Day 5: We're not in Florida Anymore

Waking in New Mexico was like having your life given back to you after a long prison sentence. I awoke with a renewed sense of well being and began to feel as though we were really going somewhere. I got up kind of early, as usual, while Shanti slept for awhile more. I met the crisp morning air with the girls in tow and we took a leisurely walk around the hotel grounds. Later, after we all got going, the girls decided to hang out in the truck while Shanti and I went to the (We still believe and support segregation) Cracker Barrel for a light breakfast. Yesterday's drive was relatively uneventful as we breezed through desert landscapes and waved to passing saguaro cacti. We were blessed with peaceful landscapes, good weather, and light traffic. As we went through Tucson AZ, we saw some amazing mosaics created on highway overpasses and houses that actually complimented the landscape like an extension of the earth itself. The desert is wide open and desolate with small pockets of people scattered throughout like pioneer settlements of the old west. It was so nice not to see any urban sprawl or sign of suburbia. Of course the day was not without mishap. At the start of the day, we pulled into a gas station and got the truck a bit too close to the gas pump. Somehow we managed to get a pole between the back of the truck and the front of the car dolly. It looked liked those Chinese puzzle rings. It took lots of team work to get us out of that one and back on the road.

"Right, go right!"
"Back up, s-l-o-w-l-y."
"Extreme right."
"Stop!"
"Back up."
"Stop!"
"Extreme right."
"Stop."
"Come look."
"What should we do?"
"Back up."
"Stop!"
"Back up."
"Please Buddha."

And then at the end of the day, we decided to roll on through Tucson and look for overnight lodging on down the road. As we came through Gila Bend AZ looking for 85 North, we made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in the middle of nowhere on some frontage road. We had been in this predicament before when we encountered a border patrol station and had to back up then too. Thankfully, this time we could turn around and as we headed back into Gila Bend, we came across the coolest kitsch motel called The Space Age Lodge. Finding this place was such a treat as I had featured it in a book I worked on when I was in publishing in Chicago. The book was called Roadside Americana and featured all kinds of roadside attractions across the U.S. This very motel in Gila Bend was one of those stops. Weird. The place is like something out of the Jetsons (decor wise), kind of what was thought in the 60s to be space age. Fun. We pigged out in the restaurant surrounded by murals of NASA space walks and pictures of the space program. Later, I crashed like a lost flying saucer into peaceful dreams at last.