Episode 5 - SVW Tapes- 8th July, 1979

Summary

Just days after the heat-soaked Fourth of July tape, Episode 5 picks up with the family mid-move and mid-mayhem. The tone is a mix of comic exasperation and determination as Sharryn juggles packing, cleaning, kid-wrangling, and preparing for the transition to the Elsons’ house.

Moving Madness:
The big news is the move. The family is relocating to the Elsons’ home, and the logistics are intense. Boxes are everywhere. The fridge is half-empty. Sharryn’s exhausted, cleaning everything by hand because the dishwasher is still out of commission. There’s a sense of urgency, but also acceptance — she’s done this before, she’ll do it again.

John’s Job Situation:
John is still on the job hunt. There's discussion of interviews and the difficulty of finding a position that will allow the family to stay rooted in Atlanta. Sharryn speaks practically about money, stress, and the reality of living abroad while relying on temporary work and unpredictable opportunities.

Domestic Details:
The kids are everywhere — underfoot, on the mic, and occasionally helpful. Rachael talks about her friend Vanessa, her new reading books, and growing lettuce. Maitland makes appearances to talk about snakes, Star Wars puzzles, and his evolving jigsaw strategy. The family’s beloved popcorn maker (a prize from Top Value stamps) continues to be a source of joy.

Social Life & Summer Vibes:
Despite the chaos, Sharryn squeezes in time for friends. There’s mention of a drink with Ruth and Georgia, who bring their daughter Elodie over again — a tiny tornado in a red duffle coat. The conversation turns to haircuts, wine, and laughter, offering a breather from the stress of the move.

People, Places, and Brands Mentioned:

• Family & Friends: John, Maitland, Rachael, Ruth, Georgia, Elodie, Vanessa
• Locations: Elsons’ house (new home), current apartment (being vacated)
• Brands & Objects: Top Value popcorn maker, Bell phone company, Kiwi fruit, Pavlova (again), moving boxes
• Recurring Themes: Expat budgeting, Atlanta summer heat, job uncertainty, child chaos, laughter despite stress

Tone:
This episode is deeply grounded in domestic life — sticky counters, faulty appliances, and all. But it's also about resilience. Sharryn’s voice is warm and humorous, even when she's sleep-deprived and elbow-deep in cleaning products. It’s a snapshot of a mother making it all work, one tape and one to-do list at a time.

Full Transcript 

Hi, it's the... what of it? The 8th of July today, and we're at a place called Montrose, which is just south of Grand Junction, about 60 miles. Actually, we weren't planning to come to Montrose, but we wrote to Bev and Jack Shields who live in Atlanta, friends of the Waters in Blenheim, and they sent us their itinerary. They take tours of school kids from the college that Jack teaches at a summer camp, and they sent us the itinerary. And we just happened to look at it the other night and we decided we're only 60 miles from the place where they're going to be tonight, so we're actually just waiting for them now, so it should be quite... they don't know we're going to be here. So that's what we're doing here. But anyway, I haven't recorded for simply ages. It was about the 25th of May, I think, we were in San Antonio, which I have told you was just a beautiful town. We really loved it there. The heat though was pretty intense, the humidity... 100% humidity there, and it really is Texas weather. After we left San Antonio, we crossed the border into New Mexico where we visited the Carlsbad Caverns. Actually, I've covered most of these things in letters to you, but I thought I'd tape it all for... I don't know what reason you might be interested. The Carlsbad Caverns were just tremendous. We've been to caves in Mexico, but naturally they weren't as organized as the National Parks are here in the States, and the Carlsbad Caverns were just beautiful. You walked down 829 feet, and you took with you a little hand-operated radio, and every now and again there would be a start and finish sign, and during that period they would tell you all about the caverns, which was really quite exciting. And they had children's ones which were told in sort of nursery rhyme fashion, which was really quite fun.

We left Carlsbad that afternoon. Stayed and see the bats fly out of the caves at about 7 or 8 o'clock in the evening, but we wanted to move on. So we moved on right through El Paso. El Paso was very dead that day because it was Memorial Day and everything was shut, which is most unusual. The supermarkets weren't, of course, but nearly everything else was. We spent the night at the El Paso Civic Centre, which was very beautiful. We had a look around there. Then we went on to the White Sands Missile range and spent the night at Alamogordo, which is a city very near this National monument. The White Sands National Monument is tremendous. It's white... snow... perfectly white. It's a natural phenomenon, quite incredible. The sand is sort of like salt, and the children weren't able to slide down it as they thought they'd be able to, but we had a picnic breakfast there, and it was really lovely. Perfectly white sand for miles and miles. But also in Alamogordo, they've got the Space Hall of Fame, which has all the space stuff since the very beginning of any space research here in the States. Most interestingly, they had a little rocket outside which the kids were able to get into and zoom up and down. And... you'd have to excuse this, I'm kind of reading back from my diary, and it's a little bit disjointed at times, just to give you an idea of what we've been up to.

That's right, we went on through a place called Vaughn, and then we arrived in Albuquerque, which is a fabulous, beautiful city centered right in the middle of mountains and a beautiful sight to come into. We arrived there early in the evening. It was terribly hot there and very windy, and we did stay at a camp to clean up, but it wasn't a particularly nice camp, very barren and wasn't very nice at all. So we looked around Albuquerque that night and... one notices as you're travelling through the country, the incredible changes of countryside. The open space is just unreal. They've got so much land here that everything is so spread. You really have to have a motor vehicle to get around because there's, you know, sort of restaurants right outside town and all over the place that in New Zealand just wouldn't... you know, they'd really... wouldn't be able to operate because no one would ever go to them. But here, everything has masses of parking around it and just gives you an idea of the size of this country.

The following morning, the 31st of May, we went to a Volkswagen dealer. We had to get the pump fixed on our water tank because it wasn't working, and we had let them look at a couple of other little things. So we were there most of the morning. We just buzzed around that day, I think, cleaned up and stuff. Very hot, 90 degrees, but you know, not quite as humid as the Texas area had been. Then we went down to Old Town. All these places have old towns. The new cities have always seemed to have formed on separate places, and they've kept the original... just as they were, with perhaps a little bit of commercialism to spruce them up a bit, but it was quite an exciting old town. We spent the evening there talking to some people from Oklahoma whose camper had broken down as well, and they were sort of heading for Carlsbad Caverns or Grand Canyon or somewhere that weren't going to get there and decided to have the holiday in Albuquerque.

