Thursday 26th May

Foxtrot has coped admirably with everything we've thrown at it, so we thought we'd treat it to an oil-change and swap the tyres around. Bob said this was needed because I was steering too much. As we were going through El Paso, I spotted an oil place from the freeway, so we pulled off at the next junction and headed back to try and find it.Strangely they'd never dealt with a 1990 Land Rover before, so they had to do some digging on the Internet to find out some details - but they did the job in about an hour, and we got free coffee and popcorn, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.
We stopped at Walmart to stock up on fluids and food then made our way to the KOA campground we'd picked out at Las Cruces, but as we jumped back in Foxtrot to take it to the pitch, the engine was ominously silent when Bob turned the ignition key. We were at a loss to understand what was going on - it was running OK not five minutes ago.
Bob eventually decided to bump it in reverse, which at least proved there was nothing wrong with the engine. So we got to the pitch, and Bob started to work out what was going on - the likely culprit was the starter-motor, so Bob checked that over after pulling apart half of the dashboard and footwell to get to it. We had visions of having to swap the starter-motor out with the spare we had with us - but fortunately he found a loose connection, which it looked like the garage had disturbed as they were swapping oil and tyres. So the next day he put everything back and the engine started just as beautifully as it has done all journey! Panic over.

While he was doing all this, I was providing valuable moral support, and doing all the washing, since we'd run out of clothes a couple of days ago, and were starting to smell really badly. Two nights in one place gave us a chance to catch up on all the chores, and get the Mexican dust out of everything.

Saturday 28th May

Roads are really busy this weekend - as well as it being lovely weather, some of their schools have broken up and it's their equivalent of Remembrance Sunday which they call Memorial Day (on Monday).

Tuesday 31st May

Decided to stay at a National Park campground today - this one was in California's Sierra Nevada on the side of Lake Kaweah, and there was a sign saying that the campsite could be closed at any time, as the lake level was still rising. We've not seen any news for about the last 2 weeks so we weren't aware that Texas has been having biblical floods and there's been tornadoes and thunderstorms just about everywhere. Plus it's been so hot in some places, it's caused the snow to melt early, also causing flood problems.

Slightly damp campground - trees should be part of a tent pitch!

Wednesday 1st June

Off to Sequoia National Park in California to see the Giant Redwoods - good name for an enormous red tree.

Guess what and where...

And onward to Yosemite National Park with some spectacular landscape.

Tunnel View, Yosemite

Friday 3rd June

Passed by Bonneville Salt Flats to Salt Lake City in Utah for a couple of days rest- it's a surprisingly nice place and the Mormons appear to own just about everything. We managed to find a bookstore to buy some maps of Canada - we haven't got anything as we weren't expecting to be going there. We also treated ourselves to a proper enormous banana split ice-cream at a traditional ice-cream parlour. Just the thing when it's 35 degrees!

Temple Square, Salt Lake City

Sunday 5th June

On our way to Yellowstone Park in Wyoming we passed a place called Bear World. We decided that we were probably unlikely to see wild bears, so a few captive ones in a safari-park setting was a good substitute.

Captive bears.

Monday 6th June

In to Yellowstone, and our first visit was to Old Faithful Geyser, waiting an hour for it to erupt - fairly spectacular. Then saw loads of wild bison, deer, elk and three sightings of bears. Fabulous place. Definitely worth the wait - we've been trying to get here for over 5 years.

Any old geyser, not Old Faithful.

Wild bison in Yellowstone.

Wild bear in Yellowstone.

Some geezer in Yellowstone.