Since a trip coast to coast involves a lot of driving, Dad decided to break it up by driving two days and then taking a day off and then two more days of driving, a day off and then the final two days of driving. We drove about 500 miles a day. We gained three hours passing through the time zones. Our first two night stay was in Missouri visiting family. The second was in Albuquerque.
On Friday, the folks decided to take a
trolley tour of Albuquerque. The cost was $25 a person and they even allow dogs on their tours. I didn't go however. The tour was sold out and there would not have been room for me.
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| My folks on the trolley. |
The tour is 85 minutes and takes guest all around the town. Mom's favorite parts were seeing old town Albuquerque and through the neighborhoods where movies and TV shows have been filmed.
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| Old Town. |
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| Trees is painted. Mom thinks it is of the Virgin Mary. They planned to come back to Old Town but there was no parking available. |
Many movies have been made here even though visitors think they are filmed elsewhere. Wild Hogs is supposed to be set in Cincinnati, but the trolley takes guest past the house that Tim Allen lived in during the moving. Mom's favorite part of the tour was a clip from Wild Hogs. William H. Macy was riding a motorcycle through a bunch of trees. The clip was shown on a TV screen on the trolley as they were actually driving past the trees and ended where Macy crashed into the sign. The post of the sign is still there.
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| Tim Allen's House in Wild Hogs |
Fans of Breaking Bad can take a tour that is specific for fans of the show. However, the tour the folks were on, took them past a few locations from the show.
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| Jesse's House on Breaking Bad. |
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| Another attempt at Jesse's House. It is for sale. The cost is $1.6 million. |
They also saw the spaceship house. It has been on HGTV.
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| Type of house you expect to see in NM. Notice the lack of grass. It is very expensive to care for grass lawns. The guide said $800 a month. |
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| This sign is supposed to look really neat at night. The tail wags. |
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| The "Beach". It is now a fishing hole because the water was found to not be safe for swimming. Doesn't seem like the fish would be safe to eat, but maybe things have changed. |
Mom took a lot of photos. Many turned out worse than these and her memory is bad and she can't remember why she took them. BOL!
After the tour, they ate lunch at The Cube. It was on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. The food was good but $28 for lunch is high. That was for both of them.
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| Mexican Burger with pico. It got soggy. The fries were good. |
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| Beef brisket, Pork Loin, sweat potatoes, onions rings and toasted bread. Dad said the onion rings were the best he ever had. |
Saturday morning, we hit the road again.
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| Let's Go! |
Here are a few of the things we saw driving through New Mexico and Arizona:
This weekend is the big balloon fest, but we still saw some as we were leaving.
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| This was a rest area in Arizona. |
When we crossed into California, we had to go through an inspection station. They stopped us and asked if we were towing. Was that a trick question? Yes, there was a Jeep attached to the motor home. We were then asked if we had citrus. Yes, we did. Mom had to show it to the guy and luckily it was still in the package and showed it had been inspected. I wonder if he would have believed us if we told him we bought it in Pennsylvania. BOL! He looked at it and handed it back to us. We were free to go.
When we arrived at our campground in Needles, CA we were hit with the heat. It was 106 fahrenheit, but since was a dry heat, it felt like 102. It was hot! We turned on our air conditioning and closed all the shades. It didn't cool off until 5 a.m. and then it was in the 80's.
The campground was all but empty. I think there ended up being five campers and three of those were permanent residents. I guess most people know not to camp in Needles, CA.
If it had been cooler, we could have walked in the desert.
The following photos are from our campground:
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| Our site. |
This is where I hurt my foot. It was not good. Mom was very worried about me. No pictures were taken from Needles, CA to our destination. The roads were good as far as traffic, but it was a long day. Dad said the last 100 miles were hard for him due to the roads. We had a lot of curves and hills and it was just a two lane road for a good part of it. We finally arrived at our campground around 5:15 p.m. We had left at 6:15 a.m.
We went to the vet due to my foot and then we got home after 10 p.m. We are all glad that day is over.
Joey,
The Greyhound Who Is Glad To Be Parked Again
