Day: 46 – 49
Date: 17/05 – 20/05
City: Mormon Lake, Arizona
Miles ridden: 32
Cumulative miles: 4133

Today is Sigrid’s birthday. When I woke up I congratulated Sigrid to her birthday, then we switched the Laptop on and logged in into Sigrid’s Skype account. We got a call from Simon, Niko, Anna, Silas, Oma and Opa and they congratulated Sigrid. Then we went to have breakfast and Val put the candles on the birthday cake that I organized earlier and lit them. When we arrived in the breakfast room we sang happy birthday for Sigrid.

After breakfast, Sigrid and I had a short pool/spa session and then started to pack. Back in the room Sigrid received another birthday call this time from Oma Inge.. During the time Wombat packed, a Red Indian accompanied him and told him stories.

After a while a second Indian came, saw that Wombat was occupied and came up to us and ask for a dollar to buy some food, so Sigrid offered him blueberry muffin. He was happy to get them and after telling us where he was from and that he is in the process of building a house, he left us, but Wombat was still stuck with his Indian. He only reluctantly left after a while. We got onto the bikes and left for Mormon lake. When we arrived it was a great atmosphere. At first it was a bit difficult to find a good camping spot. After some trial and error, Wombat located a nice area and we pitched our tent for the first time. It was a great feeling to finally camp.

After the tent was erected, we started to talk to people that passed by and talked to a guy from Alaska (not Fairbanks). Sigrid invited our new neighbours Tad and Gaila to a piece of her birthday cake. Tad and Gaila had been travelling for five weeks though the USA and where planning to travel to Mexico as well.

In the evening we started to wander around and found a truck with an Australian flag. We walked over and had a chat to the guy. He originated from Australia but was living in the USA for some years now. He and his partner were currently at the beginning of a round the world trip. His partner was from the USA and both were planning to get married on Saturday during happy hour. Going to the restaurant in the evening was a common idea, so we had to wait for an hour before a table become available. Sitting inside in the waiting area, Wombat and I tried to play Checkers, but we couldn’t agree on the rules. So we started to play chess, but we couldn’t finish the game since we got a table (bummer). We ordered our meals,

and got some freshly made bread with it. The bread tasted a bit funny, and looking at it we found that it was mouldy. We let the waiter know about the unwanted feature; she apologised and says she would inform her boss. The boss came, apologised and said that the food was free for us. Cool! We should always have some mouldy bread in our pockets. That would be good for our budget 😉
A guy with a guitar was going around and singing some songs, not very well but entertaining. When he arrived at our table, I ask him if he could sing happy birthday for Sigrid, so he got the attention of the restaurant and asked everybody to sing with him. Sigrid was a bit embarrassed but happy.

 

Next day in the morning there was the opening ceremony for the expo, and when we looked around we recognized some people that we have seen on the Horizon Unlimited DVDs

CD.

On this day we went to plenty of courses, e.g safety during traveling, risk mediation, cooking in one pot. The picture below is from a guy who was famous and cooked privately for rich people, until he decided that’s it and started traveling around the world on a motorcycle with sidecar. He gave us some nice recipes for one pot cooking.

And there was Mexico for beginners, we took some photos instead of taking notes, below are some examples.

This course gave us the confidences that we could do it but we should have a look where we cross the border and that we should avoid Mexico City. The rest of the country seems to be ok. It was a busy day. Mike arrived in the afternoon; he came a long way from New Mexico.

The last course was held by a couple that talked about the mishaps in Africa, and a very sad story about how the woman killed a child through an accident and the aftermath of that. It was a very emotional finish of the courses for the day. Then there was the happy hour, we had a couple of beers, Val bought some burger and we watched some Video’s.

 

The next day we were busy throughout the day attending all sorts of interesting courses, mostly about traveling Central and South America. At the night was a happy hour in the tent area, and just behind the tent there were some animal enclosures and one of them had some Bison’s. It looks like the Diddles were not really sure about the safe distance to these huge animals J

And then there was the wedding. It was very basic but nice.

 

On the last day breakfast was done by the exhibitors, we were walking around, talking to the exhibitors and scoring some breakfast.

Back to the tent, we thought we might make a group photo from our camp group. From the right, Gaila, Tad, Sigrid, Mike, Val, Wombat and me, and of course the Diddles, Wombat and Rudi.

In the evening there was an organize BBQ in the tent area and as special extra: A Solar Eclipse!

Tad organized some glasses for us so we could watch it and even take some pictures.

After the Eclipse, we meet a couple from Brisbane, Carol and Ken. They had arrived from traveling South and Middle America in the last couple of Month. We got plenty of information from them. When it got too cold in the tent, we moved into the restaurant and keept talking for hours. Mike was there as well, and in the end I adjusted our travel schedule and added Bolivia to it 😀