So I've been crunching the numbers, and it turns out that we suck at blogging. Just all around suck at it. Apologies to those who have been trying to keep tabs on us! With internet access limited to "town days" which are few and far between and jam packed with other errands, say like...buying food and taking the occasional shower, it's just really hard to find time to update this thing adequately. I hope there are no hard feelings. Please consider this an IOU, we'll do our best to retroactively update before the whole trip becomes totally obsolete.

For now, we're down to our last week in Joshua Tree Nat'l Park, trying to get a few more climbs in despite the variable weather. From here we have plans to visit Red Rocks for some different rock, Las Vegas for some cultural shock, then on to the Grand Canyon to get our heads back on straight again. Funds pending and Iris behaving, of course. Weather permitting, we may even get to do some climbing in North Carolina before we finally head home.

Keep us in your thoughts and wish us luck!
Love,
Sarah and Tristan

Joshua Tree

first sunset in the park, but they've all been good (especially from up on a rock)

Iris settled in next to our new neighbor, Larry (Hidden Valley campground)

Tristan and new friend Chris up on Double Cross

Tristan leading up Toe Jam

following one of the easier crack climbs, learning to love the jam

weather rolling into the park, intense winds and a bit of desert rain followed

The Mojave

     Sometime after dark Tuesday night, we finally pulled off of I-40 and headed into the Mojave National Preserve. A second turn lead us down a gravel road, into the deserted park. As far as we could tell, we were the only ones camping out that night; the isolation and the silence were unreal.
     We woke up at the foot of the Kelso Dunes. The sandy hills are some of the only "humming" or "booming" dunes in the world, created by winds whipping sand up from The Devil's Playground, then halting at the Providence and Granite Mountains.

     The hike to the hills' crest felt like a heart attack, but it was easily forgotten, or at least forgiven, as we ran down the dunes and felt and heard the short didgeridoo notes ring out. Apparently a heavier person can create a sustained sound as sheets of sand glide down on top of one another, but we didn't have it in us to go up and try again.

There wasn't much else to do in the area, so we paid a visit to the Kelso Depot lunch counter and then climbed in the car one last time before arriving at our final destination.

The Road (in pictures)

Iris is at it again, so while Tristan is down the road at one of (that's right, there's more than one!) Joshua Tree's VW shops, I thought I'd make an earnest effort to bring us up to date in the blog world. We've been in JTree for about a week now, but let me back up a bit first.

 New Mexico to California, as seen from the passenger seat

Tristan raced this guy for a bit, they exchanged friendly honks and waves before heading their separate ways

Look what we found! You hardly need two hands to count the number of vehicles Iris managed to pass on the road, but this was one of them.

short, but idyllic corridor in Arizona- I didn't realize how badly I missed trees