Eastern California, Arizona & New Mexico

Well, I'm definitely in desert country. It seems like Arizona is one huge desert: lots of cactus trees, dry, desolate yet pretty scenery. I stayed with a Mexican-American family in Indio; Andres, Patricia and their three sons. It was nice to relax and and talk about life and its many challenges.

I visited Joshua Tree National Park and Pioneertown. The park is really awesome with its joshua trees, a unique cactus and different rock formations. I only had a few hours to visit the park when I could have taken a whole day. I then went to Pioneertown which is a recreation of an old "wild west" town replete with saloon, bank, general store and a wanted poster of Pancho Villa.

Then it was on to Arizona where I was enthralled by Sedona and Montezuma's Castle. The castle, pictured here at your left, was built by local first nations in the 1400s and not the Aztec. It's very impressive and the state has done a lot of research in restoring it to it's original specs. It had been abandonned for decades and damaged by looters in the 1800s.

Then on to Phoenix and a stay with a friendly couple, Alexis and Kobi. They took me to a restaurant where I had a special dish called chicken fried steak: a battered deep-fried steak but no chicken. It reminded me a little of veal. They also forced me to have the biggest piece of chocolate cream pie that I ever had. As you may have observed from the pictures, I think I have put on a few extra pounds or 10. All this driving, eating and little exercise is not the best thing to keep me in shape. But then, round is a shape...hahaha, I know...it's lame, but I just had to say it.

I need to add that I often don't have time to "blog" due to lack of internet or time(often times, motels don't have the net or if I'm at a CS host, we chat and there is no time for computers which is good. I prefer chatting with my hosts and sharing travel or life stories). Tonight, it seems like I'm just cruising through this and not giving it everything.

So, I continued my journey east and drove through the most boring part of my trip although I did see the most humungus open pit mine you can imagine. It's a huge copper operation on the Arizona-New Mexico border. going to bed finish it tomorrow...my hosts are already in bed 10:10 pm

I'm now in Silver City, New Mexico,