Alas, it is Spring Migration time and I get to check out new places! I left the comfort of Rancho California on Easter & have stopped in Santa Clarita, CA until I can figure out which fork in the road to take. Coast or Inland? I have never been to central California west of the Sierra's so either way is new & I would like to do both at some point. So today, I made a trek up I-5 to Bakersfield. I checked out 5 - 6 RV parks and found just 1 I think I would actually stay at. I was not overly impressed with the city but it does offer a good location for checking out the spring wildflower blooms. After I found a suitable place to stay should I go that way, I scouted the surrounding area. I found the California Fruit Depot where they were boxing up oranges to head off to market. It was quite interesting to watch them separate the oranges into different sizes and see the boxes get filled. I also watched men out harvesting oranges from the trees and filling up large crates of oranges. The Depot had a great tasting room. They had samples of everything from fruit and nuts, to olive oil and licorice to taste. They even had a large orange squeezer so you could squeeze there fresh picked oranges and have orange juice. Definitely my kind of place!
From there I thought I'd do some wildflower hunting & headed south through miles of orange and almond groves, vineyards and acres and acres of other crops that I have no clue what they were. About the only crop I know is wheat & corn and there was none of that growing.
I came across a Courtesy Drive In restaurant in the next town down and HAD to stop!. My family owned the Courtesy Drive Ins in St. Louis back in the day and so the name really caught my attention. The food did not disappoint either. They have all types of burgers. I chose the Mexican burger & it was fab. The extra bonus at this stop was the Galaga game that they had inside. I love this game. You can keep all the new fangled action video things .. just give me one of these to play!
Looking back towards all the crop fields
From there I headed east on CA-223 towards Tehachapi and hit the jackpot on flowers. The fields were beautiful. The hillsides were alive with yellow, white and purple flowers. There weren't many places to pull-over & take pictures but I did find a few spots. The beauty here & a few California poppies along the roadside helped me decide to take the long route home and check out the Antelope Poppy field area. I had hoped to see poppies like I did in 2011 though it is a bit early for poppies still.
Joshua Tree bloom
I headed to Tehachapi and cut off down a back road through the wind farms, through blooming Joshua trees and to the poppy fields... not a single bit of color there yet. It was windy and desolate and I got whapped by a few tumbleweeds to boot! Instead of fighting the wind, I opted to take a canyon road through the Angeles forest to get back home. There were plenty of horses along the winding route through the blanketed green hills. 200+ miles and 6 hours later, the never pretty track subdivisions and the Magic Mountain roller coasters came into view and I was home. Now to load up the 'surf' tunes on the iPod for tomorrows daytrip to the coast! I love 'migration' time!
With the Grammy awards this weekend, I thought it would be fitting to share my stop this summer to the 'Grammy Factory' in Ridgeway, CO. Ridgeway, in western Colorado, is not a huge town by any means, it has around 700 residents, 1 stoplight and is probably best known because John Wayne filmed 'True Grit' in and around Ridgeway many moons ago. The biggest restaurant in town is called "True Grit" and is right across the street from the main street park in town, where they tell me the 'hang'n' scene in the movie was filmed. But back to the Grammy's. While on a balloon flight a couple of years ago, I learned that the Grammy's were made in Ridgeway, but in this 8 block or less town, I couldn't find them. This year a friend suggested I stop in and he gave me better directions and I still couldn't find the place. It took friends sharing a picture of the front of the business with me before I could actually figure out where it was located. Why couldn't I find it? I was expecting a nice big sign, in front of a semi-fancy building (Ridgeway is western, not fancy) with a big picture of a Grammy on it. What I found was this sign for Billings Artwork and a plywood makeshift bridge over a ditch that led to a dusty basement shop with the the door wide open. Not the least bit close to was I was expecting to be the home of such a prestigious award.
Latin Grammy's ready to go
Taylor Swifts dropped Grammy
When I entered, I was met by a guy with a long grey beard, named Jimmy, who looked kind of 'biker' and I was wondering if I was in the right place. Despite me not being 'biker', he welcomed me in and we quickly found common ground in the Grammy's. At the time of my visit they were getting ready for the Latin Grammy's and had the 'Stage Grammy's' all packed up to go. Apparently, the awards they get on stage, don't have their names on them and are called 'stage grammy's'. Later, they get the real ones with their name engraved on it. I learned a whole lot about the Grammy process, from Jimmy before I had the pleasure of meeting 'the Grammy man' himself, John Billings. John has been the Grammy designer, creator and maker for over 40 years. He showed me the history of the design of the award through the dusty samples sitting on a shelf. I also learned that Grammy's can never be sold and Billings Artwork serves as a graveyard for those that have been damaged or were found for sale. They have plenty of pictures on the wall of folks with their awards and of Taylor Swift dropping her stage grammy a few years back.
Grammy history on a shelf
These soft spoken gentleman are very proud of their work, as they should be. Interesting that this small business, in a dusty basement shop creates one of the most prestigious Hollywood awards with such little fanfare. These gentleman had work to do, so I continued on my way but it was very interesting to see the 'birthplace' of the Grammy's that folks will be all decked out to receive tonight.
I Blog because I like to share some of the awesome places and awesome things there are to do out in the world with others. I can only hope that some folks might find some of the information helpful or informative or even inspire them to see some place that they didn't even know existed before. At the least, I hope to garner a smile or an inspiration to get out & see something from one of my stories. All material on this blog, both stories and pictures, are owned by me. I have posted the copyright information in the footer for the Blog and on the picture album that contains the pictures for the blog.
