Monkey Highlights Ten, a.k.a. Here we come Texas!

I thought posting Girls Camp was daunting with all the pictures, but Texas is just another huge picture fest. But I'm so glad we took them all. I have already forgotten many of the moments we shared and the pictures bring everything flooding back to me. Thank you Joseph Niepce for inventing the camera obscura and to all the other people who improved on it. 

I was thinking of doing these posts by events, but that gets too confusing. So, you get them by day. That may mean that some days have less in them, although it seems we partied hard almost every day. And I still plan to break up some posts into chunks and events. I'm just writing this down to remind myself that it doesn't really matter how you get it on here as long as it gets here.

Sunday, July 30th

This was a driving day. I'm pretty sure that Tyler got up early and did his AM driving that helps us out so much. It is nice to get some miles under our belt before everyone is up. We had never driven this direction before so there were new sights to see on our list of weird attractions. 

Our first stop was Grand Junction, CO. It was early enough that half that kids were still in jammies. Shops weren't open but that didn't mean we couldn't check out cool stuff outside. One such thing was the Bull made from chrome car bumpers. This guy was cool.

Um...Ivory...are you sticking your finger up his nose??

Check out his little tail on his behind.

I thought this was a pretty cool thing to stop and see. 

And lucky for us, all along Main Street there were sculptures. I read online that it is part of the Art on the Corner program. Not sure what that is, but I'm for it.

It seems like we otter pet this one...

This lady is all dressed up for Crazy Hair day at school. 

Do you see what I see? Monkeys climbing on gorillas. Now I've seen everything.

 Guys...no social grooming in public. 

"Can we keep him, Mom?"

That was a very fun area. Naturally we spent most of our time on the freeway, but when we did go into the towns, it was fun to see the streets. We found D street and then spent a lot of time talking about dee street. Puns on vacation are the best.

There were weird areas where the streets were in fractions. There would be 31st street and 32nd street, but there would be eight streets in between labeled like so...

To each his own, I guess.

Here is another of our interesting stops. This fish is made out of license plates. Please notice the feet sticking out of his mouth.

I love how the littles walk to the beat of their own drum. What are they doing in this picture??

We came across this lovely area with water and a LOT of bridges. I think they counted 17 or so? I don't really recall because I was sleeping through most of this section. I think the water was all connected but each area had a different name. We never were sure what it was actually called. I think our favorite name was, 'Bay of Chickens.'

Somewhere along the way we stopped to see one of Tyler's banks. We seem to find them all over the place. He always takes a picture looking dashing for his customers.

We ate some lunch under the tree. If you find shade, you should take advantage of it.

I love these mountains along the way. I think they come straight from a J.R.R. Tolkien book. Don't they look like Misty Mountains? I like how they get lighter as they fade into the background.

Last interesting stop before Texas. We stopped to see a monument to miners. The weather was starting to turn foul and it was raining as we got out to see this guy.

Quick, huddle up. Let's take a picture.

He was a very cool statue, but what I liked most was his spine. All the sections of his spine had faces on them. Very unique.

The weather was pretty crazy as we neared Texas. Dark gray clouds rolled in and there was lightning and rain. I really like storms so this was pretty cool. I especially love to watch lightning while I drive. I guess it makes the ride more interesting.

When we reached Dalhart, the heavens let loose and there was a deluge of rain. I don't think there are many days like this in Texas. The streets flooded and you could see water pouring down buildings like a wall of water. It was a bit scary driving since most of the road was flooded. Somehow we got through it all and even found Virginia's house. Naturally she was worried and had been watching for us. The rain actually let up a bit as we arrived, so we could carry luggage inside.

It was comforting to be in a dry, safe home. Virginia's home is so inviting. It felt nice right from the beginning. And of course it was great to see Virginia. We had been threatening to visit her and we were finally making good on our promise. We had officially reached Texas.