We left there, and we visited the Old Town again in the morning. They... yeah, that's right, they had a lot of modern Indian art shops there. Murals and beautiful furniture, all soft and wool and fabulous, and modern jewelry, which was really nice. The Indian jewelry, I'm not mad on. It's fairly brilliant turquoise and very heavy. They have necklaces called blossom necklaces, and they're fairly heavy and large and very expensive. We spent the day looking around there in Albuquerque, and then we went on to... that's right, we went out to visit our Indian friend at Laguna. That's when we found out that his wife had been shot the night before, which was all terribly upsetting. And they weren't there anyway, but we spoke to the police and a neighbour on the Laguna reservation, and then we decided to move on. Just out of Albuquerque is the Sandia Tram, which goes two miles up into the mountains, very, very scary, very high. And you get up the mountain, 10,000 feet up, with a fabulous restaurant on top. Actually, you really noticed the lack of air up there. It's quite sudden going up in the tram car. You also see an aircraft that crashed on the mountains on the way up some years ago, but the remains are still there. We went up when it was still light, and we came back after dark, so it was a really magnificent sight of Albuquerque on the way down.

We travelled on to Los Alamos that evening after we left the tram, and there was an incredible lightning and thunderstorm in the distance. We weren't actually in any rain, but the sight of these is quite phenomenal because they're nothing like what we see in New Zealand. Just lit up the whole sky, and the children were very delighted. We were heading for Los Alamos to visit Karen Penada's uncle, Paul, who lives there. We called on him the very first thing the next morning, and he really is a sweetie, but he's been so long at Los Alamos nuclear station... power station. That's where he's worked for the last 20 years. He really is a bit like the absent-minded professor. And he couldn't... couldn't remember anything at all. He just kept saying to us that there are a lot of things I don't understand about people. And he really... he wasn't expecting us, didn't know anything about us, and it turned out his son Mark, who was 19 and getting married Saturday week, knew all about us and actually had mail for us and so on. And we had breakfast with them, and then we went down to Santa Fe, which is the capital of New Mexico. And it's a fabulous city because it's quite small. They limit the population, they won't have an international airport, and apparently are not a little too popular with the rest of the state, but it has kept this particular city most original and very beautiful. It's not possible to build anything but Pueblo Indian style buildings or shops or anything. And there's a hotel there, absolutely brand new, which looks as if it's been there for donkey's ages, but inside is just the most beautiful... really modern, but the exterior is Pueblo Indian. We drove around there... because... for the town for quite a while because it was really rather beautiful to look at. There are seven museums there. We visited several of them and the hotel. But that's where I ran into Dick Van Dyke. I'm sure Dad would have been thrilled about that. And we also met the couple from Dunedin... from Christchurch, who... what were their names? Oh... Fels? Fears? And he's the guy... he was a teacher at Shirley Boys High. He had actually applied at some stage for a job at the police training college and had met Dad, which was quite coincidental. We also met another New Zealand guy who was with a group. They have lots of groups of 14 that fit into these large sort of camper affairs that go from New York to Los Angeles, right around the whole circuit of the States for about $600 for six weeks. And we met a young guy from Dunedin that was one of those who came over and said hi to us and so on. And that night, we went back to the man's house, Paul, the uncle of Karen, and he took us out to McDonald's, which the children thoroughly enjoyed, of course.

On Saturday the 3rd of June, we went to the Bandelier National Park, which is Indian ruins and dwellings, a particularly nice one and a magnificent park. We thoroughly enjoyed our day there. We picnicked there and walked all the trails and so on. Everybody talks about hiking here; they don't walk anywhere, they're all hiking. In the afternoon, we visited the Los Alamos nuclear plant museum, which was most interesting. We saw the Kiwi reactor there, which is sitting beside a replica of a New Zealand Kiwi, and we saw the atom bombs that were replicas of the ones that were used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We... that's right. Oh yeah. After we left there that day, we got back to the Pinyon Loop, which is where the man lived. Pinyon, by the way, is the national tree of the state. To find a letter from Helen Tait, we were just astonished. It was about seven o'clock at night, and in the letter they referred to the Bowles. He was the Colonel or Major or whatever in Blenheim years and years ago, and we had met him, oh, about 10 years ago, I suppose. They were great friends, Helen Tait, Helen and Ted, just had a hell of a lot of fun with them. Ted and Helen had stayed with them when they were in the States, but they had since moved and had retired from the Air Force and were now living in Los Alamos and actually working at the nuclear station. So we called them. They weren't going out. They said, "Come right around." Well, they lived in the most beautiful home, 5,300 square feet. Really something special. And Mrs. Bowles is a real pet. She showed me all through the house, and the electrical appliances here are just so much further advanced than New Zealand. Everybody's got those sort of fridge-freezers, which are okay, we've got those in New Zealand, but these ones have cool water on the outside, and you push your glass up to it as you do, you know, like kind of on a spirit measure in a hotel. And then beside that is an ice dispenser, which you put your glass up to, and all the ice falls. And they all have self-cleaning ovens. Everybody has one self-cleaning oven and a microwave. I have yet to see anybody use it for anything but making instant coffee. But their house is really lovely, and Los Alamos is a particularly nice place because it's so far from anywhere. During the war, of course, it was a secret place. In fact, they took it off every map that ever existed. Just during the war, it didn't exist. And people that went in there, they went in with their whole family, and they weren't allowed to leave during the wartime while they were doing the research. And so the... the little thing that we were told about the place was that all the children that were born there during that time, because there was no such place as Los Alamos then, were registered as PO Box, something or other, Santa Fe. And it took some years after the war before these children could actually be registered as having been born anywhere in particular.

Oh, I meant to say something about Santa Fe. Oh yes, when we met these people from Christchurch, we were actually standing in the very oldest church in the whole of the United States, which also has the oldest bell in America. There was a darling brother telling us all about the place, and he was very sweet to Rachael. He had a gorgeous voice, and he sort of... in a sort of a musical little way, told us all about how this bell had been brought from Mexico. Of course, it had originally come from Spain, and it weighed many, many tons and was worth a great deal of money because it was full of gold and copper and silver. And he was telling us how it took four and a half months to bring it up to Santa Fe... I don't know how many years ago, to this church. And the church was rather quaint, and it was about to close, and there were only six of us, and Rachael... Maitland was asleep in the camper... in the little area where he was telling us about it. And he said to Rachael, "Where are you from?" She said, "From New Zealand." And everybody said, "Oh, New Zealand," as they always seem to. And one couple said, "Oh, we've been to New Zealand." They were Americans, and they had been to Auckland and Wellington and Christchurch and had done a three weeks sort of a trip through New Zealand. And this is where the other couple said, "So are we," and they were the ones from Christchurch. So six of us there, it was quite a coincidence, really.

