So Cal, Baby!

The last bit of Tucson, right before we left, was perhaps the most awesome, as we were introduced to a new dessert. How could anything top new dessert?! What Dalton and Julie and their roommate Kit showed us was a Mexican dessert called raspados. Amazing! It's several layers of fluffy shaved ice, fruit and real fruit syrup of your choosing, and ice cream (if you want it), with a bit of sweetened condensed milk squirted on top. Soooooo very very good that now I intend to look up raspados places before we leave So Cal.

After Tucson, we booked it up to Flagstaff to get our Route 66 on. I was looking for a place on the old road where my dad at my age and on a similar road-trip got into a head-on collision. He knew it was somewhere near Kingman, AZ, so we kept our eyes open for what often gets referred to as Dead Man's Curve. Apparently, the western Arizona portion of old 66 was infamous for its narrow, steep, and winding nature. I've read that there were many accidents in that area. Immediately around Kingman, however, we didn't see anything worthy of the name. But as it got dark, and we neared Oatman, AZ (an old ghost town near the border and way off of I40), we could imagine a few wrecks. The road narrowed and we were reduced to 30mph maximum, not by speed limit signs, but by the road itself. Switchbacks and guard-rail-less drop-offs resembled what I'd seen in the old Route 66 books, and so I assumed it was somewhere around there that my dad had such a personal encounter with the old road. However, it was dark, and I was being especially careful not to have my own encounter, and so we got no pictures.

After that, we finished a day of 66 travel at a noted travel stop, The Wagon Wheel, in Needles, CA. We had a late dinner there and enjoyed there classic trucker menu. Apparently, the place has been serving for a while, and we enjoyed the whole feel.

The next day, I woke up next to the car and rolled onto my belly to see one of the tires looking a bit chubby. We decided to fill it up at the next gas station, and by the time we rolled into Amboy (located in the middle of nowhere in the desert), it was well nigh flat. So we stopped at Roy's, and old 66 motel and gas station, and about the only thing in town, and took the tire off, wiggled a screw out of it, and started moving towards plugging it when a local rolled up and took over the operation. Within the hour, we were heading south towards Joshua Tree National Park, and when we rolled into town there, we were perhaps more flat than the first time, but got all patched up and back in good shape at a tire shop, and went into the Park.

We were meeting some friends there, Carissa, her boyfriend Karl, and her brother and friends, and we got to climb and play all weekend. I also got to do a day of work for a guide service I'd talked to out there, so that was really cool as well. After Carissa and her gang left, we had a few more nights in the park, and, though we greatly enjoyed being with friends, we also enjoyed the solitude of being back on our own afterwards. We really did, but that didn't keep up from making new friends, almost immediately--friends with great music taste, talent, and instruments. We spent probably 5 hours of one of our last nights sitting around the campfire with several surfer/skater/climbers from Orange County who played steel guitar, acoustic guitar, cajon, and harmonica to Dylan, Neil Young, Paul Simon, Old Crow Medicine Show, Felice Brothers, The Beetles, and anything else that was super great and not pop. They had great voices, too, though we did our best to out-sing them, if only in volume. Of course, we didn't succeed, but we gave it a good effort. Some of them even offered us a place to stay in Orange County, and we might later get some surf lessons from one of them! I'm psyched.

After that, we finished 66, wrapping it up at the Santa Monica Pier, meaning we finally made it to the ocean. I called up Justin, an old friend I'd met in Springfield several years ago, and we stayed with him a few nights at his home in Agoura Hills, CA, northwest of LA and about 8 miles from the coast. He and his family have welcomed us marvelously, and we've had a great time. Justin even got to climb with us a little in Malibu, and--the super neat thing--there was even a low-budget movie being filmed at the crag while we were there! It was super great, because there was a dinosaur, and people falling off cliffs and pretentious directors yelling for us to be quiet. Seriously, we loved it.

And, after climbing and movie-shoot voyeuring, we had a good time with Justin's church youth group and got a local dumpster tour from Zam, a girl my age who helps lead the youth group. Overall, we've had a stupendous time here. But right now, we're packing up to roll north. Do you know the way to San Jose? Because we've got at least one friend there.