Earthly Arrival by '67 VW

This is a pretty good excuse to put up a post that's not about running or music ... but actually this is related to music, at least the images below are, kinda, sorta, because the ultimate destination was Oakland and Salt Lake to see the Grateful Dead in early 1995.

the PhotoHunt theme for this week: metal

Photography is not a passion of mine but taking pictures is something that I used to casually enjoy ... these days I do not have a digital camera (yes, I'm behind the times ... sue me) and not having that many photographs from through the years, pickins are slim ... but for this week's Photo Hunt, my second, I was able to come up something.

Mayhaps one of these days I'll git me one of dem fancy electronic picture takin' machines and I'll be able to post some better shots. But for now, for this week's theme, here's what I've got...

(click to see bigger, if you wish)

On a roadtrip from rural Virginia to New Orleans, Louisiana and then up to Sacramento, California and onward to Salt Lake City, Utah, my friend Summer and I swung up through west Texas making a stop in a little place called Earth. Located not in the Milky Way galaxy but almost in the Texas panhandle, Earth, Texas (population only about 1,100) is a few miles off the main road from Lubbock to Clovis, New Mexico. This metal sign can be seen (or at least it was there over a decade ago) on Route 70 westbound between Springlake and Muleshoe.

This same roadtrip we made a stop in Fort Sumner, New Mexico where I took a few pics of Billy The Kid's gravesite.

All the way from the Virginia countryside, this was quite a journey, especially breaking down in the tiny Mojave Desert town of Four Corners. Luckily my AAA at the time had free 100 mile maximum limit tows. To get to the nearest VW repair shop, my bus, at like 2 in the morning, rode on a AAA flatbed from Four Corners across the desert 98 miles to Bakersfield. There I was stranded for three days getting a new head put in. Summer took a bus onward to Sacto and I finally made my way there a few days later.

It's almost always an adventure when crossing the country by old VW. Not having some sort of breakdown was usually an uneventful and boring trip!

(again: click to see bigger, if you wish)