Anyway, on Sunday, 4th of June, what do we do that day? Oh yeah, that's right. Mark, this young son of Karen's uncle, was moving. They were actually moving from... to Pagosa Springs, and they were getting married the following Saturday. Mark's only 19, and God knows how old the girl he's marrying is because she'd only graduated the night before we arrived. Everybody does, I gather. Education is, you know, an occupation here with everybody. Nobody fails because you can pass something. So just about everybody graduates. But Los Alamos is particularly interesting in that 65%, I think, of all parents in the area have a PhD or more, either one or both parents. So the pressure for kids here for education is terribly high and quite difficult for them, I think. Anyway, we helped Mark clear up in the morning because the poor Paul, he really wasn't very much use to Mark. And Mark was packing up a whole lot... friends came around, and we all helped them pack to set off to Pagosa Springs. They were taking all their stuff up there, you know, so they could be married the following week. Well, we all left there. And we moved on. What do we do? And yeah, the first stop was the Rancho Grande US agricultural development. It's a conservation display showing, you know, what... how the erosion comes about in these areas through too many cattle and overgrazing and so on. And we moved on to... and through Chama, which is a big skiing area, and onto the Navajo Lake National Park, where there's many boats and so on. And lots of water sports and through to Farmington. We found a river near Farmington, and we camped there that night. We met a couple there, he was quite interested in... him rushing over and said were we from New Zealand, and his name was Silver Heels, he is... a Frenchman Indian, and during the war he was in Wellington on the way to Guadalcanal, and he had actually walked from Wellington to Paekakariki. So he knew the area probably better than we did. But apparently, he said... I thought he said that his name was on the memorial at McKay's Crossing, but I'm sure he was still very much alive. But he apparently had four brothers, and perhaps some of them were killed and their names were there, whether the memorial is still there or not. We told him there was nothing at McKay's Crossing now other than the railway line. But anyway, he was also in Okinawa, and he'd really been around. He has a ranch, or part of one, in Melbourne, so he goes down there quite often. And they were just super to us, and they gave us a fishing rod, and they gave us some plum jelly, and they've invited us to come and stay. They live up near Hudson Bay.

We spent the next morning at this river, and we fished and one thing and another. It was the 5th of June, which, of course, was Stewart's anniversary day. Anyway, we didn't catch any fish. The river was blessed cold actually. Maitland came back, and he said to me, "Oh, that water gives me a headache." I didn't know what the hell he was getting on about. And then I went down. I thought I'd take a bath in the river, and oh, if you'd stand up for a few minutes, your feet would just freeze, and it was just quite painful. So I guess that's what he meant about a headache. Then we set off for Shiprock and Gallup, which is further on, and we had dinner there. Gallup's a really hilarious place. It's a large railway centre, and it's just one very long street with masses, as Maitland calls them, neon signs. We had dinner there. Very long street. All their shops are just all down the one street. It's really quite a strange place, nothing sort of further back than one block. And then we went on to Zuni because on the 6th, there was supposed to be a rain dance there that we thought we'd take a look at. But we drove around Zuni, and couldn't find very much. Asked a couple of people, no one knew anything about it. We finally spoke to the Indian police, who seemed to think it was a bit of a joke and only for the tourists. So we decided to move on. We headed for... Sanders? And we spent the night at a rest area just out of... Holbrook? These rest areas in some states, you're allowed to sleep overnight in them. And this particular one was absolutely chock-a-block. We had to sort of get off the road to get into the damn thing. It was very crowded, and that wasn't far from the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert. So the next morning, we went up and away into the Petrified Forest. It was fabulous there. Rachael thoroughly enjoyed it. Went demented over the petrified wood, and there's long logs, you know, sort of across small canyons or areas. In fact, there's one that apparently a cowboy crossed on a horse for $1 some years ago, but now has concrete... things across to make it, you know, much safer, and nobody's allowed to walk across it, of course. The Painted Desert was beautiful too, the colors and the whole... whole area was just beautiful. All these national parks are just so beautifully kept and so well organised. We moved on from there to Holbrook, and at Holbrook, they've got a meteor crater, which is just enormous, but we went up there. The national parks are almost free to get into because we've got a ticket to go to them all for the whole year. You don't have to pay anything when you buy a $10 ticket, and the whole car goes through for nothing. We got to this meteor crater, and they wanted five bucks to have a look down a ruddy hole. We'd been looking down holes all day for nothing, so we decided to look at a few postcards, and we were actually at the top of it then, so we decided that no hole was going to be that interesting, so we didn't bother.

We moved on from there to Sunset Crater, which is a large... it's a volcano which has still got... masses of lava around it from previous times. Actually, having been in the past, it looks very like Mount Egmont, sort of steep like that. You have been able to walk up in the past. We would dearly like to have done so, but... as everything here... the latest Geographic magazine says, "Are we loving the Grand Canyon to death?"You know, the T-shirts and... this sort of crater was just the same. So many people had been walking up, and the lava was so sort of soft that it was getting too worn away, so you cannot go up there now. So we moved on, 89, to the Grand Canyon... to Cameron, which is a little small town. We passed through Cameron, and we spent the night at the Little Colorado Canyon, which is just beautiful, and it was just an insight as to what we were about to see the next day. It was magnificent. The Canyon really is something. We... in the night, there were several other campers there. There's no camping... you're not supposed to camp there, but this other couple who were from Canada said, "Well, we were going to stay," so we all decided to stay. And the next morning, all the Indians arrived with their jewelry, and I purchased a small necklace which is made by the Navajo people, which only cost me three dollars, and I felt I had a really good deal with this. It's about the only... I've purchased jewelry, as I say, it's pretty expensive, and most of it has gotten chunky for me. But we met a couple there who were covered in diamonds and God knows what, and they, in fact, were from Memphis, and they lived over the road from Elvis Presley. In fact, the lady's child had used to play when they were little with Elvis, and I really got, you know, quite sad. Tears came to her eyes when she talked about him, and you know, it was really quite... quite sad.

We arrived at the Grand Canyon, which really is just absolutely beyond words. We decided to sort of stop and have lunch and clean up. We met a couple, Gene and Roger Shera from Auckland, if you please. This guy said to me, "What...? Happen to know the time?" And I thought, "Gosh, he sounds like an Australian." It's funny how you feel that New Zealanders sound like Australians when you haven't heard one for a while. And we had lunch with them and quite a bit of fun. They had twin daughters, or a son and a daughter, twins, and they played with the kids and so on. And that afternoon, we looked around the Grand Canyon village. Oh, Dave and Jack have just arrived, so I'll continue this tape some other time.

Wow, at last, I've got back to recording for you. I was recording last on the 8th of July while we were waiting for Bev and Jack, and as you heard, they turned up. I'll get back to that later, but in the meantime, I'll go back to the 7th of June when we arrived... Grand Canyon, that's right. The first day we were there, we met... she isn't that? And we spent the day just getting organized at the Grand Canyon, finding out all about it. It's a tremendous village. It's probably the largest tourist resort in the whole world, I should imagine. The international tourists here are just tremendous. Everything has been translated into six different languages. And it's really quite a place. The Grand Canyon itself is just magnificent. The sunrises and sunsets here are just really very, very beautiful. We... as I say, we got ourselves all familiar with the area and found out what was going on and what one could do, etc. We discovered that to go down to the bottom of the canyon, one required a permit to stay overnight. It never used to be necessary, but the ranger was telling me when I was down there that when it was just free-for-all, on one occasion, they had... there's a camp at the very bottom of the canyon called the Bright Angel camp, and on one occasion, they had a thousand people stay there over one night. He said the first thing to give up was the loos, and it took them weeks and weeks just to repair the damage, not done deliberately, but just the vast number of people, just... the damage is very great. So, we decided that there was no way we were leaving there without going down to the bottom of the canyon. And, of course, having the children with us, it would have been quite a strenuous walk for them, and we wouldn't have enjoyed it ourselves. So we decided we'd have to go down individually. And so it meant that we had to get up really early the following morning and get in line waiting for tickets because they retain just 10 tickets for people to collect each day.

