Here's a post from earlier, you'll understand the delay once you read the first paragraph:

It's now Tuesday morning, and we're just settling into our full day of waiting at Beijing's airport. Big news here is that the government is quite actively blocking websites: we are stopped from accessing both Facebook and Blogger, and currently our attempts to get a proxy working are failing, so you may be reading this a while after its been written! Thankfully we depart for Bangkok this evening around 7pm, so we're only “censored” for a day – which is great except that we arrived here before 5am! Sometimes our thriftiness – in finding the cheapest voyage to Thailand - is only so beneficial...


Anyways, we just spent a fantastic weekend with the extended Muth clan, primarily hanging out in Redondo Beach, CA. We stayed at a Best Western only blocks from Hermosa Beach (where we spent a great morning body-surfing the waves), which was also about a mile from where our aunt & uncle live. Quality time was the top priority, since everyone only had the weekend to see each other, so we spent a lot of time chatting, eating, and drinking. Besides the beach visit, we also squeezed in a little hot-tub time, played an exciting game of family charades, and Liz even managed to hit up a yoga class. It was really nice to see everyone, aunts & uncles, cousins, and cousins' children alike :-).
We also visited our aunt & uncle on Anderson's mother's side, out in Northridge, so we ate some amazing Chinese food at the Mandarin Cafe and also petted their two Australian Shepherds, Renzo & Elle, as much as we possibly could.
Monday we spent cruising around LA with our friend Matt, having lunch at Venice Beach, exploring a bit of Long Beach (where he lives), and then returning to Redondo Beach for one last family get-together at Ruby's. After saying our final, final, final round of goodbyes, our cousin Reannon drove us the short distance to LAX, and to the beginning of our SE Asian Adventure...

Petrified Forest National Park

It's been a busy few days of road-travel, as we work our way across the American Southwest. This is being typed en route, actually, so currently we're in the desert between Flagstaff, AZ and Barstow, CA. We'll be staying in Barstow this evening, which is exciting mostly because the hotel has a pool in addition to the wi-fi!
Today is going to primarily be a travel day, not only because we need to cover a lot of miles, but also because most of the destinations are too far off of I-40 to visit when you're in a rush. That means we've decided against the Grand Canyon - four hours of driving for a few photo ops isn't quite worth it when one travels with their parents :-). Thankfully, yesterday involved more than enough touristic activities to satisfy even us!
We started our day, departing from Grants, NM, by taking scenic by-way 53 so we could stop by a place nicknamed "Fire & Ice." The "Fire" comes from the ancient Bandera Volcano - which we climbed - and the "Ice" comes from a perma-frozen cave-lake at the edge of a collapsed lava tube.


As you can see from the photos, the landscape was definitely dynamic and diverse. The volcano was quite impressive because we could see the path of the lava flow during our walk to the edge of the crater, while the ice-cave was literally freezing - a nice break from the desert heat - as we descended down into the cavern. Definitely a lucrative tourist trap for the family that owns it, but overall it was very interesting.
Next up was nearby El Morro National Monument, which features not only an impressive bluff with native American housing remains on the top of it, but also has quite the historical graffiti collection. Hundreds of signatures and drawings have been carved into the soft sandstone rock, ranging from Spanish explorers, to gold seekers, to early American travelers. There is a deep pool of water located at the base of the bluff, which certainly explained the site's popularity!



After our best meal yet, at the roadside Stagecoach Cafe in Ramah, we then drove a while to finish our tourists' trifecta with... the Petrified Forest National Park. Located in eastern Arizona, the park combines spectacular views of the painted desert, along with a plethora of petrified wood in its natural setting, and then throws in a few native American petroglyphs for good measure. Perhaps you can tell, but all three were impressive and very photogenic!



We spent last night in Winslow, Arizona - which if you're an Eagles fan you've undoubtedly heard of - though virtually all of our time there was spent either eating to recover from starvation, or sleeping to recover from exhaustion. Thankfully those conditions, from our modern perspective, are nothing like what it must have been like for those intrepid adventurers whose footsteps we are so loosely following.
Coming up is a weekend of family fun in and around Redondo Beach, CA, which will undoubtedly involve a bit of touristing - currently we're contemplating the Getty Museum in LA, and hopefully a winery on the way into the city - we shall see.

Crazy that we'll be in Bangkok in less than a week, and riding our bikes in about three...

Peace
A&E

We've made it through a jam-packed two weeks, spending time in several states and driving well over 1,000 miles.Unfortunately our camera was getting repaired (thanks United Camera!), so there aren't really any photos. If we get some from some friends (hint, hint), we'll add them. Fortunately, however, we have our camera back now, and will be going to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona tomorrow, which we are quite sure will be very photogenic. Currently we are at a hotel, with Anderson's parents, in Grants, New Mexico, after the first day of our road-trip to California. We're headed there for a Muth family reunion, and we'll then be departing from LAX late Monday night.
Now for the rewind: after Luke's legendary birthday party :-), we headed back up to Wisconsin for about another week. For July 4th we spent the entire weekend camped next to the Chippewa River, on Liz's aunt and uncle's property. We sold stuff (literally, all sorts of stuff) at the nearby flea market with Liz's grandma, floated the river for several hours (with coolers of beer tethered to our inner tubes), and even got to eat deep-fat-fried turkey for the first time ever. And of course we spent time with all of our nieces and nephews, including the new baby, including a few crazy hours in a hotel pool.
From Wisconsin we headed back to Iowa, for a whirlwind extended weekend. Thursday night we dined in style at our friend Dustin's new place of work, The Chef's Table. It's French cuisine, made funky. Or "deconstructed" as our waitress was fond of saying. Regardless, it was stylish cuisine, delicately prepared, that tasted absolutely delicious. Afterward we went to our friend Collin's final (really?) show in Iowa City, which was a somewhat crazy jam session at Quentin's Bar.
Friday involved a lot of running around, shopping for some needed bicycling accessories, a brief relaxing bike ride, and then we split up for our respective bachelor and bachelorette parties. Anderson headed to northern Iowa, outside Cresco, for a full day of camping and canoeing to celebrate with our friend Joe; Liz headed to Des Moines, for a full night of an 80s theme, sushi dinner, and dancing with our friend Hannah. They are getting married in September, which means we obviously won't be able to attend the actual wedding, so at least we got to join them for an awesome weekend!
Anderson then caught a ride to Des Moines, part of an epic Sunday in the car, ending up with us in Colorado in the wee hours of the morning. We were lucky enough to stop by Blake & Sarah's house again in Omaha, NE, where we once again ate amazing food. Nothing like garden-fresh vegetables and garden-vegetable-patties to rejuvenate some weary road warriors.
After an anxious day of packing, including a trip to REI, and the much-better-priced Wilderness Exchange, we had a fun get-together with most of our Denver friends. Thanks to everyone that came over on such short notice, good to know that our bribe of pizza was effective enough!
We spent about 8 hours in the car (well, van) today, ate a delicious Mexican lunch in Trinidad, CO, at Mission At The Bell Restaurant - which apparently doesn't have a website, and an only average Chinese buffet for dinner... guess that's what we get for getting Asian food in New Mexico.
Tomorrow's going to be a long day, but so long as our next hotel has wi-fi we'll post photos at night...

Peace
A&E

PS - Special thanks to Steph for the stolen photo above, it was from our meal at The Chef's Table.