WHERE THE STREETS HAVE NO NAME

We woke on a crisp-clear day, had chocolate cake and strawberry milk for breakfast and hiked a short way into the desert. Clambering under a precariously balanced twenty ton boulder down a gap Natalie did well to get her amazing child-baring hips through we sat and watched chipmunks and unknown critters sun themselves on the rocks. We climbed a stack of rocks, all of which seem to have been made of fibre-glass and placed there by a film crew or by Indian giants playing a game of granite Jenga. Or for you Christians out there, placed there by Jesus like colossal Sticklebricks. I can imagine the conversation “What’s that meant to be, Son?”

“It’s you Daddy”


We drove away for about a year and a day to the land where the Joshua Trees grow. Dressed in Elvis shades and a cowboy hat, we tried to recreate Anton Corbin’s black and white imagery of the eponymous album; only Natalie had never seen the cover. Then I drove Optimus Prime a couple of miles through the National Park and did good,. We walked some more and drove to Keyes Viewpoint where you can see the Salton Sea and a mountain on the Mexican border.

As I type Natalie is expertly driving us across the border into Arizona.

(Yes she told me write that bit - minus 20 cool points for her, even though she is an excellent driver)

We just passed a sign for the state penitentiary (or prison)

Under that another sign reading “DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS”

Marty who’s asleep on our bed in the back says he was “just passin’ thru” but seems nice enough…

Next stop - Flying J’s Truck Stop, outside Phoenix.

We didn’t want to go there, but Marty insists.