ShapShots of My First Cross Country Drive
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This is the backside of Hoover Dam, not what you're used to seeing, huh? It's shorter in length than i thought it would be. Bumper to bumper traffic at 10 mph for way too many miles!!! My ankle was sore from riding the brakes. They are doing all sorts of road construction trying to make a staighter crossing, hope it works! There is even a police check point for homeland security, for whatever that's worth, they let us right through, guess we looked normal...ha ha haaa! Stopped just long enough for this picture, then kept driving...
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You can't really tell from this picture, but there is vegetation in Arizona! GREEN vegetation! Totally blew me away! I expected something similar to Death Valley from Death Valley,CA to, oh, well, Oklahoma....not so! As a matter of fact, I'm sitting at 6000 feet (still in a desert, but its cooler. It got to 109 degrees just before Hoover Dam and its now less the 60 here in New Mexico...yep, that's right, we drove through a whole state today!!! Very proud of ourselves! Lot's of long, boring nothingness at 75 mph! WAAAAY to fast for my blood, but, when in Rome, right? Tomorrow we try to get all the way to Amarillo, Texas...Check out is at 11:am so we'll see if we can make it to my grandma's sister's by tomorrow night, hopefully.
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This is Texas...lots of NOTHING!!!! More nothing!
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There are Route 66 casinos!!!!!
I never knew that! Nope didn't go in, saving the casino thing till we get to Las Vegas tomorrow.
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Here's one of the original tourist traps on Route 66, it's still in business!!! No, we didn't go in....Instead we went on to Williams, Arizona, where there are historic trains. When we get up in the morning, we are heading across the street to the Grand Canyon Railroad Museum.
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Look at the skyline of New Mexico, gorgeous isn't it?
Yes, that would be a train on the left...I love trains!!!!!
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Forest Hill, Lousiana.
The Nursery Capitol of the World.....nine out of ten properties are nurseries,
yes we recognized some names.
This is the forest we were in for four days, absolutely gorgeous! 604,000 acres of pines with NO SNOW!!!!! WHOOOO-HOOOO!
Another nursery, no I won't post all of the pics of the nurseries!
I have no idea who's driveway this is, but I liked it.
This is what a Northern and Central Louisiana swamp looks like, no we didn't see any alligators this time, but when we return in the fall we will go to Southern Louisiana (Cajun Country) and see more. New Orleans, too.
Is this a beautiful cock, or what????
And, how about this one????
Meet Daisy Mae....she is such a loving puppy!
Daisy Mae, Queen of her mountain!!! Yes, she a hound dog, but I don't remember the exact breed...Black and Tan, Red Tipped, and one more kind. She was the only one with those colors out of the litter.
Cocks, cocks, and more cocks!!!
And, looky, even more cocks!!! LMAO
These are the Pit Bulls that Chuck moved out there with. Psycho Loco and her daughter, Poco Loco....they love there dad so much and he just spoils them to death with cookies and let's them sleep on his bed with him...it's soooo sweet! BTW, it's a waterbed....brave man, even braver dogs!!!!
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Well, I have experienced a true Louisiana thunderstorm!!! Lightening so brite that you could see across to the other side of the cock (chickens, guys, POULTRY) barrels. Thunder so loud, you jump and duck for fear of the sky hitting you in the top of the head and it shakes the whole house. The guy that Chuck works for (the farm owner) says we probably only got about two or three inches, I expected him to say five to ten inches from the depth of the standing water on the ground.
We got a phone call telling us of pea sized hail in the town it hit before us. The bunnies didn't like the ruckus one bit. The cocks, however were standing on the tops of their barrels-obviously to dumb to NOT be eaten, HA! Survival of the fittest, baby! I stayed outdoors for about an hour watching, listening, and being impressed. Chuck, our friend we're staying with, says it takes about two to three hours after it stops raining it was possible to step off the porch and not step into four to six inches of water and two inches of mud. Some evaporates, some runs off (in Louisiana standards, we
are on a hill~WHATEVER! It's wonderful here, miles and miles of thick forest (pine, mostly). I guess the swamps and bogs are more to the south from here, towards Lafayette, and to the east, tgowards Baton Rouge. The industries around here are logging, nurseries, off-shore oil drilling, and cemetaries (WOW, the are a lot of cemetaries!!) Chuck's sister, Joyce, lives in the next town over (the other direction from the hailed town), Elizabeth, and she bought this HUGE old house for $28,000, and it was livable from the start! That'll buy you a trailer home in California!!! BTW, we are in a little town
(excuse me, they are called "corps" here) named Pitkin, southeast of Alexandria. The county ~ nope, wait, that's "parrish", sorry ~ is named Vernon. We are on a rabbit (for eating, YUCK, they eat them here!) and cock (again, CHICKENS!!) farm. The cocks are sold for various causes ~ feathers for jewelry and hatbands, breeding, and fighting (yep, its legal here, and a few other places, as well). You just wouldn't believe this state! Everything you see on TV about the countryside is not at
