Dreams, Moments, Travels
My mother went to Florida and all I got was this colon cleaner. From the Sunshine State and Professor Phardtpounder comes this hot sauce “Elixer of Capsaicin Extremus” – Colon Cleaner. If only I were naive enough to wonder just how it does its magic and were contemplating, should I eat it or apply it?
Everything is now right in the world. Tata (Aunt Ann) got her hair done, and now it was time for breakfast at Cajun Kitchen. We’ll hang out until just after noon, reminiscing about all the stuff we’ve probably reminisced about before, but no matter as it’s always great to see their enthusiasm for sharing the highlights of their lives.
It’s already mid-afternoon when we pull off the freeway for some quick sightseeing in downtown Los Angeles. While there’s plenty of blight to focus on in this part of the city, that’s what I was doing back when I was growing up before I had access to a car. Today, I’m looking for striking images.
However, I’m also persuaded to take distorted self-portraits.
And more high rises.
Not to forget the beautiful older and much shorter side of Los Angeles. Enough sightseeing, time to go home.
Passing the Chuckawalla Valley State Prison outside of Blythe, California, on the way back to Arizona, you are warned not to stop for hitchhikers as they just might be escaped convicts.
These are not the ladies from Tijuana; they are Woody Burns and John Wise, who, with Caroline and our Aunt Ann, are spending the weekend together in Goleta doing not much at all.
Well, there is this pot of chicken soup underway that I’m hoping Tata (Aunt Ann) learned to make from her mother, Luba, and that it’s the same recipe her sister/my grandmother Amelia used to make. There are those foods from our childhood that really defined our expectations, and from my grandma Wise (Amelia), it was chicken soup, homemade noodles, and tapioca pudding.
More than 30 years ago, my Uncle Woody and Aunt Ann picked up this once beautiful statue from across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. As she rode back to the U.S. in the passenger seat of a convertible, she turned heads – yeah, right, it was her stunning beauty and not those odd multi-directional breasts.
Driving to Santa Barbara, California, for the weekend, we have to stop in Quartzsite to fill the tank before the price jumps from $2.99 a gallon to over $3.55. The drive to Santa Barbara is 510 miles (826km) and takes us about 9 hours to drive, including a stop for dinner. The majority of the road slices through the desert until shortly before Los Angeles, when the temperature drops, the air moistens, and traffic starts to get heavy.
Along the way, we stopped at the Colorado River, where the Ehrenberg Wash joins the river here on the Arizona side.
That’s Palm Springs ahead.
Here’s that stop for dinner I mentioned above, which is once again being taken at the Northwoods Inn in Covina, California.
Tropical Sno is the name of the business, Hawaiian Shave Ice is the product. Eric Slivinski is the owner and part-time operator of this small stand on the south-east corner of 40th Street and Bell Road in Phoenix, Arizona. Today, Paul Zellner took my order and with glee, I asked for a large 16oz portion with a scoop of vanilla ice cream at the bottom. And now the best part of ordering here, they don’t just feature grape, strawberry, bubblegum, and rootbeer, they have the traditional Hawaiian flavors such as guava, passion fruit, pineapple, coconut, mango, and papaya. In all, Eric stocks 80 different flavors, and with prices starting at only $1.75 for a small and the scoop of vanilla ice cream costing an additional fifty cents, you can bet I’ll be a regular customer so I can re-experience another fond Hawaiian memory again and again.
Sort of like the leaves photo, this shot of the moon is the lazy way of simply catching up to having all the photos I needed to fill in the past week. I had neglected to post any new images as, as I said in an earlier posting, I have been working furiously on the Hawaiian photos for a special project – mind you, we shot more than 3200 photos on 5 islands. Right now I am finished with the first 1000 images, so try to understand that the next week will be slow on new photos of the day.