At all the... the national parks and state parks, they have campfire talks in the evening and all kinds of things to do. We went to the campfire talk that evening. It was in the Grand Canyon. A guy ranger had put some slides together with the Grand Canyon Suite, which was a really, very pleasant evening. We also went and watched the San Francisco sidewalk astrologers. It was quite fun. Maitland was Saturn, and we saw the moon and some galaxies and so on. It was really quite fun, and they tell you a bit about astrology while you're there. The canyon itself, its sheer size and beauty is simply phenomenal. It's really just terribly hard to explain the feeling that you have when you're there. The temperature was very nice there too. It's a nice, comfortable 80. However, it's not so pleasant down at the bottom. However, we moved on.

Thursday, the 8th of June, John got up terribly early and waited for these tickets that were required. Had to get up at five o'clock. The place doesn't open till seven, but by quarter past five, there were about 10 other people in line, so we were lucky. He got our two good ends. We went about enjoying the canyon for the day. We went along and watched the mule trains set off, which were really quite fun. The mules are terribly expensive to take down there. It costs you about $50 or $60 to go down just for the day, which is only halfway. The mules can't go right down and back in a day. But everybody set off looking all terribly, terribly good. And a ranger told us that there's one thing funnier than watching the mule train set off, and that's watching it coming back again. I really think that I would rather hike down there because the mules are really quite large animals, being quite a lot larger than donkeys, perhaps a little smaller than horses. And they kind of go to the edge of the canyon and look over, and I think I'd rather be on my own two feet than perched on the back of a mule. And I think I'd rather have sore feet than... I'm not too sure, but however... We buzzed around the canyon that day. Shuttle buses, which are free everywhere, and they take you around. One of the trips on the shuttle buses is an hour and a half, which goes around the West Rim. And then they have feeder buses which take you to all the facilities within the park, you know, the camping facility, shower, stores, general store, post office, and all the rest of it. The kids thought it was marvelous because in all the national parks, they have a five-cent refund on cans, so they spent their whole day looking for cans and then piling on the shuttle bus and tearing down to refund them and buy things. And that day, we... I went and bought my tramping boots that day because I didn't have any decent ones, so it was rather nice to get them. And we took the children... we picnic and so on during the day. And that night, we took the children to an astrology talk and then along to watch the astrologers again. It's a lovely place to be in the evening at the Grand Canyon. People are always terribly friendly, and we thoroughly enjoyed that day.

Well, the following morning, Friday, I didn't really know what time John had gone. I knew it was still dark, but he got up terribly early. We got tickets to go down and stay down there Friday night and Saturday night. Well, John got up terribly early and set off, and he walked from the village itself where we were parked illegally, I might add. One isn't supposed to camp in National Parks outside of the campgrounds. However, they're all terribly full. There was a long line in the morning, so we weren't about to wait too long, so we just camped where we felt like it. Nobody seems to mind. And he walked to Yavapai Point, which is where you start, which must be about five miles to begin with. And I had breakfast with the kids, and we decided to go on a geology walk, which was from this very Yavapai Point where John had set off in the morning. We drove down there. And two guys yelled out, "New Yahoo!" in the car, and I thought, "They can't be yelling at me, I didn't know anybody here." But they were... they... and it turned out that John had dropped... trodden over them in the middle of the night. They were sleeping on the road or somewhere, and he had trodden on them almost. And I was chatting with them for a little while and said to watch out for me during the day. And their names were Craig and Patrick, and they were from Boston, and they were... Chicago? It was great fun. Coming on the geology walk with us, and the hat got blown over the edge, and they bravely tried to get it, but one would be crazy to attempt to try and retrieve a hat from over the side of the canyon. And they came and ate ice cream with us, and they ended up spending the whole day with us. They were really good fun. Craig was just like... start with the children, and he played, and he stomped along with the kids on a foot each and so on, and they really had a great time with them all day. They were really sweet guys. And they had to leave about 5:30. They were going across the desert, so they'd stayed for the day so that they could travel across the desert in the evening. And they gave me their copy of the Grand Canyon Suite when they left. I was really quite delighted. So hopefully, we'll meet up with them again. They want to meet us in Canada and go to a festival up there, an Arts Festival later on. So anyway, I'm sure we'll see them again. So we spent the day with them, and we went off to bed at night, and then unexpectedly, John arrived back about 10:30. I wasn't expecting him because it's a terribly long way. He'd gone down to the Canyon in the one day, and it isn't recommended because the heat down there is tremendous. It's 80 at the top, but it's around 110... yeah, 110 at the bottom. And the steep climb out is miserably hot. However, he got down there and decided that coming back at midday the next day, it would be far too hot for me to go down then, so he would come back that night in the cool of the evening too, it is much easier.

So we drove down to Yavapai Point so that I could set off the first thing in the morning. Well, I left at 6 am. I went down the Kaibab Trail, which is a trail about nine miles... oh no, seven... sorry, six miles down the Kaibab Trail. It's very steep, zigzags right down. You sort of feel you're going down through the ages as the different layers of earth change colour. There are no water stops on the way down, and this track isn't advised for coming back up because of the lack of water stops, and it's a great deal steeper. It's six miles down that one compared with nine coming up the other way and with water stops. So I was down there by about 8:30 in the morning, and I had breakfast down there. And then I went over to Phantom Ranch, which is... typically American in that... John had warned me to take some money with me, but one doesn't expect to find anywhere to spend money at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But sure enough, there's Coca-Cola and hamburgers and all the usual fast foods and beer and anything you could wish to eat down there. There's a restaurant and bar and goodness knows what. And at Phantom Ranch, they have like little bungalows for the people that come down on the mule trains to stop over. And anyone else... quite often the raft trips stop there, and the people can sleep in the cabins as well. So I sort of spent the day around Phantom Ranch and at Bright Angel Creek. People seemed to be smoking hash; it was the most popular pastime, very common and very pleasant, I might add. Later, I was talking to some girls most of the day, but it's so terribly hot when you first arrive down there. You're not allowed to swim in the Colorado River itself; it's terribly swift and terribly dangerous and very cold. But you can swim in the small creeks that lead into it, and the Bright Angel Creek is nearby the camp, so everybody swims in that. The first time you get in, it seems terribly cold, but as the heat of the day draws on, you just sit in there and cool off your feet. There were some really hilarious people down there. There was a woman down there that must have weighed 20 stone if she was a pound, and John had told me about her. The rangers said they didn't know how he was going to get her out of there, but you know, he was really quite worried because people are getting lifted out all day long. They find it's really easy going down, of course, downhill, and when they get to the bottom, they're pretty exhausted, and they panic at the thought of getting back out again. And so they cart them out in helicopters and mules all day long. And it's terribly expensive. It's more expensive to take a mule out than a helicopter because you have to pay for the mule to come down and back for two days. But it's over $100 to get a helicopter lift out. And this woman also weighed over 200 pounds, and the mule can only cope with 200 pounds, so as far as I know, she's probably still down there.

