“I’m your huckleberry!”
-Doc Holliday
Joshua Tree to La Vernia
After several days on the road, we were ready to get to a homebase for a while, to catch our breath and to do some much needed laundry! On leaving California, we spent some long days driving through the southwestern deserts and ghost towns to reach our destination: Barry’s mom’s house!
Wednesday – Joshua Tree to Tucson
My dad used to live in Arizona, and we’ve done a good bit of sightseeing in this state. We’ve been to Sedona, and the Grand Canyon, and the Saguaro National Park, so we didn’t feel too bad about not veering off the main highway much. Driving in this part of the country is interesting – cactus-dotted desert stretches to distant barren mountains, and no matter how far you drive, those mountains always seem just out of reach.
By early afternoon we arrived in the city of Phoenix, where we stopped for lunch. Back in Barry’s Navy days in San Diego, he had eaten his first fish tacos at a place called Rubios. When we discovered the chain was also located in Phoenix, we had to try them to see if they were as good as he remembered. (He said they were!) It was my first time eating there, and I’d say the tacos were outstanding, especially for a fast-food place, and the street corn was some of the best I’ve had.
We drove many more miles in the hot autumn sun, (Arizona doesn’t pay attention to silly things like seasons 😂) until we got to Tucson, our resting place for the night.
Thursday – Tucson to El Paso
About thirty minutes into our drive from Tucson I saw a sign.
Me: “Hey, the exit for Tombstone is in half a mile. Have you ever been?”
Barry: “No, I haven’t.”
Me: “Do you want to go?”
Barry: “Sure, why not?”
Tombstone was not on the agenda for the day, but just like that, we got off the freeway and drove out to “The Town Too Tough to Die”. It was founded in 1879 and is a historic landmark of the Wild West. Wooden boardwalks lead you to storefronts captured in time, and infamous sites like the OK Corral and the Birdcage Theater. You can visit the Courthouse, and Wyatt Earp’s house, both turned into museums. You can ride a stagecoach to see historic attractions or enjoy a libation or two in a rustic saloon. And, for a fee, you can see actors in period garb reenact a shootout between the outlaws and the lawmen. This was the gunfight we chose to skip. Not that it wouldn’t have been entertaining, but after some window shopping and lunch at the Crystal Palace Saloon, we had both time and budget constraints. We did stop and talk to some cowboys though. 😉
The rest of our drive to El Paso was uneventful, and we settled in early to rest up for our trek across Texas the next day.
El Paso to La Vernia
Today was one of our longest days on the road. If you’ve never driven across the great state of Texas, it is BIG. And even proud Texans will admit, there’s not a lot in the western half of the state. So after grabbing breakfast at a nearby Cracker Barrel, we got an early-ish start and continued east. We drove and listened to music, and drove and listened to a podcast, and drove and listened to an audiobook, and drove some more. Lunch was in Fort Stockton, literally the only town on our route today. And finally, we arrived in La Vernia, a small suburb of San Antonio.
La Vernia
If you get a chance to visit San Antonio, it has some wonderful places to explore. You could easily spend a full day at the Riverwalk with its shops, galleries, restaurants, Spanish colonial missions, and the nearby Alamo. We stayed in San Antonio once for New Year’s Eve and loved it! This time around though, our focus was on family.
La Vernia was our home for a week – a chance to visit with Barry’s mom, brother, and sister-in-law, rest, and do the aforementioned laundry! We helped with running errands and some projects around the house, cooked a few meals, and went out to a few restaurants, including a local favorite called Rabel’s Roadhaus.
In the middle of this week, Barry also flew out to New York for an interview. We’ve learned it’s a lot easier to go through the interview process when we have a basecamp! A few days later it was time for us to hit the road again. At the beginning of this trip, I didn’t know if we’d make it this far, and I’m so glad we got the chance to have some quality time with Barry’s family.
The calendar pages have turned from summer to autumn, and our road trip is nearly complete. The next leg of this journey will be the last, the one to take us back to where we started…
Til next time, shine bright friends!
~Dawn 🌻
