Highlights: Slab City to NOLA

4/25
Finally uploaded some pictars from the rest of the trip today. I don't wanna do all the heavy journal searching and transcribing today so...


Oasis at the Visitor Center of Joshua Tree


A bit of boulder climbing


Do not reenact this scene here


The Salton Sea. 226 feet below sea level.


The beach is made of barnacle shells and covered in dead fish due to the ever increasing salinity.




Salvation Mountain


Made of adobe


Slab City




On our way to Phoenix we drove through some sand dunes. There were dune buggies and such racing around on them.


Downtown Phoenix
Her Secret is Patience created by Janet Echelmen


View from some rock formations in Papago Park


En route to Santa Fe, we encountered some snow while traveling through Tonto National Park.


Grassland stuff


While heading to Santa Fe we came across the National Petrified Forest. Here is a nice view of the Painted Desert.


Espied some petroglyphs through a telescope while heading to the petrified tree area of the park.


How does wood get so hard


The trees are just laying around, poking out of the mud hills. So surreal.


Made it to Santa Fe, found a bookstore. This is a rad owl.


One of the only reasons to ever go to Santa Fe


Roswell,NM


In the Alien Museum, there is an angry fat disembodied head


Advice skeleton in Carlsbad,NM


Entrance road/canyon to Carlsbad Caverns National Park



We are explorers


The Cave entrance. You can watch the bats leave at night






Some light painting






On the way to Austin,TX. West Texas is a vast empty place


Downtown Austin


By Ladybird Lake


Epiphytes in all the trees


Exploring the river


Ran into some Asheville friends and had a campfire at their place


Made it to New Orleans for the last two days of Mardi Gras






This dog lived at the place we were staying. His name is Capote


Last night of Mardi Gras means Twister in the road and yelling at every vehicle nearby while biking about.


Some ruin porn of NOLA.
And then my camera died.


So yep, that's a quick recap of the last two months of travels.

Some quick stats:
Duration - 20 weeks
Distance - 10,200 miles
Cities visited:28

Thanks

crap

4/13/2011
hi all.
My apologies for the sudden drop in updates.
Well, I guess it wasn't all that sudden really, it's been more of a lonnnnng tapering off and then a cessation.
We've been back in the Asheville for almost a month now. I left my computer charger in New Orleans and my camera finally kicked the bucket there too.
Thankfully our host in NOLA will be sending it back to me at some point in time and I may actually catch up on the final third of our voyage.
After that I imagine this blog will turn back into a bits and pieces, image, arts, ideas thang.
Until then,

Joshua Tree National Park

The ride out of L.A. was simple enough; lots of expansive swaths of highway and traffic congestion. Fortunately we were on the non-congested side, heading out of the city and into the desert-y rural areas of California. After a mix up detour and turnaround, we made it to Indio and grabbed some groceries for our camping stay at Joshua Tree. We checked in and drove out to one of the camp sites, set up camp and did some exploring. There are a number of large rock formations you can climb about on.














Evil cholla







During the night coyotes wandered through the camp. At first I thought it was someone chanting outside the tent, what with the weird rhythmic panting they were doing but then they began their trademark yipping.

The moon was full and so bright that I thought it was dawn and ended up waking up and wandering around the campsite with James at 3am. We did some light painting photographs. Or the best that we could with this simple digital camera.


A Joshua Tree


A Yucca with the flash filtered by my finger




Light painting on the rocks




Another Joshua tree