Lots to say, Very little time!

I have to write this blog post rather fast unfortunately, as we don't have much time before we head west to the Grand Canyon!

From last time, we headed into Kentucky and met up with Sarah's Uncle and his friends. They lived on a nice big cattle farm, which me and Sarah decided to walk around until Sarah nearly died when we ran out of water and we were about 3 miles away from the main house! We stayed in a detached guest house which was really nice! They even had a really playful cat which reminded me of Matt & Becky's cat - Tyler!

We stayed there for a few days before heading south to Nashville where we stayed for 2 days in a budget motel. The first night we went to the main strip in Nashville to see all the country bands and have a few beers. We had a great time, we even had a guy who wouldn't stop telling me that he was "the" Tommy Lee, to which I replied - "You may be called Tommy Lee, but you're not the drummer one". He took offense to this and failed at trying to get me thrown out by whinging to the doorman! As we left the pub, it became apparent that Sarah's bag had been stolen from right under our noses! We didn't lose too much, but we did lose her purse and the camera that had some really good pictures on it!

We logged the theft with the police and nothing has happened - surprise, surprise! The next day we popped to the Jack Daniel's distillery in Lynchburg. The tours are absolutely free and we both found it very interesting indeed! We did buy a bottle of Jack Daniel's, only because you can't buy this particular bottle anywhere else. It's also funny that they're allowed to sell it because it's based in a "dry county" which means no alcohol can be sold there! They have a separate law that states they're allowed to sell commemorative bottles there.

The next day we made a bee-line for New Orelans. We stopped at the welcome center just inside Louisiana where they managed to get us an amazing deal on a hotel right down in the french quarter! We popped out that evening, had a drink called a "Hand Grenade" which they only sell in New Orleans and the recipe is a secret ...apparently.

Bummer - I'm out of time, so I'll finish this blog post later but there's some things I want to quickly add!

We're heading to the Grand Canyon so don't expect to hear from us much during the time we're there! We're already doing 120mile stints without anything in between, including petrol stations! I would just quickly point out that we also broke down twice on our way through Texas. At 1am, Sarah sleeping in the back, the drive shaft center bearing went again. As my mobile is incapable of ringing the AAA for some stupid reason, we went to the motel over the road, got the AAA to drop the van there and we got it repaired the next day (after spending 5 hours in the garage!!!).

We left there and got 50 miles up the road, and the same thing happens. This time the center bearing slipped down the drive shaft, so the drive shaft ended up rubbing against the bracket. We stopped, I jumped out and saw lots of smoke. Massively annoyed wouldn't even begin to describe how I felt. I had sarah hold the drive shaft up with a towel whilst I used our crowbar to smack the bearing back into place. As the screw wasn't there to hold it, we had to turn back and drive slowly. Stopped at the same motel, got the center bearing replaced again the next day by the same garage for free which is where we noticed a MASSIVE gash in the side of the muffler which was blowing extremely hot air directly onto the center bearing. We had to get this fixed and as it was Saturday we had to move fast! Luckily they put us in touch with a garage nearby and they replaced the muffler and some of the tail-pipe section mega fast and we got on the road and 700 miles away to here: Albuqueque, New Mexico!

We're absolutely loving this place, it's JUST like in the movies and we've even driven through some really wild west towns with populations of around 231! We're so glad we carried on in Roger, despite the problems of late!

Hope everyone's ok!

Love to all!

Ed & Sarah

xxxxx