Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman

After my perfectly formed waffle in needles, I check the tour book and say, "look, heather, the world's longest map of route 66 is painted on the side of this motel on needles! And the neon sign behind it has been restored! We MUST go!"

So we go and find that the "map" is a cartoon illustration of a wavy road and its typical landmarks, not particularly to scale and not particularly photogenic. I do my best to take good pictures, also competing with the sun. We leave. Today is desert day. Like, Mojave desert. From what I'd heard, I was expecting Prince of Egypt-style sand dunes, but I was quite disappointed with much of the same tumbleweed country that i had been seeing for days now. This country was train land and truck land. And us land.

I began to wonder what WOULD happen in an emergency. We didn't pack a gallon of water per person per day.

(Speaking of gallons - remember when I said leaving a gallon of milk out for an hour takes a day off of its shelf life?  I'm curious about soy and almond milk. Ours went through many temperature and pressure changes but stayed good for quite a while. I thought the cartons were puffy because the milk was putrefying but it was just because of our higher altitude. But they're nuts and vegetables...so how long does it take for them to actually go bad?)

Thankfully we were fine.

We stopped at a well-kept but nonfunctional gas station/diner/motel and had a good talk with the guy there as he sat upon his red vintage car and let us use his water cooler to refill our bottles. "Quick! Before anyone sees!" He gave valuable advice and I bought chocolate which gave us valuable energy on our hike up the volcanic crater which was right across the street, sort of.

The station is defunct because the ground only has saltwater and the first go-round they found out the hard way as it destroyed the pipes (we found this out from the T-shirt guy on the Santa Monica Pier - isn't that awesome that we can mention a place and he knows EXAVTKY what we're talking about?). But it's still painted bright, bright white. I commented on this to a lady who had just gotten out of her car as we were about to depart.

Just like that, we were sucked in to another conversation. A nice one, though. According to the woman's husband, Nikon cameras are better than Canons. And back in the day, 66 was full of traffic. Bumper to bumper, he said. The government didn't build I-40 just to be evil and divert traffic from towns and turn them all into "ruin porn" (a popular term used for when artists over glorify the artistic value of decay), they did it to alleviate traffic and make things easier for Americans! And easier to escape to wherever of the Russians did something evil, I believe was the reason the interstate act got passed.

Anyhow, those are what nice Californians are like. I am also meeting lots of nice girls in my hostel. People in Santa Monica give off the vibe of being very...other. I can't say I'll be sorry to leave.

The Amboy Crater. The part worth writing home about is the fact that I hiked every inch that Heather did, and I have a picture and a human being to prove it. The part not so exciting was the crater. Once we hiked  the mile out and up to the rim, there was no beautiful concave shape to observe, just continued hills and piles of rocks. There were two flat spaces on which people had arranged stones to form a heart and a snail shell pattern. Google picture search "Amboy Crater so you can understand the hike. It's three miles round trip, and some of it is kind of treacherous. I didn't bring anything except water and car keys.  If I had brought my camera there would have been cool pictures but it would have been way too much to worry about.

The black rocks sound like glass when you kick them together.

Then we find another hotel with exterior doors, and our dinner counts as lunch the next day. The girl who hostessed that night served in the morning with the same cheerful attitude, which made me feel hopeful too.

That town we stayed in was the border of civilization. It was the end of lonely little blip towns and the beginning of the traffic lights I told you about.

I forget what else I said. I had fish and chips (so much better than fish sticks) and heard someone else snoring last night which means I'm not the only one!

Today Heather found the toaster at breakfast (small victories) and I enjoyed my breakfast too in spite of the fact that butter came in a serving bowl and was the consistency of chunky yogurt (you spoon it on, yum).  We wash our own dishes which either increases my faith in their cleanliness or decreases it,, not sure which.

I got to see the !aids change the sheets. HOLY COW. On point and with amazing teamwork, they pull the mattresses out, drape the covers, fold them under, and throw the mattress back in the bunk- and it looks tidy, tight, and fresh as can be.

We went to a combination national park/state park/private land place today.  The drive there past the impressive green mountains reminded me of some shots from the Sound of Music. We arrived at one building that shone just as brightly as the whitewashed gas station buildings in the desert a couple of days ago. It featured a tiled fountain with ultramarine tiles on the bottom.  You can bet you'll see a picture of that. Without the water feature the building wouldn't be as memorable.
Between sections of park live many celebrities. The two of us rode along with a friend of Heather's as he gave us the low-down on the community. My favorite was knowing where Beyonce "lives."

My FAVORITE favorite, though, is the section of the park with a "wild west" set on it where numerous movies and TV shows have been filmed. Some of them use other parts of the park too. Heck, American Sniper filmed something in the park we were at! But, back to the set. This set is the Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman set. It is The Town. We touched her office, stood on her porch, went into the sheriff's office. We saw the bridge where little Brian regained his sight.

It was beautiful. I thought I would never see it.

There was also a meadow with yellow flowers and I spun around in it.

Heather and I got seafood (me: fish and chips) from a recommended location, then touched the pacific ocean, found muscle beach, and parted ways. I found a swing and came back to the hostel to befriend some cool ladies. Heather got some cool shoes.

And that's actually it. It's kind of scary to not have anything else, but tomorrow I'll have a chance to get behind on my updates again, right?