After leaving Santa Barbara we headed for Las Vegas to see Holly’s friend Liz. On our way we stopped in Calico, an old silver mining town that they call a Ghost Town because it has been abandoned apart from tourists visiting. 

Calico

Home built into a cliff in Calico

While in Vegas we checked out a few casinos such as The Bellagio, The Venetian and The Paris. More importantly we went to Dunamis Ministries which has an awesome presence of God, and we received some great prayer and prophetic words. We were also given a whole stack of sweet sermons to listen to on our roadtrip. We also went to the Hoover Dam which is big and very cool, and went to a huge buffet which is one of the things Vegas is famous for.

Hoover Dam

Inside Venetian Casino

Drive-Thru Wedding Chapel, Vegas

Paris Casinio

Next we went to The Grand Canyon and spent most of a day walking and driving around it taking a million photos. It’s such a lovely place; so much colour in the rocks and the vastness adds to the beauty. 

Grand Canyon

Holly at Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon from South Rim

Then we went to a Navajo Indian Reservation where we bought a few souvenirs from a Trading Post, and also saw some real dinosaur tracks and fossils as we were guided by our Navajo tour guide. We saw T-Rex and raptor footprints and the remains of a fossilised stegosaurus and we were given some fossilised dinosaur poo and a meteor rock to take home.

Stegosaurus fossilised remains

T-Rex footprint

Indian Reservation with dinosaur tracks

Brontasaurus footprint

Raptor footprints

 Next we went up into Utah to Monument Valley. We stopped in at an old Mission with some old log cabins built in a circle like a fort to protect themselves against Indian attacks.

Monument Valley - Utah side

Monument Valley - Arizona side

Monument Valley - Arizona side

Next we headed south back to Arizona and visited the Red Rocks and Sedona, which was an incredibly beautiful town built between cliffs and rocks, it was all old fashioned and quaint. Then we went to another ghost town – the largest one in America - called Jerome which was also very beautiful, they call in America’s most vertical town because it is built on a very steep mountain and just goes straight up and has a lot of weird curly very steep roads, it was pretty freaky to drive in actually.

Wild horses on side of the road

We travelled some of Route 66

Teepees at Reservation Trading Post

Sedona Town

View of Red Rocks from our motel room window

After Jerome we went to Phoenix where we stayed for four days at a Patricia King conference that also had Bobbie Conner speaking. We experienced some amazing worship times with Steve Swanson and Patricia King always has incredible teaching. Holly’s foot also got healed, she is pretty sure, time will tell. It had been giving her a lot of trouble ever since it was broken nearly a year ago – it kept hurting when she walked for too long or bent it funny and she hasn’t been able to run since she broke it. Bobbie Connor got a word that God was healing people’s right feet that had been injured and broken. Since the conference there has been no pain in her foot at all. Praise the Lord.

At Patricia King conference with too much gear

Cactus and Wagon in desert

Holly and huge cross at a Monastery in desert near Tombstone

After Phoenix we headed to Tombstone for the day and saw a gun fight show at the OK Corral where Wyatt Earp and his brothers and Doc Holliday shot dead three of their enemies. The Doc Holliday actor was pretty amazing. Then we went on a stage coach tour of the town. We saw the courthouse gallows where they used to hang people. It was pretty cool, it was like a boyhood dream come true for Ewan walking the streets of Tombstone.

Real site of shootout

Re-enactment

Our stagecoach, pulled by mules

After that we headed to New Mexico, stopping in Lincoln to see where Billy The Kid used to live and where he famously broke out of jail killing two deputies before escaping.

Ewan and Billy the Kid, inside Courthouse

Then we went to Roswell to take a look at the town where the 1947 spaceship crashed. We checked out the Alien Museum and an old prisoner of war camp where they held Nazis in the Second World War. Then we went north to Fort Sumner to the Billy The Kid Museum and gravesite.

UFO Museum

Alien diner

Ewan getting tortured by alien

Billy the Kid's rifle

Then we headed for San Antonio Texas, where we saw The Alamo, at the Alamo we did a battlefield tour and saw where Dave Crockett and the boys died when they were trying to free Texas from Mexican rule. We walked down to the Spanish Governor’s Palace which was built in the 1700s, and went to the largest Mexican Market in the USA. And we did the amazing Riverwalk which was built in 1930’s and was really stunning.  

Riverwalk

Spanish Governor's Palace

The Alamo