An interesting drive...

My mom and I left again from Colorado to make Los Angeles for the holidays. The weather just kept getting warmer and warmer for me! Illinois to Chicago to Colorado and now gradually, the southwest and SoCal. After all this time in the south, when it comes to time to leave a few weeks from now, I'll forget our globe is still in the winter season! Our first stop was in northern New Mexico, not a long drive, to the neat mineral hot springs of Ojo Caliente, where we met a family we know from Vipassana. There were about seven different kind of mineral pools to soak in, and one that was actually *almost* as hot as something you might find in Japan! (Waters in America, I find, can't really come close. Average Japanese pools most of my countrymen and countrywomen would wince upon setting their pinky in. The hot standard over there-- it almost burned the skin just to touch it... ahhhhh!)

Then as we were going through Arizona, we ended up taking a detour that took us over the old Route 66. It was really quite fascinating. We travelled over old dusty roads that narrowed and hung over cliff edges, roads like I've never seen in this country. Hairpin turns that cut its way through empty desert vistas and followed the track of a lost byways that once upon a time totally transformed this country. Can you imagine what the land must have been like before it had a highway system connecting it? The Route 66 that traversed from Santa Monica to Chicago was a first of its kind, prompting a multitude of old jalopies to take advantage of this new found freedom--and now abandoned but certainly not forgotten, not where there is a dollar to to be made, and today countless shops, restaurants, hotels, cafes, and anything else you can think of hawk just about any kind of "memorabilia" imaginable, even those built on the new expressways several dozen miles off the old route. Still, driving through the 66 style has its high points. Like there are a few towns that, for certain glances, really look fairly unchanged. Old style lettering advertise the cheap hotels, with dusy glass doors and a lazy breeze to boot. Or check out this shot in a small town called Williams of the left. In black and white here you'd hardly believe it actually came from my own camera! And here's a copy of an old gas station we passed by in one desolate area below...

Then we made another stop at the fascinating small town of Oatman. We even saw the old Oatman Hotel where Clark Gable's honeymoon sweet has been untouched. This town was thirty miles of equally untouched roads away from anything whatsoever, and yet there were a few other visitors and yes, again the ubiquitous hawkers. But there was something kind of neat about it too. Dirt roads and even an old-timer dressed in sheriff's uniform. It was an old mining town and burrows, which previous had been used for the mines, never quite left with the people, they stayed on and now roam the areas wildly (with signs warning the human visitors to their distance-- the animals have been known to kick and bite!) Here is a picture of three such creatures, with an equally authentic raggedly old shack behind them. (The photo above is of my mom in the dining room of the Oatman hotel, decorated with what is said to be 20,000 $1 bills-- the room extends quite a ways)

And finally-- here's a shot of that desert cactus. The photo is a bit deceiving, though-- this cactus actually grows at a ground level about five feet below where I am standing!