Going West

Time to catch up... have been travelling almost since last time I wrote, and my travels took me to two very different places in the United States- from the frozen Mississippi River in St. Paul to the cactus strewn desert landscape of Arizona- a discovery for me.

 But as always, America behaves exactly as expected, and the landscape is so familiar through so many films we have seen all our lives, in the same way that  New York; L.A and New Orleans seemed like old familiar places when I first went.

We flew in to Phoenix, and then we travelled overland- to Winslow where the historic Route 66 runs for a while  along  the great railway track which  carries mainly freight from East to West- Washington to Chicago through Salt Lake City and onto San Fransisco. Winslow has one of the last  great, famous railway Inns: La Posada Hotel, frequented from  the 1930's with stars crossing America whose portraits are now proudly adorning the walls: Shirley Temple, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Groucho Marx...

The great romance of America is somehow tied to the roads or railway tracks- all those blues songs which involves railway stations- the Blues myth of the Crossroads, 

The railroads... Here is the back of the Posada Hotel with a train the must have been three miles long going West...

And Bob Dylans' song to Woody Guthrie: 

Here's to Cisco and Sonny and Leadbelly too
And to all the good people that traveled with you
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind

I'm a-leavin' tomorrow, but I could leave today
Somewhere down the road someday
The very last thing that I'd want to do
Is to say, "I've been hittin' some hard travelin' too"

 So, we travelled and along the the way we (Patty Les and I) tasted the great Mexican food of Arizona, drank plenty of Margaritas and revelled in the American travel romance...