Black Canyon

This deep canyon is amazing.  Below are a number of photos which really do not not show just how amazing this canyon is.  It is not very wide and is very very deep and many of the places for looking at it do not have safety rails.  One cliff is 2,700 feet high!  How high is that in meters?

Camping in the Rockies.

Camping in the Rockies.

This is our motor home parked in an RV (Recreational Vehicles) Park with the Rocky Mountains behind us.  Below are some photos Mrs McLeay took around this camp site.  The sunset was beautiful as you can see.  There was a lot of wild life right beside us, including many Canadian Geese, who were very noisy, and difficult to photo.  At the bottom Jan (Mrs McLeay's sister) is cooking up a delicious meal.

Three Days Update

Hello Everyone.  It has been three days without connectivity to the internet, so I am sorry if you have been checking this blog without seeing any updates.    We have traveled from Amarillo in Texas, where we were wearing shorts and tee shirts, to the mountains of Colorado over a pass 11,300 fee thigh in quite heavy snow.  Right now I am in the public Library in a little town called Hotchkiss in Colorado, where they are very happy for me to use their internet access.

I will show a few photos from our travels over the past 3 days and hope you enjoy seeing them.This sign on the left was outside some public toilets at a rest stop in Texas as we traveled into New Mexico.  We`were very careful!

This is the front entrance to Cotopaxi School, where I spent several hours with the Superintendent and Principal, learning how their school functions.  The school has 220 students from Pre-Kindergarten to the end of High School, and is in a very isolated area.  We had to drive several hours on back country roads to get to it.  Notice the black rock cliffs in the background.

This is the junior playground for the elementary section of the school.  The big cliffs are in the background again.  They completely surround the school and you have to drive through a steep river gorge to get to the school.

Some of the children are very poor and live in houses without electricity and running water. Most are from normal houses, but are still poor.








These bison are roaming in the wild, quite close to the road.  The wooden construction in the fore ground is not a fence.  It is a stretch of construction to help the snow build up away from the road and help keep the roads open,

The deer below are also roaming in the wild.  We couldn't help thinking of that song; "Home home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play ..."

Yes.... that is snow.

This photo was taken from the front passenger side of the vehicle as we drove up

 over the Monarch Pass in the Rockies.  The summit is 11,300 feet high!  What is that in meters?

Here Mrs McLeay and I are at the Summit.  If the snow melts on the west side of this place, the water will flow all the way out to the Mississippi River and into the Caribbean Sea.  If it heads west, it will run into the Gunnison River, then into the Colorado River, and finally into the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean!

This amazing rock formation is called a "mesa."  There are hundreds of these along the way.

Cleburne to Amarillo

Do you know the Way to Amarillo?  This was a popular song many years ago, and here we are in that city for two days.  It is in an area called the Texas Panhandle.  Have a look at a map of Texas and see if you can tell why it is called that.



The first thing we have to do when we pack up the trailer home is empty the tanks of used water and ....  well, you can guess what else!

The drive from Cleburne (south of Dallas/Fort Worth) to Wichita Falls and then onto Amarillo was a long one.  We decided to do the whole trip in one day to allow a non-travelling day in Amarillo today.  It was slightly up hill all the way and there was a very strong head wind, which meant the big motor home got blown around a bit.



Amarillo is a transport hub.  There are several big inter-state highways and railway lines all passing through.  When you go into town there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of big rigs (18 wheeler trucks), and the railway line runs through the middle of the city.

When we arrived in Amarillo, we went for dinner at this famous Steak House called The Big Texan.  They offer all customers a free 72 ounce steak (what is that in kilograms?) if you can eat it in less than 1 hour.  I had a 16 ounce steak and that was big enough.





Today we visited Palo Duro Canyon State Park which is just south of Amarillo, and it is the second largest canyon in the United States.  Do you know which is the biggest in the USA?  It also happens to be the biggest in the world.

At the end of our time at the Canyon, we passed some long horn cattle so I took a photo just to show you.

Tomorrow we plan to drive to Raton in New Mexico and perhaps on to our next school visit which will be Cotopaxi School in Colorado. However, there is some bad weather forecast, so we will have to be flexible.

Texas Wildlife

Here are some of the interesting animals and birds Mrs McLeay and I have photographed in Texas:

This is a cardinal on our first morning
near Houston

This is a squirrel at Fairfield Lake State Park, half way between Houston and Dallas.

                       




           This is a robin in Cleburne

This is a Yellow Crested Heron near the house we stayed in in Cleburne  We spent two nights camping at Cleburne State Park, and two nights with Dr Bruce and Mary Mertz, who we worked with in the jungle hospital in Ecuador back in the 1980s.

These buzzards all nested in a tree just above our campsite near Cleburne.  They were all flying around in circles above us as we had a BBQ tea.  A little chilling!

Cleburne Schools

A Busy Day in the Schools of Cleburne.

On Thursday we had a full day visiting and learning about the Cleburne Independent School District.  The word "independent" does not mean private.  These are public schools funded by the government and the state.  Ms Tammy Bright, the Assistant Superintendent of Student Services, was our host and, after a 90 minutes meeting with her, learning all about how their principal appraisal system works (and many of the requirements and systems in the state of Texas), she then took us to visit three of their elementary (primary) schools.  We also met briefly with the new District Superintendent, and finally had a short time in the middle school where a celebration of wounded war veterans was taking place.

