Southwest Trip 2007

All the posts from my trip:

• Day 1: From Berkeley, CA to Lompoc, CA, including Pescadero, Duarte’s, kitesurfing in Santa Cruz, Big Sur… in words and pictures. Also: anticipation, iPhone angst, miscellaneous thoughts, on detours, and yum.
• Day 2: From Lompoc, CA to Joshua Tree National Park, CA, including Carpinteria State Beach, LA traffic, Indio and “other Desert Cities”, and camping in Joshua Tree… in words and pictures. Also: rain and the beach.
• Day 3: From Joshua Tree National Park, CA to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, CA, including Keys View, Twentynine Palms, desert aqueducts, RV parks, and Lithuanian entomologists from Kansas… in words and pictures. Also: what I woke up to, remembering why I do this, and where the streets have no name.
• Day 4: From Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, CA to Patagonia Lake State Park, AZ, including border towns, a coyote puppy (!), Kitts Peak, Nogales, AZ, and, finally, a shower… in words and pictures.
• Day 5: From Patagonia Lake State Park, AZ to Deming, NM, including Tombstone, AZ, huge pit mines, more border towns, fording rivers on the road, and thunderstorms over the desert… in words and pictures.
• Day 6: From Deming, NM to White Sands National Monument, NM, including more border patrol, thunderstorms, a Swiss classical singer letting loose absolutely gorgeous Native American chants in the middle of the dunes in the dark, an wonderful Argentinian guru and artist with a slightly-offensive name, a New York hipster girl rambling through New Mexico, a guy quite a lot like me, a transsexual artist in inflatable sculpture, and stargazing and talking with them out under the stars all night long… in words and pictures. Also: what I woke up to.
• Day 7: From White Sands National Monument, NM to Taos, NM, including waking up to an absolutely amazing sunrise over the dunes and New Mexico mountains… in words and pictures. Also: Part 2 of that day.
• Day 8: From Taos, NM to Estes Park, CO, including bad hotel breakfasts, rustic Taos, the high road to Santa Fe, roadside graveyards, arriving at my parents’ place, and having driven farther than any straight trip in the continental US by now… in words and pictures.
• Day 9: Relaxing in Estes Park, CO… in words.
• Day 10: From Estes Park, CO to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, WY/UT, including cinnamon rolls in Glen Haven, rugged Wyoming, almost hitting cattle on the highway, The Laramie Project, Ph.D.s in clinical psychology (from USC, nonetheless) in small-town (tiny-town) Wyoming, driving through tremendous electrical storms… in words and pictures.
• Day 11: From Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, WY/UT to the Colorado River Canyon near Arches National Park and Moab, UT, including sunrise, teenagers “roughing it” with three giant RVs, five ATVs, and two boats, really, really tasty cantaloupe, and the hottest place I’ve ever camped in my life… in words and pictures.
• Day 12: From the Colorado River Canyon near Arches National Park and Moab, UT to Muley Point, near Mexican Hat, UT, including the world’s biggest cinnamon roll, creative methods of sleeping, Dead Horse Point State Park, the Moki Dugway, and camping on Muley Point, possibly the most beautiful places on this whole trip… in words and pictures.
• Day 13: From Muley Point, near Mexican Hat, UT to St. George, UT, including more Muley Point, the tragic poverty of the Navajo Nation, the north rim of the Grand Canyon and the amazing lodge they have there, a bit of homesickness, all followed by the most spectacular sunset I’ve seen yet… in words and pictures. Also: Muley Point, the Navajo Nation, and my reaction to it.
• Day 14: From St. George, UT to Great Basin National Park, NV, including a much-needed shower and shave, a back entrance into Zion, the Middle of Nowhere, UT, “WHOA!”, seagulls in the desert, and the best campsite yet… in words and pictures.
• Day 15: From Great Basin National Park, NV to Sparks, NV, including the metropolis of Baker, NV, the loneliest road in America, the Most Beautiful Phone Booth on Earth, Sand Mountain and wishing I could be a redneck for a bit, and the cultural capital that is Sparks… in words and pictures.
• Day 16: From Sparks, NV to Berkeley, CA (home!), including Lake Tahoe, the return of exorbitant real-estate prices, the heat of Sacramento, and coming back home, very, very happy… in words and pictures.

And a few extras: on driving and the open road, about the Border Patrol, and a few statistics and a map of the whole trip.