Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

So, I am back home, and our trip is over. I have been vegging and watching a bunch of shows and hanging out in the woods. My Grandpa is doing much better and Mom is staying with my granparents while he gets better. I guess I am wrapping up the blog. Here I present a few cool shots that never made it into a blog post somehow. From the top: Antelope at a private ranch in Texas; tall skinny cacti in Van Horn, Texas; decaying angels' trumpets at Laura Plantation; coal exposed by wind erosion in New Mexico. I'll probably keep posting photos here sometimes, but not as often. Thanks to everyone who's been reading, and happy Thanksgiving!

Back in California!

We left Oatman, drove for a bit, then crossed into southern California at about 1pm (which instantly became 12pm) last Friday. We got lunch in Needles, and were headed to Bakersfield to get on I-5. We were about in Barstow when Mom got a call that my grandpa (who is doing much better now) fell down and had to go to the hospital. So instead of sleeping somewhere, we drove all the way to San Carlos (near the San Francisco airport) in one night, arriving around 1:30 in the morning. We stayed at my grandparent's for a few days, then I got a ride back (Mom is staying to help out), and now I am back home in my little house.

Oatman Burros

There's a whole herd of feral burros (17 of them, we heard) living in Oatman, and all the stores sell carrots for them. So we fed them, but not the little burritos like this one (above). They are still only having milk. The one in the close-up is named Dusty.

Oatman, Route 66, Arizona

Oatman (which is close to the CA border, about 30 miles) is still a working gold-mining town, and it also has cowboy shows and stuff. We had an early breakfast, then decided to wait around for the famous burros.

Oatman, Route 66, Arizona

These trees are all over the road near Oatman. They seem to be memorial trees--there were people's names written on the ornaments. They were very pretty.

Seligman, Route 66, Arizona

We stopped to look at this awesome storefront (so did a bunch of other people). In case it was not clear, these people are not people, they are cool creepy mannequins. Not pictured: the vintage stove store that told my Mom her bright red 50s stove (cost to her: $50) is worth about six grand if she ever decided to sell it. Wheeee!

Ashfork, Route 66, Arizona

This was such a cool, beautiful town. Mom and I stopped and talked to a neat guy who was from the swamps of Louisiana, but had moved to Arizona during Katrina. And so, Ashfork is the town which I shall always remember as The Town Where The Cool Cajun Thrift-Store Owner Gave Me The COOLEST EARRINGS IN THE WORLD. (See above.)

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

I have always sorta wanted to go here. It was very charming, and we maybe should have stayed longer, but we were only about 50 miles from Las Cruces and that was deemed not enough progress. Maybe I will go back sometime. They have hot springs.

Las Cruces, New Mexico

The cool rocks are actually from a rest stop somewhere on Interstate 25. The spider we got in Van Horn, Texas, but we'd just gotten a new roof-rack thing held on with a bungee-cord web, so we had to put the spiders on it. We took them off there before we drove, though.

Las Cruces, New Mexico

We stayed here last night--we got a motel and takeout food after two days of sleeping in the car at rest stops. We're going to go do some fun stuff before continuing on, because it is my birthday. I am 28. Ooooh, almost thirty!

El Paso/Ciudad Juarez

We drove straight through El Paso--it was just big and overwhelming, we were pretty burned out, and we didn't need gas or food or anything. I looked over across the Rio Grande and there were all these little houses and dirt roads, and we realized, that's Mexico. I would like to go to Mexico someday, but maybe not Juarez, so we drove past, which was weird. It was weird to be so close to another country, especially since we had just driven through Texas and seen many young Latinos pulled over at the side of the road by the spooky cowboy types of the Border Patrol. We drove right out of Texas and into Las Cruces, NM.

Bug Car, Van Horn

I think this is by the same person who did the sculpture garden, though it's in a different part of town.

Los Nopales Sculptures and Cacti, Van Horn

I repeat, this place was really cool.

Van Horn, Texas

n Van Horn is a cool 50s town about an hour east of El Paso. We got great, cheap breakfast at Chuy's (and added to their business card collection), and then we walked around the crazy junk-sculpture garden next door. It's called Los Nopales. It was so, so neat.

No Livestock on Lawn, I-10, Texas

More Caverns

We were 280 feet underground! The cave kept dripping calcium-laden water onto everyone. (The hand railings, which have been there since the 1960s, have a fine film of cave deposits on them.) The pile of bat guano is from prehistoric bats, but the humidity keeps it squishy. Also, it's about 50 feet tall. The ripply stuff is "cave coral".

Natural Bridge Caverns, New Braunfels, TX

We went by these on the way to Louisiana, but they were already closed. We were coming back on I-10, and the caverns were only a 15-minute drive north, so we went back. I have never been to caverns before--they were really something. That's the "natural bridge" the caverns are named for, above. The skinny little spikes in the middle picture are called "soda straws", and took about 600 years to form.

Slave Quarters at Laura, Vacherie, LA

h These are the exact cabins where the Tales of Br'er Rabbit were recorded for the very first time. There used to be about 70--now only 4 are standing. (You can see the whole row in the photo-of-a-photo above.) It was incredibly unsettling to be in slave cabins--a first for this California girl. These four were continuously occupied until 1977, when everybody moved into little houses and mobile homes right across the road. Many people in and around Vacherie are descended from people who were enslaved at Laura.

Oh, Louisiana! Oh, New Orleans!

The food! The music! The endless swamp! It was so cool, we never wanted to leave. Do not be shocked if I end up moving there. We drove out of Louisiana at sunset, all sad and bereft. (Our spirits were not improved by the fact that we were about to drive across 900 miles of Texas.) Fortunately, we pulled off the highway and ended up eating at this real-thing Cajun sandwich place, where we got delicious alligator sandwiches and played peek-a-boo with a cute little girl. We put on some Cajun music we got at Laura Plantation, and we felt a little bit better.