This photo is of Ms Tammy Baker, with me, outside one of the schools we visited.


Cleburne has 7 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, one "alternative school" for special learning programmes, and one large high school.  It has an interesting mix of students, with the largest number being Hispanic (speaking Spanish), and also a number of students from the Marshall Islands.  Have you worked out why people from these islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean are here?  There are two important factors: the first is that the USA did nuclear testing on one of their islands in the 1940s, especially on Bikini Island (the bikini swim suit is named after this very small island - can you get the connection?) and the second is that many Marshall Islanders attend Seventh Day Adventist churches, and there is a Seventh Day Adventist University in Keene, close to Cleburne.

First School Visits - Keene

First School Visits:

Tuesday, April 21:  Mrs McLeay came with me for my first school visits today.  We hired a rental car and made our way to Keene, a small town northwest of Cleburne where we had fun meeting three special people and looking through two amazing schools.

I had interviews with the School Superintendent, the person who manages a group of schools, and then interviewed the principal of Keen Elementary School (the photo to the right is the main entrance) and Keene Junior High School.  The Superintendent appraises all the Principals, which is what my interviews were about.

There are 480 children at the elementary school, in 24 classrooms with an average class size of 20 - I am sure we would all love this at Riverview!

There is also a Keene High School, and all the sports trams in all three schools are called the "Keene Chargers."  The photo to the left is the elementary (primary) school gymnasium.

The elementary school also has specialist teachers for P.E., Music, Art, Computer Studies, Learning Assistance and for Counselling.

Part of me feels a little envious of all these things, but what I really think is that Riverview School has fantastic teachers who do all of these things in their own classrooms.

One other interesting fact that I found surprising is that about 20% of the students come from the Marshall Islands.  You might like to find these Islands on a map.  I don't know why so many have moved to this town in Texas, but there certainly are a lot of them.

Things to see in Texas

We have seen some interesting things in Texas.  Here are a couple:

In Texas nearly half the vehicles on the roads are "trucks" (or pick ups or utes).  These are mostly big ones with 8 cylinder motors and are very popular.  We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant last night and came outside to see this parked by us.  You need to climb up several steps to get into it.  Mr McLeay has three brothers who would all love to have a ride in this beauty!

This is something you won't see in New Zealand.  In case you can't read the sign it reads: "Crazy Gun Dealer.com"  We drove past it and were so amazed, we went back and took a photo.  Then we thought, maybe he really is crazy and doesn't like us taking photos, so we drove away very quickly.

Just this week a new law was passed in Texas allowing people to now carry their guns openly in public.  This means people will be allowed to have a gun just like in the cowboy days.

Our home for the next 5 weeks.

This is our home for the next 5 weeks.  Jan and Tim Cooper own this 12 meter long motor home and there is a jeep behind which we use for short trips once we have set up camp each night.  The State Parks often don't have internet connectivity, so there may be times when I won't get a post up for a few days, but will try to catch up later, like I am now.

Our first night was spent with a family in the little town of Hull, an hour east of Houston.  We then took two days to travel up to Cleburne, a town of about 30,000 people, just south of Dallas-Fort Worth.  This is an area called "The Bible Belt" where many people go to church.  This town has 77 churches and many of them are very big and are full on Sundays.

Here we are at Cleburne State Park.  Most of the time we will be staying overnight in state parks. When we were having tea at this table a squirrel came and watch us eating and was very inquisitive.  We`have seen beautiful deer and lots of colourful birds

Kerikeri to Houston

We;re off!

We flew down to Auckland on Saturday afternoon on the start of a very long day.  In Auckland three of our adult children (Anna, Robbie and Yanita) came to farewell us, which we really appreciated.

This is the Boeing 777 we traveled on.  We` thought it was pretty cool being in the Hobbit Plane!

The flight to Los Angeles was very long (about 10 hours), but we had great seats; the two at the very back of the plane.  I watched three movies while Mrs McLeay watched two and caught a bit of sleep.

We`had to wait at Los Angeles International Airport for 5 hours before our next flight to Houston, in Texas which took another 3 hours.  We`arrived their at 10 o'clock on Saturday night, only 8 hours after we had left Kerikeri!  How could that be?

The Chauffeur and the Chef

April 16:  The Chauffeur and the Chef.

Meet Tim and Jan Cooper.  Jan is Mrs McLeay's sister, and we have had many adventures together over many years.  The Coopers left today for Houston, Texas.  Here they are at Kerikeri Airport.  They arrive in Houston before us so that they can get their big Motorhome ready for the American part of our journey.  Tim is a retired pilot and engineer and he will do most of the driving in the USA and Canada.  Jan is a fantastic cook,

Hence: the chauffeur and the chef.



Note:  Chauffeur and chef are examples of words starting with a digraph.  
Can you name 5 more?

Here is Margie with Jan and Tim just before the Coopers leave Kerikeri.

Here are two questions:
Tim has estimated that we will drive 3,350 miles as we travel around the USA and Canada.

• How many kilometers will this be?
• If we are travelling for 33 days, what is the average number of kilometers we have to drive each day?