And I was... or about as evening came on, a guy came along the river, and he said, "Hi, you must be the Kiwi bird." I thought, "Gosh, bush telegraph travels fast." And it was a guy from... Taos, New Mexico? Yeah, Rob his name was. He has been travelling for four years, and he was with a girl... well, woman, she would have been about 50. Rob's 28. And they came from Woodstock. They were real sort of hippies, and she was into astrology and all the rest of it. She'd written a few books and stuff. They were great fun. There was another couple down there, Rick and... Kay? They were from... oh, Rich and... no, Rick and Caty were from Mississippi. That's... Rich and Vicky were from New York, and they were great fun. They actually came back up with me. Anyway, we all had the evening together, and we went over to the Phantom Ranch, mainly to see Peter Fonda, who was down there making a movie with the new chip star that they have in this country. He looked slightly different from the days of Easy Rider with a big red beard and a slightly portly stomach now. But I gather the movie he's making has something to do with him winning a gold mine... off a gamble, and he wins this girl as well in the gold mine, but is set in the Grand Canyon, and he takes this young girl with him. Anyway, we saw all the film stars and so on, and we had a drink in the bar, which was all very active, being Saturday night. B... You sleep on the floor of the canyon. You don't have to... Sorry. Side, too. Well, I think I was up to tents or anything. Yes, you sleep out under the stars, which is really rather nice, although there is quite a lot of wind down in the canyon, so things rattle around a bit all night, and you keep thinking it might be a snake beside you or whatever. But anyway, you wake up pretty early too because as soon as the sun comes up... so I set off about five o'clock. And Pooky and Rich left shortly after me, and they caught up to me at Indian Gardens, which is about halfway up. We had breakfast there. And the first half of the trek up is relatively mild, but the second half is really quite tough going, and that last mile is just... one thinks that one will never get there. However, we were prompted on by Rich, who kept threatening the most gorgeous cocktails when we got to the top. We got up there about 10:30, quarter to 11, only to find that the Arizona liquor law on Sunday doesn't permit the pubs to open until midday. So unfortunately, we had to settle for Coke and ice creams. So they also... when we got to the top, some bright guy was looking for people to go down and bring up 50-pound packs for the film team that were down there, and they offered you $64 to bring up a 50-pound pack. The joke went... so they could go take a mule. Anyway, we leaped onto a shuttle bus and tore down to the showers and got all cleaned up and spent the rest of the day lying under the trees just chatting with everyone. It's really quite a pleasant day. John and the kids were all okay and had been having a great time tearing around the canyon. But really, the hike down the Canyon is quite an event. It's really... a great deal of fun and well worthwhile. You know, it really is the ultimate in seeing the Grand Canyon. You really feel... if you've done it... I think that the most wonderful thing would be to take a raft trip down. People seem to be having such a great time on the raft trips, it really would be a thrill.

Well, on Monday the 12th of June was Rachael's birthday, of course, and Rick and Vicki, who had come back up the hill with us... gorgeous Vicky was quite an artist, and she'd drawn... made a handmade card with the drawing of the Grand Canyon and Rachael's name on the Grand Canyon, and on the card was wishing her a very grand Canyon birthday. And they gave her a beautiful Navajo necklace... was it called ivory? Sort of birds on it, which really is rather sweet. She was just delighted. So we all had breakfast together. And we all went in our various directions. Ours happened to be to Bedrock to see the Flintstones, which, of course, the kids were delighted with. Actually, Flintstone or Bedrock or whatever it's called is not all that marvelous, but you... it's a bit of a commercial racket. We then went on to a place called Williams, and we had dinner at a place called Kingman. And the heat was increasing again. It was starting to get pretty hot. We got to Hoover Dam. And about 7:30... yeah, it was 95 degrees at 9 o'clock at night. So we decided we'd stop at Lake Mead, which is a reserve there, now man-made lake through the Hoover Dam, of course. And we camped at the campground there, which was very, very pleasant, had lovely trees and flowers and things camping, and swam there. The lake was lovely and cold and fresh. So we had a swim and some downtime. It is easy for a while in the heat, you really just can't do anything if you're so lazy and so worn out. So on Tuesday the 13th, it was terribly hot again, so we just relaxed and swam in the morning. And... really quite enjoyed being there. And set off for... That's right. We went and had a look at Hoover Dam. Went over Hoover Dam, just a very, very large dam, of course, and quite interesting. And then we set off for Las Vegas, well... we were going to take a motel because... of any of the places in the States, the cheapest motels in the whole of the country must be in Las Vegas. Everything is really cheap there: food, motels, drink, everything. Of course, all to get you to get into the casinos. However, we discovered that we could park up at the back of the Silver Slipper casino absolutely free and with security as well. And that there was no point being in the casinos all night and half the morning as well; there was no point in taking the motel or anything up. We're cooler or more pleasant in the casinos. So we had our first sort of taste of Las Vegas. Las Vegas has to be the most brilliant, sparkling city in the whole of the United States. It is just full of neon signs and glittering, shining buildings, magnificent, luxurious, overdone buildings. We had our first free meal after midnight. You get all these breakfast steaks and eggs they serve you after midnight, all the free breakfasts and things, of course, are between midnight and 6 am. You can have three or four in a night if you really want to go to different places. We went and the Silver Slipper casino was very nice. We went there, and we toured around a few of the others. Spent half the night, I might add, and lost a few shillings, nothing too serious, but... you know, it was really quite fun. It's impossible to stop gambling, of course. And it's just as impossible to win anything.

