On the road, again

The call of the road reached home a couple of weeks ago, so good by Albuquerque – hello Barstow!

Yes, that Barstow.

Along the way,stops in Winslow, Kingman, Laughlin, Mojave, Bakersfield, Paso Robles and Las Vegas, too.

The occasion was an opportunity to visit the Paso Robles wine country (we arrived a couple days before the harvest, darn) and stay in a magnificent renovated farmhouse at Halter Ranch about 10 miles west of Paso Robles.

Here are some photos and a comment or two about what we saw..



Yes, folks (most of them were graying hair) do stop and stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona. Made famous by an Eagles song (Takin’ it Easy), there’s a terrific curio shop across the way. The community should thank the supporters of this little park for making an enormous contribution to downtown (and a great photo op). I wonder what had been going on in that upstairs room? Not the one the eagle was looking in. Ah, the subtleties of life!



At the entrance to a neat public golf course in Williams, Arizona, unique rock formations give the course its name - Elephant Rocks Golf Course.





That BAKERSFIELD sign once bridged the downtown, but somebody got carried away and was going to have it carried away so Buck Owens (Hee-Haw) had it moved to the front of what is now the Buck Owens Museum – where the history of the Bakersfield Sound is recounted. I wonder if he lived to see the day?




Halter Ranch vista about 10 miles west of Paso Robles. 1000 acres of land, 231 of it home to 200,000 grape “plants”. First production in the new winery (still under construction in the middle of the pic) is going on this year. Some of us on the trip are not big wine drinkers, but spending more time here might convince us otherwise.





Not a stuffed “Trigger" and these aren’t stuffed mules. The real live person is Jim Baca, with whom I traveled some 2100 miles this trip. These creatures, who's hind end you see in this picture are made of some chemical substance fabricated depicting the Borax 20 Mule Team that once hauled a substance called boron. The huge open pit mine is still in operation supplying boron for Boraxo and hundreds of other products. It’s near Boron, California, only a few miles away from what I’ve been told, is the largest solar collection array in the world.

Culture clash!