Thursday Nov. 20 This morning it's a chilly 30 degrees but it warmed up to 50 fretty quickly on our way to Las Cruces. From Las Cruces down to El Paso we see a lot of Pecan groves along the Rio Grande River. Driving on I 10 we can look down the hill to the Rio Grande Valley and see they are picking cotton. We stop at a gas station in Fabens to get gas and something to drink. The owner of the station says farmers are just starting to pick. A lady comes into the store and said the renter of her land was saying the bales were lighter this year. Leaving there we stop in Van Horn for lunch, about 50 miles from where I 20 joins to I 10 each heading on their seperate ways to the east coast. At the roadside resturant we meet this younger guy from Upstate New York that was riding on of those hwy / offroad bikes. He had been to California and met up with friends to ride the back roads & sand dunes. He had told us when he headed out west he had come down to I 20 and rode it all the way out and was returning the same way. He said he was looking at having to go thru some bad weather before getting back to New York. We wished him luck on his travels home. With a full stomach, be put our bib coveralls on because the wind was out of the Northeast at 25-35 mph with cloudy conditions. There is not much to see after leaving the Rio Grande behind us, just blowing sand. We make it to Fort Stockton where we spend the night.


Friday Nov 21 It's 34 degrees this morning when we leave Fort Stockton at 8:30 and we have an East wind at 10 mph. Pretty cold going 75 mph down I 10 into this headwind. Not much to see thru here but dead deer along the hwy. We stop in Junction for lunch, looking at the map, we decide to forgo the San Antonio route and take Hwy 290 to Austin. This route takes us into Fredericksburg, a beautiful old town with lots of activity going on. I learn later that the National Museum of the Pacific War is located here, joined to the Admiral Nimitz Museum. Lady Bird Johnson had a big influence and a helping hand in making the town so picturesque. We ride by L.B. Johnson's ranch at Stonewall before entering Johnson City on our way to Austin. We take the 290 - 35 loop around Austin to get to hwy 79 that we will be taking to Shreveport in the morning. We find us a room at Round Rock which is close to hwy 79, that way we won't be in all the early morning traffic. After eating supper at the steakhouse next door to ur motel, we turn in for the night.

Wed. Nov. 19 It's a comfortable 55 degrees this morning when we leave Tucson and turn on hwy 80 south to Tombstone. As we enter Tombstone we pass the Boothill Graveyard where they have researched and marked the graves accurately by studying the records at the Courthouse. When you round the curve entering town you pass Wyatt Earp's home.We take a right turn on 4th street and park across the street from the visitor's center to obtain info. We are early enough that it's not many people here yet. We walk to the different historical points that the lady had marked on the map for us. We get a sandwich for lunch. More visitors are coming into town now. We ride back to Boothill and walked around lookingat the grave markers. If they could not identify the person buried there they were listed unknown, which was seldom, because they had such accurate records. The hey-days of Tombstone really didn't last but from 1881 to 1889, that was when the mines flooded. They had 2 fires 1881 & 1882 that destroyed a lot of the town. One of the most famous honky-tonks in America at that time was the Bird Cage Theater. In the 9 years it was open, the doors stayed open 24 hours a day. Before it closed in 1889 it would be the scene of 16 gunfights, leavinf 140 bullet holes in the walls and ceilings. The longest poker game was a house game and the players had to buy a $1,000 minimun of chips ( equal to $33,000 today) too geta seat at the table. The game ran continually (day & night) for 8 years, 5 months & 3 days. The house take from the poker game was a little over $1,000,000 during that time, for today's value multiply 33 to that, not bad. When the floods shut down the mines, they couldn't pump the water out fast enough, it was a death blow to the town. The Bird Cage Theater was sealed and boarded up with all it's fixtures and furnishing left intact. For 50 years it stayed sealed until 1934 when it and the rest of the town became a Historical Landmark of the American West. Everything is as it was when sealed in 1889. Curtains, furniture, chips still on the tables, and whiskey in bottles, all left there as if they just shut down for the night.
We left Tombstone headed south to Bisbee, which took over as county seat after almost everyone left Tombstone. Right beside the hwy there is a hugh open pit copper mine as we pass through Bisbee. We get into Douglas and miss the turn to the gas station so I figure there will be another one before leaving town. We travel through and outside town we stop at a borber check point where 2 law officers are checking the gun case of some guy, good they didn't check my pocket. I ask them if there was a gas station between there and Lordsburg, told them we were trying to get back to Mississippi. There was none, they said go back to town. Fueled up and heading north on hwy 80 we wave at the border guards as we pass by them. I round a curve and a male roadrunner is running a hen out in front of me, I almost got me one to mount. We pass a monument on the side of the road saying at that spot Geronimo surrendered to the U.S. Army. We make it to I10 and head east going through Lordsburg and stop in Deming, New Mexico for the night.

I'll try to finish the California trip

Monday- Nov. 17,2008 This morning when we left Ventura, Ca at 8:30 it was a nice 58 degrees. We turned back on to hwy 1 to go to Malibu. The temp rose to 85 by the time we make it to Malibu , we start shedding our long sleeve shirts. Stop at the beach, take the view of a few good looking natives jogging by. When we get to Santa Monica we miss a turn trying to get up town so we break out the GPS. I punch in Beverly Hills and the only street I know is Rodeo Drive. We follow the GPS directions which take us to the start of the fancy stores on the street. They had a few Christmas decoration up at that time. The street is 4 lanes with a medium down the middle.The street lights hanging on eachside of medium are Chandeliers inside glass boxes. I had never really thought about it but the shopping area is not but 3 bl;ocks of stores then you run into residential area. We turn around and head back up the other side of the street so not to miss anything. Leaving there we head to Hollywood Blvd. We try to turn north on the the Blvd. but the street was blocked off. They were setting up the red carpet for the premire of Bolt that night. We had to go down 2 blocks to get on to Hollywood Blvd, found us a parking space in front of a Greek Deli and took a walk to check things out. The Bolt premire was at the El Capitan and next door to the theater , Jimmy Kimble had his live talk show going on. Checked out the stars on the sidewalks, went to the Chinese Theater to see the fet & handprints in concrete. Went back to the Greek Deli to get a bite to eat and afterwards the owner came out to talk to us some more and told us what route to take to get to the Hollywood sign. I was checking the map for a route to I10 after we had taken pictures of the sign when a guy walking by gave us the directions we needed. This route took us by the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre. Later on during our trip we hear on the news that a guard kills a sword welding intruder after we pass by. We take I10 East to get around the fires and smoke in Orange county south of L.A. We go through this valley with hundreds of wind turbines along the road stretching some 20 miles by Palm Springs to Palm Desert where we stop for the night. This is the same town 2 guys kill each other in the Toys R Us the day after Thanksgiving. I get a salad for supper and afterwards go to Walgreen to get sinus medicine to try to head off the head cold I think I caught from Joe.

Tuesday--Nov-18
This morning we leave Palm Desert too head out to Indio where we turn south on hwy 86. We drove something like 40 miles along the Salton Sea which is 235 feet below sea level, 47 feet higher than Badwater Basin in Death Valley. At the south end they have the Sonny Bono Nat. Wildlife Refuge. South of the Salton Sea we start to enter the Imperial Valley where they are growing vegetables, cotton, milo, and lots of alfalfa hay. Turning on I-8 at El Centro, we head to Arizona. All along this route if they have access to water, they were growing a crop and if there was no water, there was nothing but desert. At on point we can see the tall steel fence along the Mexico Border. Make it to the west side of Tucson at dark that night where we get a room.