The next day, we went... on the 14th of June, we went to Circus Circus. Well, this is probably the best casino with children because they have a very, very enormous casino. Beautiful one, really. And they have a complete floor which is devoted to children's games, which, of course, costs money, you know, sideshow things. Very really good prizes, you know, huge pink panthers and things like that. They're quite good value, but of course, you can spend plenty. And the children can stay on that floor, and from 11 am in the morning until midnight, they have, every half hour, fantastic big top performances. All kinds of things from riding bicycles in every possible conceivable manner, from dog shows, performing poodles, to, you know, the high wire, then loose wires and every wire. And all kinds of entertainment, absolutely free, which, as long as you aren't persuaded to go downstairs and start gambling in the casino, it's a very, very good deal. The children thoroughly enjoyed it. So we spent the whole day there. Well, Maitland met the sweet guy. His name was Chuck, and Chuck was the sweetest little kid. His parents were on their way to Alaska. They were in the Air Force, and they were staying in Circus Circus, which is a pretty expensive hotel to be staying in. And middle Chuck, he was 12. This... saw him there for two days. He must have had a pile of dough because he had been winning all these soft toys, and we never laid eyes on his parents once in the two days. And Chuck, you know, following Maitland around, he was spending money madly. Well, first of all, he gave Maitland a little soft toy. And the next thing, he came back with an even bigger one. And, of course, Rachael didn't have one. And both the children wanted to try and do these sideshow things to win prizes. Of course, for Rachael, one was the prize. You shouldn't have a hope in hell of winning it. So we heard that Chuck was such a great shot with a water pistol. You fire a water pistol into a clown's mouth, and the balloon blows up, and you have to beat the other 10 people or whatever. So we gave Chuck a quarter, and he won. And we gave him another quarter, and he won. And he wouldn't give Rachael a toy exactly the same as the one he'd given Maitland. So all was happy. He was a cute little kid, and we sort of spent... Maitland had gotten quite friendly with them, and we spent sort of a couple of days with him. We had lunch at the Silver Bird, which was another casino across the road. Food here is incredible, you know, for a couple of dollars, you can just eat and eat and eat and eat. They're all smorgasbords, and there's the most incredible desserts, and kids quite enjoyed being able to eat just what they liked. And that night, we visited many other casinos, the Jolly Trolley, and we had breakfast a couple of times that night, I think, John and I, the Castaway, and I think we finished up at... oh, I think the casino that Howard Hughes owns, or one of them owned, and we had a breakfast at about 4 am. When... that did sort of thing for the whole of the next day. We thought we saw some follies that night and a couple of strip shows, and you can go to... there's all fabulous entertainment, of course, but most of it's pretty... pretty well, you know, probably quite reasonable really. But for about $15 a head, you can get a couple of cocktails and a show with, you know, really top performers. There were all kinds of people who were there? Liberace was there in a... there were 40 people in his show. Really would like to have seen that. And who's the dancer? Mike... can't think now. There was a very good dancer there, a well-known one. And the only person that I would like to have seen had he been there was Sammy Davis, but unfortunately wasn't there at the time. So boy, we got to bed real late that night. H... Anyway, that was so much for casinos. You can spend an awful lot of money in casinos. It's actually... I quite enjoy watching the crap tables and the roulette wheels. It's where the really big money changes hands. It's just incredible how much money changes hands and the wealth that's there. But I gather that they make the most money out of the dime slot machines.

Anyway, on Thursday, the 15th, we went back to Circus Circus in the morning and saw some of the acts that we hadn't seen the day before because they change every half hour, and there is a terrific variety. And we left Las Vegas about 2 o'clock that day, and we drove through extreme heat again. Las Vegas is just so hot. It's incredible to find such an oasis in the middle of a desert. It really is... to a place called Overton, the National Park. And there's a beach there. We had a swim and spent the afternoon there trying to cool off. And in the later part of the afternoon, we drove on to St. George in Utah. That was just crossing the border into Utah. We had dinner at a very nice park there, and we'd been in Utah about two minutes, we met the first Mormon, who, of course, after 10 minutes of conversation, put his hand out and said, "My dear, you've met a Mormon." And I felt like saying, "Well, I thought it was about a 99.9% chance that you were one." And gave us the rundown on the whole deal, Brigham Young and all the rest of that now, I think. We didn't stop there; we moved on that night. Yeah. Or would we stay? Yeah. Well, that's right, we moved on towards Zion National Park, and we came just short of Zion that night. This was the beginning of Utah. 90% of Utah is owned by the government because it's mostly national parks; there's very little else there. And so we moved on to Zion first thing in the morning. And on Friday the 16th of June... that track... got Zion, which is very, very nice. Canyon. Very picturesque. Lots of cottonwood trees and little sort of cabins and... it's got sort of multicoloured gorges, and it's really quite spectacular. This canyon's nice in that you're at the bottom of it. And instead of, like the Grand Canyon, you're at the top and look down, this one you're in the bottom, and there's a lot more trees and things, and you look up at the very steep cliffs around you. We spent most of the day there by a river, which was very, very nice and incredibly steep cliffs around you. We were thankful for a little bit cooler weather than in Nevada, where it really was extremely hot. There was a... oh, we had to go through a tunnel at Zion, which is a mile long. It's an unlit tunnel, and it's quite interesting. Then you travel through a magnificent canyon called the Red Canyon. And it was really red, you... really quite brilliant red. The scenery changes so dramatically from one place to another. You know, quite often it's not terribly many miles, but the complete... geographic shapes and colour and the whole areas are just so different from one another. That night, we stopped at Bryce Canyon. And Bryce really... we got there quite late at night, so we didn't see much that night. I think we went to the campfire talk or something. And then on the Saturday morning, we walked through Bryce. Now Bryce is really super. It's a very, very small canyon compared with some of the others, but very, very pretty. It's all pinkish, and it has the most unusual formations, and there is one called the Queen Victoria, and really, it's almost as though it's the statue of Queen Victoria in Courtenay Place or Cambridge Terrace standing there, so... so lifelike. Very, very pretty canyon, indeed. Almost like fairyland. Yeah, that's just what it looks like. Well, we spent the day there, and then we left for Arches, which was quite a long trip through the mountains, and we went over a dirt road through a place called Boulder. And through the Capitol Reef National Park. We stopped there... oh yes, this is... we stopped at Capitol Reef National Park for a little while. There was a wee schoolhouse there. It wasn't originally a Mormon settlement, and I think at its peak, this little schoolhouse had about 10 students. And there was a girl employed by the rangers who sat in the school all day, and there were the desks that used to be there in the old days, and she had crayons and pencils, and the children stopped for a little while and did some colouring. And it was quite intriguing. The old maps that we used to have at school that rolled down, one sort of waxy looking thing, was one on the wall, and it was half down, and it was a picture of Australia. We were intrigued. I rushed over and pulled it down a little further, and New Zealand was on it as an inset. And it was quite funny to look at it. It was an old Rand McNally map; they're very famous mapmakers in the United States. Very old company. And quite a lot of the names... spellings were wrong, you know, Hokitika and some of the original bigger places in those days where the spellings were quite wrong. And it was quite an interesting little incident. As... that's right. Went on and spent the night at Arches and so that we could take the trails the next morning down the Grand... that was the first time we came across a snake. Kids were delighted to see a snake. I don't know that it was terribly poisonous or anything, but to my delight... snakes don't chase you. People chase snakes together, and the snake tore off as fast as it could go. Arches National Park is just once again this complete change of... of scenery. It's fairly bare and sort of a place, and these arches are just enormous. If you stand under them, it just makes you feel so small. They're intriguing. They have windows and sort of portholes. They've all got names and things, of course. Really, yeah. Incredible sight. They're just enormous natural arches.

