Day 5 after passing through bayous and parishes we flew past Dallas and headed for Route 20 west. We were both starting to get into the groove of this rare opportunity to have the freedom to plan our journey on the fly and stop and stay wherever we wished without worry of a motel reservation. We were driving our own little house around. It’s fun to settle in for the evening, watch Netflix and then wake up in the morning and make breakfast in the little galley. Dave and I are both list people. We make lists for every thing and set little weekly goals. This experience has us completely out of our element and could be habit forming.
20 West brought us through the west Texas oil and cotton fields. Nothing else is there except for old rusted out trailers or abandoned buildings and dreams. Oil and cotton. Unattractive scrub land worth lots of $$$. I wonder if it gets any prettier in the spring. Suddenly in the middle of oil country we came upon thousands of giant wind turbines gently turning in the wind. It was surreal! Like the wind turbines were coming after the fossil fuel oil rigs to do battle and in Texas of all places! It made my day to see this progressive renewable energy thing happening.
Day 6 we fueled up in Eunice, New Mexico. A very gritty, dirty, rusty little town. Must be the folks work at the oil fields. You could see why drugs and alcohol run rampant there in that hardscrabble 1gas station town. We took the back roads over to Carslbad and passed by acres and acres of solar panels! The southwest is getting it on with energy alternatives! In Carlsbad we stopped at the Living Desert Museum. I saw my first mountain lion and they are huge! We were up so high and had such a great view you could see the curvature of the earth? And, my ears finally popped! Night was spent in Las Cruses, NM, a cute little college town.
Day 7 We met a man in an MH like ours that suggested we go north to Silver City. We had the time so we went up there and enjoyed lunch in the historic little town. From there we took 60 west thru the mountains and some breathtaking scenery. Jaw dropping scenery. You are so far out there then you come upon a house or trailer home. Where do these people shop? We went past acres of burned out forests where the tree trumps were singed black and yet the branches were full of green leaves ?
Day 8. Steve called us and reminded us to go to Frank Lloyds Taliesen West home/camp if we could. We were heading towards Scottsdale so made a point of getting tour tickets online and going there. We have been to his Falling Waters in Pennsylvania so this was a real treat. The tour guide was excellent and we came away inspired to do some things at our home that we saw there. More lists! The weather was 65degrees and perfect. I could dig Scottsdale I think.
Switching house styles and gears we signed up for a Mid Century Modern home tour in Palm Springs for the next day.
Day 9 Palm Springs is one of the hippest, rat pack memory evoking towns ever. If it was cool enough for Frank then it’s cool enough! We had a great tour guide all to ourself, an architect who does tours. He drove us all over town and pointed out building details and styles. He was talking Dave’s language and I was taking notes for more ideas at home. We did see Sinatra’s house. It is vacant and for $2,500 a night you can stay there and sleep where Frank slept. Pretty cool! We’ve been to Palm Springs before and I would love to spend more time there. Joshua Tree National Park is nearby and I believe the Burning Man event is held out there in the desert. We pushed onto Ontario,
California for the night, about 57 miles out of LA. We wanted to get close to LA for the drive into the city the next morning.
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