was only overcast here :)  The cars arrived, and the boys got ready.  We were running late, as seems to be normal, and with an invite that said 3.15 for a 3.30 ceremony with us girls planning on arriving at 3.35, the boys only got there at 3.20 (when ALL the guests were already there) and us girls at 3.45.

We arrived, and walked down the hall.  All along I had wanted Pachelbel's Canon to walk down to, and Kade had found a guitar/rock version which he wanted me to use.  I kept saying nope, I'm using the classical version.  We even rehearsed with the classical version on the Friday.  So we used the rock version, without anyone knowing apart from the Girls on the Bridal Party.  Kade liked it, he played air guitar :)
Ceremony went well, my nose was running the whole time - A HUGE THANKS TO JAMA FOR TAKING MY TISSUES OFF ME!!!  We said I do, we said our vows, performed the sand ceremony, kissed and were announced.  I don't have much memory at all of it, and it went so fast.  We then got our pics taken at different locations, playing croquet, on the beach, on the pier, at the amphitheater.  I believe a good time was had by all, and we got some EXCELLENT pictures (which are up on my facebook, with Kade noted as being in the album).

The reception was at the leagues club, and it went great.  We were late arriving (no surprise there) but they were accommodating.  The food was excellent, as was the service.  We ate and danced and talked, and ended up leaving around 11.

Ahh...the end :)

A huge thank you goes to Jama, Alison, Kylie and Harriet, Greg, Lance Aaron and Ben (the bridal party).
Our families for being there on the day with us
Everyone else who was able to attend to share the day.
Melissa, our photographer who did an excellent job
Kylie, our celebrant who was amazing
Kate, our florist, who got my black roses
Rawinia, our hairdresser, and Meagan, her helper for doing a great job with our hair
Julia, our makeup artist, and Hannah, her helper for our excellent makeup
Sutton Beach bed and Breakfast for letting us take over it for 24 hours
Lisa and the Redcliffe Leagues Club for a great reception
Kelly for doing an amazing job MCing
Kades Nanna for making us the chocolates for the tables
Ken, Bushy and Andrew for the use of their cars
Kylie and Michelle for helping with everything that needed to be done - it looked great :)
and everyone else I'm sure to have forgotten about -  thank you

As the song goes...California, here we come!!!

(pics will come this afternoon/tomorrow morning, I have to run to work now...)
Ah I just found out if I post this link
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=400712&l=b967963412&id=756020351 anyone can click on it to see pictures :)
I hope it works