I get emails on occasion from people wanting to use a picture or two or a story for a specific purpose. I am always happy to work with them provided they cite proper credit and/or give me a link. I appreciate the fact that people want to reuse my material with my permission.
I DO NOT appreciate it when people copy my text or download my pictures without permission to do so! A few days ago, I happened upon a Analytics program that wanted to trial on my blog before using on a commercial site. This program captures download events. To my surprise, I found people both near and far downloading pictures from my blog posts without permission. I found one person had downloaded 16 pictures, on one it was every picture in the post (hmmm... I am guessing they probably grabbed the text too!) and they did this in just a 2 day period!
I have read lots of blog posts & been on lots of websites and have never thought of downloading someone's pictures. Maybe I am naive, maybe I just like to take my own pics. I have used pics from Picture sites that offer free or paid pictures for people to use as they wish but going on a personal blog & downloading their pics!? C'mon! My first reaction was to just take down the blog & stop blogging all together. Though I guess it could be seen as a form of flattery that someone wants your pictures, I found it to feel violating. So I went through and added blatant copyright to most of my pictures. Some even have 2 on them because despite there being a physical copyright discretely on several of the pictures, some of them were downloaded too. So from here on out, I will mar the pics with copyrights in places that will at least make it a little harder for someone to steal. I know people will still steal and do what they are gonna do but at least they will have to work a little harder at it. My blog posts won't be as pretty as I would like anymore, but hopefully people will still enjoy the pics. Its a shame that Blogger doesn't offer download protection. It's a shame that we need download protection...
If you are interested in using one of my pictures or my content please contact me.
You drive thru Organ Pipe N.M. to get to the border crossing
You would think that after traveling alone for 8.5 years throughout North America and making a trip alone to India while on crutches, that traveling 60 miles south of the US border by myself would be no big deal, but in my mind it was. Traveling south of the border always conjures up images of banditos with big guns wanting pay offs, drug shoot outs, theft and run down dirty towns with people on every street corner wanting to make me a deal on something I don’t want. As you can tell, my exposure to Mexico has basically been in border towns. Having spent 6 winters along the Tex/Mex border I found out that unlike Vegas, much of ‘what goes on along the border, stays along the border’ and is never reported.
Good signage all the way down
Over the last fews years I have met more & more people in my travels that just love Mexico and several of who spend 5 - 6 months every year down in Rocky Point. Their stories of beautiful beaches, crystal clear water and gorgeous sunsets certainly peaked my interest. I just had two problems. The first being location. Puerto Penasco (aka Rocky Point) is not only located 6o miles south of the border, it is 40 miles south of the town of Ajo, which is over a 100 miles from either Phoenix, Tucson and Yuma and not necessarily on the way to anywhere unless you are going/coming from Tucson and Southern California which I happened to be doing last spring. When I got to Ajo last spring, problem #2 kicked in. Problem #2 was fear. Fear of driving 60 miles into Mexico by myself. The visions of being stopped by armed banditos and never being heard from again won out over my desire to go see this place for myself and I went on to Tucson without visiting Rocky Point this past March.
Fast forward to this fall and I am again in Tucson and headed to Southern California. This time I have friends in Tucson that I convince to take the foray into Mexico with me, so I feel much safer. Ultimately the timing did not work out & they could not come with me. When I left Tucson, after spending the evening before reading the Phoenix Sun articles about violence in Mexico and the downturn of tourists going to Rocky Point I was resolved to skip it once again. I was yet again succumbing to the fear of the 'what ifs'.
Beach in front of Playa Bonita RV
RV Park - Playa Bonita
As I pulled into the Shadow Mountain RV park, I asked the woman camp host, about the safety of going to Rocky Point alone. She assures me that I would be fine but confesses she has only traveled with her husband down there recently. I ask if I could borrow him for a day and luckily she laughed. As I check in, I asked the manager, about Rocky Point and she too assured me that I would be fine, gave me a map and outlined places for me to go. She explains that Rocky Point is the beach playground for Arizonians and that most of the folks traveling the road will be from the US. This began to quell some of the fear demons wreaking havoc in my mind and I resolve to just go for it & whatever happens will just happen. Once I made the decision and decided I was going with or without fear, I got excited. I wasn't just excited about discovering Rocky Point, but because I had freedom from a fear that kept me from doing something that I wanted to do. I haven’t traveled much out of North America. One reason is finances, another is fear of traveling alone in a non-english speaking country. Now that I was taking this small step to tackle the ‘traveling alone’ fear .. who knows what new journey’s await!
Looking at from "Rocky Point" the Fish Market area
Rocky Point Fish Market area
Side street - all sand
So, I went to Rocky Point. I had no problems on the road. I was stopped at a Mexican checkpoint by men with big guns but apparently they were good guys and I had no problems. The water was a beautiful blue and a perfect temperature. The beach was fabulous and I enjoyed the fish market area at the point. The beach RV park I visited was a parking lot of sand, had unreliable internet and was in my view overpriced. Away from the beach and Market area the town pretty much looked like a poor border town. I loved the beach but didn’t care much at all for the surroundings. If I lived in Arizona and wanted to get away to the beach, I would definitely return and spend some time in the water here. Not being from Arizona and living on wheels, I much prefer the Alabama and Florida Gulf Coast areas which have much more amazing beaches and nice towns to go with them.
They had big guns!
All and all, I had a great trip .. the one through Mexico and the one through fear.