From there, we moved on through Moab, which is a big centre for the beginning or end of rafting. It's big... really big time here. Everybody goes on raft trips. It's really quite a thing to do. You know, they all get geared up in all the right gear and tear off down on raft trips for weekends. It's a lot of fun. And we got to a place called Monticello. And Monticello was strangely still in Utah, and we needed some groceries, and there was nothing open. Most unlike the States, but because it's Utah, of course, and Mormon, it being a Sunday, there was very little open. And we crossed the border. And as soon as you reached the border, of course, there were 24-hour supermarkets and good night... once he stopped at the place... Cortez. And what was that? Cortez. Did our shopping, and there we met a guy and a girl in the garden. And a motorbike yelled out to us, and he turned out to be... he saw our New Zealand flag on our camper, and he was from Christchurch, New Zealand. Di... Pete and Di. Their names were... she was from Australia, and we chatted to them for quite a while. And as it happened, they were heading for Mesa Verde, the National Park, which we were also heading for, and so we did meet up with them again. We got to Mesa Verde and cleaned up and spent the night. You... at a block of motels or something or other? We camped illegally. And it was Sunday night.

On Monday the 19th, we got an early start up the bus. Where there's rock dwellings, Indian... Indian ones. These are the best ones we actually saw, I think there are. Very well preserved and being very high up on the mesa. We met a guy from New York there who was most informative, and we talked for quite a while. He'd done a lot of touring, and he was actually a guide for a Greyhound tour with all these people on board. And got back onto the bus. They must have told him that we were from New Zealand, and the bus stopped, and half the people leaped off to say hello to us, and a couple had just come back from New Zealand and knew... Noeline? They jumped up and down, the whole bus waved back to us. It was really quite funny. We met up with Pete and Di again and just spent the afternoon with them. And on that day, I met a guy called Rob who was an architect from Denver, and he was actually with some friends, and they all had Honda motorbikes. Americans have everything for recreation. These were just for... hospital? Sort of a weekend away. Great big Stephen? 750s they were, but they're so cheap here. And he said, "Oh no, I must go see you in Denver." So we got his number and everything. And that afternoon, we went back and had dinner... ours? Pete and Di chatted with them, and they got ready to camp for the night, and we set off for Pagosa Springs quite late at night. We camped actually just out of Durango.

On Tuesday morning, we... yeah, we had breakfast at Durango, and we moved on to Pagosa Springs to go back and see Mark and Donna, Mark being the son of Paul Mans... Karen Penada's uncle, whom we'd stayed with in Los Alamos. Well, we got to... they were in a mess in Los Alamos because they were moving house and getting married the following Saturday. But boy, Los Alamos was nothing on Pagosa Springs. They were in one holy bloody shambles. They'd finally got married the following Saturday, but the house was half finished, and you know, it really wasn't terribly... but it was quite strange because... when we were looking for their house, they lived where they held... because Pagosa Springs is a pretty small place anyway. And they lived, you know, some 20 miles out, about... along a dirt road. And it was difficult to find their house because there were no numbers or anything. And a guy came along in a pickup truck, and we waved him down. And he said, "Well, hi there." And we asked if he knew them, and he did. And he pointed out where they lived. And he said to Rachael... "...you?" And she said, "I'm 7." And he said... he said, "I've got a seven-year-old... you know," he said, "...back home." He said, "Actually, I've got a whole bunch of kids back home. He said, "We've got horses and a waterhole." He said, "And we've got lots of farm animals. He said, "You know, why don't you guys come over?" And so I said to him, "Well, I don't think we'll be staying here long with these people," because I knew that the newlyweds wouldn't be particularly good company. And I said, "You know, will you be home this afternoon?" He said, "Yeah, come right over." Or he said, "You know, come and meet Morty." His wife's name was Morty. His name was Larry. Larry and Morty. Well, we got to the farm. The children were both asleep in the camper. And the goats greeted us. Apparently, they've got a friend that brings over some rubbish for the goats to eat. And they've got a Volkswagen also. And the goats thought we were whoever they were. And the goats descended upon us. The goats were all named, by the way. There was Longfellow and Keats, and they were all named. Anyway, the children, as I said, were asleep. So I opened the door of the camper, and the goats got inside. Well, Maitland was just... aghast is the right word... when they woke up to these goats in the camper. They couldn't believe their eyes. Well, it turned out that Larry and Morty, who were just fabulous people... they had this farm. And they had all these goats. And they had a horse and a donkey and couldn't... I suppose what else? And farm animals, of course, dogs. And they had three children of their own. And two welfare children. A friend staying with two other kids and the four of us. And they were so friendly. We had to stay for dinner and all the rest of it. Larry was... neat. He drank Budweiser, which is a beer here, all day long. Even when he took you out in his pickup truck, which... everybody drives at about 65, constantly, even in town... dirt tracks. Larry took half a dozen bottles of Budweiser with him and drank the whole time when he was driving along. It was a real scream. Anyway, actually Morty's father is a state senator, and I can't imagine that he approves of the way that she lives on the farm, but however, she's obviously... she's from the East. Everybody's from back East. She's living very happily on this farm. And they were just marvelous. And we had some really good food there. Just not fast food for a change. Everything was homemade, lovely muffins and all kinds of things and all kinds of fun. And they had a very basic sort of a house, you know, outdoor loo and all the rest of them. The kids thoroughly enjoyed staying there. We ended up staying for a couple of days. It was really fun. We talked and talked and talked into the night. They were very interesting, and they knew a lot about Indians and so on. Actually, the area where they live, at Pagosa Springs, is on the Little Navajo River. And the particular valley they live in, a very, very lush valley, good growing. There's only been two farms sold in 20 years. They're mostly owned by Spanish people, and theirs was one of them that were sort of lucky to get, I think. The land doesn't change hands very much. Anyway, the next morning, we had a fabulous breakfast of dozens of pancakes. You know, the children can eat anything. After such pancakes for breakfast with... Morty had real maple syrup. And she really looked after us terribly, really well. And that day, Larry drove John and I up to the high country, and we walked trails. So we went three or four miles into the mountains and... they... we drove a long way up into them, and then we walked from there. And the mountains are really beautiful, wildflowers and animals. We haven't seen any bears, but they're all there, of course. And... this... they had very heavy snowfalls this year, so the snow is still quite low on the ground. And... we got back quite late that night. And we just all had a... discussed our different ways of life and the differences in countries and people and genuinely enjoyed their soul. The children all... that evening, they all went down and visited a beaver... they've got beaver dams on their farm, so that was quite fun. And generally had a great time with them. They're very, very special people.

