Okay, I have internet access once again.

When we last left our heroes, they were trapped in a snow storm in Flagstaff.  It turns out the entire northern part of Arizona was snowy, so we headed south through Phoenix and Tucson instead.  Along the way we stopped to take pictures of some cacti, since saguaros finally appeared around Phoenix. There were a couple horses in the lot we parked in, which Jenny was very excited by.  She grabbed two of her apples and was overjoyed to feed them.

So when I saw a sign on the highway for an ostrich farm that let you feed ostriches, I knew we had to stop there.  It turned out to also have deer, goats and lories.  While I found the ostriches fascinating (the closest thing to a Mesozoic theropod I'll ever see in life), Jenny loved feeding the deer.  It was the happiest I've ever seen her.  Jenny spent sixteen dollars feeding those animals.  The goats were my least favorite since one bit my finger. :|  But the lories (similar to parakeets) were lots of fun.  You entered a greenhouse full of lories, which then fought over the cup of nectar in your hands.  They landed wherever they wanted.  At one point, we each had a bird on our heads, and I had four on my arm.

That night we stayed with my online amateur paleontologist friend Rutger, who had just moved here from the Netherlands a few months ago.  He and his girlfriend Allison were excellent hosts, taking us to dinner and treating us to drinks.  It's always fun to speak to someone in your profession.  I type a lot about dinosaurs, but it's rare to speak to someone face to face about longipterygid phylogenetics.

We stayed a bit late, so didn't quite make it in time to use the natural entrance at Carlsbad Caverns.  But we were able to use the elevator and enjoyed the speleothems until a particularly noisy family annoyed us.  They tell you to be quiet when you enter, because the cave amplifies sound, but this group brought their little kid who wouldn't shut up.  So I make a comment to no one in particular that loud children shouldn't be allowed in some public places (this would also include movie theaters for instance), and the apparent grandfather went berserk.  He threatened to kill me, bragging about how many men he's killed on American soil, saying he's ready to pay his bail money when they arrest him.  It was pretty intense, but Jenny and I just walked away.  We figure we won in the end, since he ended up more upset than we were to begin with and embarrassed his family to boot.  While we now have an amusing story to tell.  I did learn to keep my mouth shut in the south however. :)

Next up will be Texas, the Gulf Coast and our start in Florida.  Plus more pictures.