Ryan Cunico

Link to Montezuma Castle Facebook Pictures So we left Phoenix on Saturday morning, to head north towards Sedona.  Our first stop, before Sedona, was a place called Montezuma Castle.  It is about 800 years old and was built by the Sinagua people.  This was only one of many communities in this area, known as the Verde Valley. Before we entered the park, I was admiring this little motorized bicycle parked off to the side, when the owner came out and…

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Link to Phoenix, AZ Facebook Pictures We spent Thursday and Friday nights in Phoenix with Brittny and her family.  They truly treated us like family – feeding us both nights, giving us a comfortable bed to sleep in, and providing lots of tips / life experiences about the various places we are going to visit.  Brittny’s mom lived in California for a large portion of her life, and was telling us all about what it’s like there – what we…

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Link to Biosphere 2 Facebook Pictures Today we woke up early (in a real bed!) and said goodbye to Josh. I am so thankful that I got to meet a distant Cunico, and learn all about him and his family. I am grateful that he contacted me and wanted to meet me after reading about our trip. I hope to have some more experiences like that! It’s really cool that we have distant cousins all over the country, and that…

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Links to Tucson Facebook Pictures Alrighty, folks. Woke up nice and refreshed and took a shower with the Solar Shower once more. The park volunteers enjoyed it; the grandparents who volunteer to help maintain the park live in an RV right by the visitor center and they have 9 grandchildren!  One of their grandchildren lives in Florida and taught in Savannah – she wrote 2 books as a Chemistry teacher.  It’s a small world! We continued touring Mt Lemmon after…

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Link to White Sands, NM Facebook Pictures So if you’ve been reading along, you’ll know that we slept in the Walmart parking lot.  Upon waking up, we got to see the awesome picturesque scenery behind this otherwise seemingly normal Walmart. We brushed our teeth in the parking lot, filled up the tank with gas, and made Almond-butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast. Then we headed on to White Sands National Monument. It is hundreds of square miles of white sand….

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Link to Roswell, NM Facebook Pictures On wards to Roswell! We got there pretty late in the night and set up camp at the Haystack Off-Roading Vehicle Park. There were some massively strong winds in the are and our tent almost blew down a cliff! The views in the morning were pretty spectacular. CHECK IT! We visited Roswell’s famous UFO museum Awesome replica of a radio station from the 40’s. Reasons for why the government hides UFO evidence from the…

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Link to Frijole Ranch Facebook Pictures Link to Carlsbad Caverns Facebook Pictures After waking up this morning, we wanted a shower.  Even though it was a bit cold outside, we decided to try out the Solar Shower and hung it up in a tree.  It worked quite well, and we both were able to get ourselves clean with one fill of the shower.  It was a bit gusty, so we shivered until we were dry. After our shower, we went…

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Link to this Post’s Facebook Pictures We woke up at Guadalupe Mountain, and decided to do a day-hike around the area.  After telling the park ranger we didn’t feel like killing ourselves on a steep mountain ascent, we decided to do the McKittrick Canyon trail.  It would be about a 7 mile round trip to the Grotto / Hunting Cabin and back.  First things first – the heat is so different here!  It is hot, but it’s a DRY heat….

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Link to this post’s Facebook Pictures Great day to start touring Dallas by seeing someone get arrested in our hotel parking lot! We briefly explored the city via car. It was a very well organized city compared to Atlanta and very clean as well. The lanes were massive! We saw this awesome looking bridge in the city. After we were done exploring the city, we headed west on I-20 for the Guadalope Mountains. It was over 500 miles of driving!…

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Link to First Day’s Facebook Pictures Link to New Orleans to Dallas Facebook Pictures So the first day on the road was a success.  Managed to make it all the way to New Orleans.  Our plan was to camp at a state park called Bayou Segnette State Park.  We tried calling 4-5 times while on the road, to make reservations, but the phone just kept ringing and ringing.  We weren’t going to make it to the park until RIGHT before…

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