On Thursday 22nd, we... oh, you... had great difficulty leaving the farm because it really was very sad. We all had photos taken, and we... really... terribly hard to leave them. We took fresh milk with us, which was very nice because all the milk here is separated. They don't have cream with the milk unless you buy half-and-half, which is hellishly expensive, something like 45 cents for half a pint. And that's... the half-and-half is about equivalent to what we get, you know, in the milk bottle. Well, we finally did get away, and we went on to Buena Vista. Had lunch at Buena Vista and then moved on to Colorado Springs. There we called on the Smith people that we'd seen in San Diego, had their son there, so we called on them. We had a very pleasant few hours chatting with them. They were very helpful. That's right... it's quite nice to see someone when you first arrive in a place to, you know, get a quick general idea of what's the best things to see and so on. We cut out most touristy sort of attractions. And that night, we camped not far from the Garden of the Gods, which we wanted to go and see the next morning. And we were also anticipating going up Pikes Peak early because Pikes Peak is the highest road in the United States, something like 14,000 feet. But it's often covered in cloud, and of course, there's not much point in going up if it's like that. So the following morning, it was a little bit cloudy, and we decided not to bother. It costs you quite a lot to go up there; it's a toll road. And unless you're going to see something, it's hardly worth it just to say you've been to... well, I guess it's worth it to say you've been to the highest road in the country. But anyway, we decided not to. We spent the evening near this Garden of the Gods, and we toured the following morning. We went all around the Pikes Peak area. This is where Father Christmas lives and makes all his toys, supposedly. That's what they advertise it as. It's a very touristy place, Colorado Springs. There's a good deal to see. But many of the things there are like wax museums, things like that. They're crazy, but... oh, that's his name... Wild Bill Hickok, things like that. But it is kind of expensive to visit. They're okay if you're on a couple weeks' holiday and want to fill in a day or two, but they're not really necessary. We went to Manitou, which is near that area, and there's many tourist attractions there and had a look around. So generally... through Manitou later on that day, we went on to the United States Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. The chapel there is really well worth seeing. It's magnificent stained glass. It was fantastic. And I gather it's the only... the top part of the chapel is the Protestant part, and the bottom part has got the Catholic, and leading through from the Catholic church is the Jewish synagogue. Apparently the only place in the world where you'll find a Catholic Church and a Jewish synagogue adjoining next to one another. Well, we toured the Academy, which is really quite a place, and then we left for Denver and picked up our mail. Yeah, which was great fun. And we just got there in the nick of time, actually. The American Express Company closed, but they reopened just to give me the mail. And when we arrived there, we called Rob... that Rob Rob... whom we'd met at Mesa Verde. And he was just putting arms from shish kebabs and said, "Hi, come round." So we were very delighted to attend the dinner party. Rob has a condominium in Denver, which is very, very nice. He's got what's called a Bachelor condominium, which is just a very large one-bedroom study affair, but it has a lounge, dining room, kitchen, and lots of little outdoor areas and things, very, very nice.

So that was the Friday night, the 23rd. On the Saturday, the 24th, we went into the city, had to register for the conference. Yeah. And I was sitting in the middle of the Hilton Hotel amidst Maitland's tears to find that Beverly Bennett rushed up to me, which made me feel even more tearful, seeing the first person from New Zealand. But anyway, it was all very nice. So I registered for the conference and just sort of teed up, you know, a few things for the next day and stuff. And in the meantime, John came back to pick me up, and he had found a Spree, which was marvelous. That was at a high school. And it was an arts festival, which they have every year in Denver. And all the artists donate their time and effort for nothing. And there were things just happening all day. Rachael spent the whole day with an artist who was a sculptor... marble. And he had marble out for the children. And he showed them what to do. And she was just absolutely wrapped and spent the whole day chiselling away a piece of marble. Turned out that John became quite friendly with him, and they spent quite a lot of time together over the next week. But there were all kinds of things at this place. They had, you know, miming is terribly popular here, and they had lots of mimes. People just sort of do their thing anywhere at any time, any place, just whatever they fancy doing. And... they had a children's area where the children could go and paint their faces up like mimes, and all the paint and everything was all provided free. They were able to do those swirly painting pictures. They swirl a thing around and pour paint on. And they could make necklaces and all kinds of things like that. And they had puppet shows, everything free. It was just marvelous. There were fantastic gymnastic displays, and they had the Scots... Scottish bands and all kinds of other musicians wandering around and all kinds of handicrafts and things to do. It was just... every time we turned around, there was something further to do. And that night, they had an all-free and open-air jazz concert with some very, very well-known jazz artists playing, and they had an air balloon. Oh gee, it was just a... a really fantastic place. You could spend the whole day with no trouble at all. Yeah, I met some Kiwis that night that were living here in Denver. They called out to us, said, "Hi."

On the Sunday morning, we swam. We were still staying at Rob's at the condominium, so we... All the condominiums have their own swimming pools and pool rooms and laundries and you name it, they've all got it. And it's all free because you pay... when you live at the condominium, you have all these facilities available to you. So we swam all morning, and in the afternoon, John dropped me off, and I attended the first session of the conference, which was familiarization. And this time, as thanks for... for his time and so on. Just the general... general pattern of what was going to take place. It was quite an interesting orientation program, actually. That only lasted a couple of hours. And in the afternoon, we had our district meetings, which Beverly Bennett, of course, being our district governor, ran. And all the Australians and New Zealanders met for the first time. There were 46 people from Australia and New Zealand, so it was really quite fun. And of course, I knew most of them because I knew all the girls from New Zealand, but the Australians that had come over when we had the district conference in Wellington last year, many of them had been to New Zealand for that, so I knew most of the Australians as well. So it was really quite a reunion. That afternoon... oh yeah, Cherry Raymond and Ann Mallinson and I all went out that night. We went to Duffy's Bar, which was quite fun, just across the road from the Hilton. It was really good to see the Aussies and New Zealanders again. And John and the kids went off back to the Spree thing again. They had another whole day there. They just loved it. And then John got friendly with this artist guy, and I think they went to his place or some friends of his for dinner that night. And the kids belonging... want to go back simply to paint up their faces again.

Well, it was a wee bit of a problem being in Denver because the conference was starting early in the morning and pretty late finishing every night with the social events and parties and so on and so forth. So Ann Mallinson was staying at the Hilton Hotel, so I managed to squeeze in with her there. That night they had the opening ceremony, which was a very elaborate affair, and was very, very nice. Had started off with the flags from every country, 47 in all, and that was a very moving start to a conference, I thought. And then they had the national anthems of the United States and France, France being, of course, because our international president at this time is a Frenchwoman. Well, had general, you know, the usual welcoming thanks from mayors and one person and another. But the key address was from Thyra Thomson. She's Secretary of State for the state of Wyoming, an honorary member of the Cheyenne Club. I was a little unimpressed with her.