Dog is my Co-pilot

Driving cross country is a very interesting way to really let the Big Change set into your psyche.  As the miles go by, with the vast distances I realize the vast changes that are about to occur in my life.  And the drive is a wonderful reminder of the enormous diversity we have in this country. 

It took an entire day to get out of California.  Starting in the fog in the Bay Area, I drove past the parched hills along I-5 - where they're putting in vineyards!! and posting signs about how Congress is creating the next "dust bowl" with their water policy.  Over the never-ending Tehachapi Pass, with its windmills looking just like the Altamont Pass, I headed towards Barstow to pick up I-40.  But first, a well-deserved date shake at the California Fruit Depot off Hwy 58.

www.calfruitdepot.com

After crossing the Mojave desert and pressing on in the dark to Kingman AZ for the night, I was exhausted but happy for the progress.

At a rest stop in Arizona.

The next morning revealed the red rocks and mesas of Arizona - what a dramatic difference from the rolling hills and flat desert of California.  Then into the mountains around Flagstaff - starting with juniper-covered hills, then at higher elevations, the pines started, reminding me of the Sierra.  Back down into desert with sandy washes and sagebrush, I started seeing signs for "Indian Trading Posts."  I suddenly realized that this would probably be my last opportunity to buy "Indian" jewelry.

In January, my house in Oakland was burglarized;  they took the TV and all my jewelry, some of which was handmade southwestern turquoise, coral and mother of pearl I had acquired on my various trips to the southwest.  Here was my chance to buy a few things to replace them.  Of course nothing could replace the memories of my Navaho neighbor in Magdalena, making my silver and turquoise bracelet in his garage workshop, but a nice pair of handcrafted earrings would be a start.

So I bought these, made by Calvin Begay, at Ortega's Navajo Trading Plaza, outside of Gallup.

After the night in Tucumcari NM, I drove onward (what else was there to do?) past Amarillo TX, and left the Interstate to US 287 that travels southeast below the Texas-Oklahoma border.  I had set the navigation to Wichita Falls to make sure I didn't miss the turnoff in Amarillo, but once I passed WF, Navi kept telling me to "Exit the Highway and Turn Left!" because she thought I had passed my destination and I didn't know how to turn her off.  So I exited the highway, reset the destination to Denton TX, but as luck would have it, the road I exited on didn't have an on-ramp to get back on.  She sent me down a small road that took me to an unsignaled railroad crossing - where I found lumbering along the super long BNSF train with car after car loaded with coal that I had been tracking along the highway!  I sat there, in 104 degree heat, and lost count of how many cars passed before the tracks were empty and I could cross and in a mile or so, got back on the highway.

As I said, it was 104 in Wichita Falls.  Forty miles later, it was 81 degrees.  Texas doesn't have micro-climates like California.  What it has instead is violent weather!  But much to my surprise, this violence wasn't a thunderstorm - it was wind!!  Wind so strong I had trouble keeping the car on the road, so strong I had trouble getting the car door open when I stopped to buy gas.  So strong, that on the news that night I learned that it had toppled a crane in Dallas and killed two people.  I was lucky.

Finally, safely in Denton, I visited my 97-year-old mother.   ah, but that's another story . . .