Socal to Phila road trip, Day 2....FIGHTO-OH!!!

Alright, picture time.

Some of these pics maybe boring to you, but in person they were spectacular. In the words of T.E. Lawrence when asked "...what is it Major Lawrence, that attracts you personally to the desert?", he responds simply with "It's clean."

Here's the recap, so I drove from California to Arizona and stopped in Holbrook in Eastern Az. Arizona is a really beautiful place, Holbrook is closeby to one of the entrances to the Petrified Forest National Park. I was tempted to go and drive in, but someone informed me that it was a 2 hour tour at least and I didn't have time to spare so I shopped some petrified tree bark at Jim Gray's and left...wanting more.

Here we go (as always with my picture posts, click pictures to embiggen):

1st up are sort of biggish desert hills against a backdrop of the biggest sky you've ever seen. Whoever said Montana had big skies, clearly has never been outside of Montana, big sky...they're everywhere.

Spectacular canyons in the middle of nowhere, a mini Grand Canyon. I actually stopped to take more pics of this canyon.

Sorry for the tiltedness of the picture, it's not because I'm attempting to be artsy, it's just that I was trying to avoid a semi and take nice pictures for my loyal blog viewers.


And close by these canyons, I found this cool looking cragly tree and thought: perfect time for an artsy Ansel Adamsy photo. It came out pretty nicely don't you think? I should p-shop that unsightly wire in the lower right. I love how the clouds are just perfect for this shot. All done on a canon point and shoot digicam held by PROFESSIONAL hands...that's right, it's my blog I can call myself whatever I please.

This big flat rock was near the scragly tree and had some markings on it. In fact some of the wood nearby had markings on it, like DD hearts LB or something. I thought it would be as artsy as the tree pic, but it didn't turn out too well. I also took pics of the bottle of beer i finished on the road, perched on some rocks, but you probably don't want to see that...but you know I'll show you anyway.


"Empty Bottle" by Hammer "Ansel Adams" Siem

More canyon, hilly, rocky, formations, this time in New Mexico. New Mexico, was like Az, it was more canyons, hills, CLEAN desert. They had some nice friendly small dirt towns there. I actually shipped something I sold on eBay there. There was this other side town that had yellow buildings, it really cought my eye, but I didn't stop. Next time I will and I'll take pictures of it.

Nice big fluffy white clouds over Hwy 40. It was truly peaceful out there. I went to a motorcycle museum in Ohio, more on that later, and I read about this guy, he had taken some time off from his rock band job after losing both his daughter and wife. He took a motorcycle and toured North America and racked up 55,000 miles, that's an insane amount of mileage (I covered 2700 miles in 4 days). The article mentioned how he got back his zen or chi or realigned his spine or something because of the peacefulness of the open road and wide open country, after which he returned to his band to continue to Rock Hard. He was the original Ghost Rider...because he actually wrote a book called Ghost Rider. Amazing, someday, when I'm burnt out from treating sick people, I'll do this and come back with a fresh outlook and realigned spine.

More canyons, these were really colorful. It would be nice to take some time and hike this area and take lots of nature pictures. I was thinking that those guys who take stock photos of nature must done that very same thing in order to take their spectacular pictures. Waiting for the right moment, the right cloud formations, the right conditions, etc etc. Like Ansel Adams did (Thanks Ron for that tidbit of knowledge).

This image was bland at first, but I p-chopped it to bedazzle it. It seems surreal now, like a technicolor tv show. Anyway, this was what Eastern New Mexico was like, flat and desert. The more eastern parts were incredibly boring and ugly to drive through. This continued on into Texas and Western Oklahoma.

On to Tejas!!! Finally the sunshine state, oh wait is that Florida? Lone Star state is what I mean. They say everything is bigger in Texas, well, they are absolutely correct. Here's a gigantic cappuccino machine being dragged by a huge semi needing cars in front and back with lights to signal wide load. Amazing.
Sorry about the splattered bugs on my windshield. Can't help it, I'm just deadly accurate with my driving and there was nothing else to do but kill bugs!

Here's a Texan sunset set against a backdrop of yellow, red, deep purple sky as far and wide as the eye could see. It was a smog free sunset, lacking the incredible colors you see in a California sunset.

The big theme continues with the 2nd largest cross in the Western Hemisphere. It may not look it, but this thing was huge! I actually saw two of these on my trip, the other one was in Illinois (more later). It's a roadside attraction. Oh and apparently, the LARGEST CROSS in the world can be found in the Valley of the Fallen, Madrid, Spain. It's over twice the size of these puny American crosses. Texas, you ain't got nothing on big compared to Los Conquistadores baby.

As an example of what I'm talking about when I say flat wide open country. Here it is. It wasn't desert, it was grazing grass land.

The leaning water tower of Groom, TX. Seriously, the photo is slightly tweaked, but the water tower was leaning like crayzay.

Another picture of a Texas sunset, artfully from inside the car...ok I feel like this doesn't need to be here, it's kind of a stupid picture. Oh well.

One of the few barns and farmyard that I saw while driving through texas. This one's interesting looking.

That's it for Day 2. I passed Texas into Oklahoma in the middle of the night and stayed at a motel in El Reno, a town just outside of Oklahoma City. This hotel had CLEAN pillowcases. How did I know? Because it smelled bleachy, like the sheets. My mom use to work as a maid at a motel and I use to hang around the laundry area while she worked, I still remember the smells of clean motel sheets.