all what you see (at least so far, we've only gone halfway through the state at this point). I am totally flabbergasted at what I have seen so far! There are a helluva lot more trees than I expected, and a lot less water, too. I guess I expected the whole state to be swamps and bogs. Tomorrow (Tuesday, May 31st), we head to New Orleans for the day. It's about three to five hours from here and Chuck can't be gone overnight, due to the fact that he has the pit bulls to feed and no one to do it for him. I am gonna stick my toes in the Atlantic Ocean!!!!! That'll be so cool for this Californian Valley Girl!!! I've decided what souveneers I am gonna get. Magnets, a watch that says New Orleans (or something of the sort), and maybe a T-shirt or tank top. Then when we get back to Duncan, we'll hit the Wal-Mart Supercenter and buy a smallish ice chest so I can get all the cool candies that they have on this side of the Rocky Mountains. When we stopped in Arizona for gas, I got a Pecan Roll (that I had heard was better than what we get in California), and it had a cherry nougat center (yummy) and it was sooooo soft, it made the ones in California seem hard and dry! Let's put it this way, fresh marshmallows are harder! Then there are these things called Cherry Mashes, they are the original Cherry-a-Lettes. They are three times the size, and instead of a milk chocolate and peanut covering, they have a fudge and peanut covering. The cherry cream center is the size of a whole Cherry-a-Lette!! Finally, MaJan has always told me about these things called "Peanut Patties", and of course, that was the first candy she spied in Oklahoma....VERY GOOD STUFF!!! I like Californian Peanut Brittle better than the brittle out here, Californian is more buttery. So, my ice chest will be filled to the brim with Great Plain candies....There is this chocolatier's shop in North Las Vegas, that is just to die for!!! Expensive, but well worth it because everything is handmade, right there in the shop, even the truffles! The last time I was in Vegas (with the ex-butthead) I hunted this place down after watching a segment on it on 'Food Finds' on FoodNetwork. It's just a little hole-in-the-wall place, in a rundown old shopping center, been in the same location since it opened years ago....BTW, its called 'Danielle's Chocolates', if you want to Google it. So, tomorrow, we fulfill that life-goal of a road trip to New Orleans, we may not have time to do much, but we will drive throught the French Quarter to see Anne Rice's house, touch the Atlantic Ocean, mail postcards, and make a phone call to my video-gaming friend, get a few momentos, go to the old cemetary (a must, appearently), and hopefully get to walk on Bourbon Street as they have closed it to motorized vehicles. I am so excited that I am writing this into my notepad, on battery power, with no plans to drive 23 miles to the nearest free WIFI spot. Come to think of it, there may end up being a few of these kinds of posts, depending on how talkative I get on the way back. Wednesday we head back towards California. First, to Duncan, to plant a Mimosa tree at the cemetary and get a few more pics and see MaJan's cousin's family (he might not be around coz he drives truck during the week) but that's okey, we can visit with his wife. We'll stay at the same motel with WIFI, so I should be online sometime Wednesday night or Thursday morning before check-out time of 12:noon. Then we will head up the road to Marlow, where there is more family buried (MaJan's dad's side, I think), then over to Anadarko where the 'Indian Hall of Fame' is located. Then, we're off to Amarillo to see our aunt and uncle again, maybe for the last time as they are old, addled, and not in very good health (and, yet, they jump in that RV of theirs at the drop of the hat for any ol' reason ~ fishing, mostly). If we stay in Amarillo Thursday night, and that's a BIG if, it
won't be at the same motel as last time! The Cadillac Ranch of Route 66 is on the California side of Amarillo (I thought it was north of Oklahoma City, wrong!) and I want pics of me and Majan standing by those half-buried Cadillacs so we can only leave Amarillo if its still fairly bright outside (the digital is a cheapo without zoom or flash, does that explain the fuzziness of some of the pics so far? Oh yeah, that rest stop is between the Oklahoma/Texas stateline and Amarillo, so I can do a quick post from there, too. *'I must remember that', I think to myself*
~~~~~DATED MONDAY, MAY 30th~~~~~
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Here's MaJan in front of the little house she was born in. It was considered the garage apartment.
In the foreground is (not my thumb, for once...lol) the foundation of my great grandmother's house that was torn down years ago.
Here's the lot where Grandpa Bob's auto body shop used to be, long gone now, it's someone back driveway, home to an old pick-up. The truck is actually sitting right where the cars would sit to be fixed.
Just so you all know, Duncan is the founding place and home base of Halliburton Corporation, in the news as of late thanks to DICK (said with all connotations of the word) Cheney and what's his name (the idiot pres) and the dumb-ass war in the middle east....does anyone remember where are troops are this week and does anyone know why we're there? and isn't it time for our soldiers to come home yet?!?!?!
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(left to right) Payton, Jimmy Glen, Margaret, MaJan, Neva, Kenny, Pee-Wee, Ruby, and Mary.
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This is the family headstone.
This is my grandmother's footstone.
This is my grandfather's footstone.
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Behind the thumb is the house MaJan grew up in.
I kid you not, this is a serious sign just outside of Duncan!
Yes, that is an armadillo, the first one I've ever seen, and it's dead!!! It figures! LMAO
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Here's our car and MaJan in New Mexico.
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I really am beginning to think I live in the wrong state!!!!
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