John Wise

Update: Here I am in 2023, disturbing the order of time by altering the past. I’ve said this what now feels like countless times: back when I posted these early blog missives, bandwidth limitations were such that I was mostly limited to one photo per entry. With that no longer a concern, I try adding photos and maybe a bit of text about the day from the original images I shot.

Like the old Burma Shave signs that required those on the highway to keep on going in order to read all the signs, this message hand painted on the asphalt wouldn’t be fully read until the next image.

So, there you go, you’ve been warned that there are cows on the road. The matter of fact was that we’d just passed a quite flat specimen, but it was well off to the side of the road.

At the time I didn’t know that these tiny churches were a thing with multiple locations where you are encouraged to Enter, Rest, Pray. This one is in Salome, Arizona.

This ruin we’ve photographed a few times is also in Salome.

Darrell Smith, a longtime friend of mine, was my company for the drive west out of Phoenix to Alamo Lake State Park. The lake is approximately 30 miles from the California border south of Lake Havasu, up a 38-mile dead-end road in the middle of nowhere. Like so much of the southwest this year, wildflowers are scattered as far as the eye can see.

This rebel flag seems to say a lot about who the landowners are looking to sell property to which makes Darrel and I a wee bit uncomfortable.