Starting at work

It had been a great summer for us all along.

And Sept 14th was a special day: our first day at work (as a matter of fact, we both had never had a formal job before). You'd think we would spend Sunday doing something fun to celebrate. Not at all. We had to fill 53 forms for the new job. A pain.

Where's Silvia?

Assembling the new furniture

Leandro assembling new furniture. He kept an incredible record of at least one mistake per piece of furniture.

Moving in

The new house!

Passports

Fortunately, we had passports for all our plants and they were allowed to enter sunny California.

But...

as we were entering California we were stopped at the Agricultural Department checkpoint (not a very welcoming state...).

Yes...

as you all might suspect we have already arrived in California!

Route VI

We spent Friday, Sept 4th in the Grand Canyon Park. In the end of the day, we drove to Sedona, AZ. We hanged out in Sedona on Saturday and are ready to go to bed (as soon as we deal with the backlog of posts). We have driven 3,950 miles so far.

Tomorrow morning (Sunday) we hit the road: 485 miles left. We are going home!

Food

Last day before driving home. After going to the movies, we went to a
Japanese restaurant. Great food. We decided to write a post with the
best meals we had in our trip:

Breakfast > Cochineal > Marfa, TX
Lunch > Cochon > New Orleans, LA
Dinner > Takashi > Sedona, AZ

Inglourious Basterds

The last day of our trip. We were in Sedona, AZ and it was raining non-
stop. We decided to go to the movies to watch "Inglourious Basterds". It was a blast! We both agreed that it is Tarantino's best movie. Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz
are amazing.

Repeat after me: faa-roh-faah

Farofa on the rocks.

Silvia sliding down the rocks

classy.

Slide Rock State Park

Sedona, AZ

The banana plant meets the cacti

Sedona III

Sedona II

Sedona I

Sedona, AZ

Ooops, there is someone watching!

Grand Canyon VII

Grand Canyon VI

Grand Canyon V

Grand Canyon IV

Grand Canyon III

Grand Canyon II

Silvia thinks she is a cowgirl

since she bought this hat in New Mexico....

Grand Canyon

What has gone wrong so far?

We have been posting nice pictures and writing fun stories of our
trip, but every now and then something doesn't go as planned so we
thought it was worth writing a post about these episodes:

1) Leandro forgot to make a reservation for the first night and the
only hotel in Philippi, WV was full.

2) The plants suffered with the heat when we were in New Orleans.

3) In Austin, we were pulled over by the cops because Leandro had
forgotten to turn the car ligths on.

4) Marfa, TX has a lot of stuff going on in the weekends, but not much
in weekdays. We were in town on Monday and Tuesday.

5) We stopped at Gallup, NM to get lunch in our way from Santa Fe to
the Grand Canyon. We got stuck for 40 minutes in a railtrack light
because the train was making repairs (see picture above).

6) We took a longer and more scenic route to enter the Grand Canyon
Park. As we got closer to the canyons, the sky darkened and it started
raining really hard. We could not see much.

They love Elvis

Gallup, NM.

Driving from Santa Fe to the Grand Canyon

Route V

We arrived in Marfa, TX on Monday, Sept 31st. We spent the night in Marfa and on Tuesday we headed to Santa Fe taking the scenic highway 285. We stopped along the way in Balmorhea State Park and for this reason did not make to Santa Fe on Tuesday. We decided to stop at Vaughn, NM and left on Wednesday, Sept 2nd in the morning. We visited Santa Fe on Wednesday and on Thursday we left to the Grand Canyon State Park taking the scenic highways 64 and 89.

And here is our banana plant flower

much cutter than O'Keeffe's, no?

Georgia O'Keeffe

One of the highlights of Santa Fe is the Georgia O'Keeffe museum.
O'Keeffe is famous for her large paintings of flowers. The picture
above shows the flower of a banana plant. Very appropriate.

10,000 waves

We went to a Japanese spa in the outskirts of Santa Fe. Very relaxing!

Adobe houses in Santa Fe

Santa Fe

Santa Fe is a very pretty town with many art galeries. There we bought
the first sculpture for our new house. It is very well wrapped so you
will have to visit us in Venice to find out how it looks you like.

Update on the plants

For those who asked, the plants are doing ok. They were not super
happy with the heat in New Orleans and Austin but since then they've
been sleeping inside with us. We get funny looks from hotel
managers.... But it seems like they will all make it to California
after all!

Driving to Santa Fe II

Driving to Santa Fe I

Not in Santa Fe yet

We did not manage to drive all the way to Santa Fe. We decided to
sleep at Vaughn, NM -- 2 hours south of Santa Fe -- and hit the road
tomorrow early morning. We arrived exhausted and went to a diner for
some milk-shakes.

Driving through New Mexico II

Driving through New Mexico I

Snorkeling at Balmorhea State Park

They promised us turtles but all we could find were pretty fresh water
fish.

Balmorhea Pool

In our way from Marfa to Santa Fe, we stopped at the Balmorhea State
Park to swim in a natural spring water pool. Just like we did in
Austin. Only this time we had the entire pool to ourselves.

As if the crossing deer were not enough

Driving from Marfa to Balmorhea, TX

Motel in Marfa

We stayed at the Thunderbird Motel, the coolest and most pretentious
motel one could imagine.

Marfa, TX

To the nonbelievers, Marfa is a pretty special place -- although in
the middle of nowhere. Hat tip to April & Mike.

Sneaky

Silvia sipping Leandro's drink, assuming that he was out of sight.

Swimming in Marfa

Under the Texas sun.