Roundup at NW ranch. A day about red-hot brands and having your irons in the fire no doubt. And about those palominos…not legends at working cattle they say, but awful hard not to look at. This is handsome hardworking Taco▽ on the job, shooting holes in that myth for good
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Come July/Aug/Sept when your head’s on fire in Texas heat prison, all you can do is hit the road and go west to find the endless summer. Old Route 66 still winds from Chicago to LA pretty much as I-40, and taking the high road to the waves gets you Santa Fe piñon and the painted desert instead of I-10’s Fort Stockton and Deming. Good trade. Your reward: Tower 15 △, the choice of summer professionals
Signage always makes this route pretty sweet all the way to Lala. Thanks Dave
First stop most times > El Rey Santa Fe. After 12 hours busting it on the road to leave Texas behind don’t get rattled if you run into unexpected Austin folk. You can run…
@ El Rey…good idea and big fat type, had to share. Way better in a bathroom than on a ballot. Go to plantpaper.us
Dropping from almost 7,000 ft in Flagstaff to the desert floor for the blinding hot run to Needles at the California border is how the Mojave weeds out the weak. Gas up first, don’t say nobody told you
Needles records the world’s daily high temp a whole lot. Meaning it’s the hottest place on Earth. But it’s a dry heat. That will kill you
△ El Garces, one of the few remaining Harvey House hotels, deserted but still standing at Needles train station in the wicked-hot Mojave wind. Ghosts of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway (now BNSF) and the Harvey Girls who helped open the West. Some kinda story
△ And here’s Casa del Desierto, former Harvey House hotel at Barstow train station. Made these stops because grandmother was a Great Plains farmgirl of Austrian parents who joined up with the Harvey Girls and worked her way west to end up in LA. Where she met our grandfather, born in Vienna. How ‘bout them odds?
Big turn left at Barstow and the long wind south hugging that shifty San Andreas takes you to the beloved Santa Monica Freeway and west with the sun until there’s no more west to go. The Mother Road, she’s still got it
Can’t leave the icon out. Daytime here △ or nighttime red neon glow, somebody did it right
Have yourself a great summer ✌🏼
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Sept/Oct the sun tracks lower in the sky and the beaches empty out. LA County guards shutter their towers and head off to their other lives. Some of the best beach days all year don’t tell anybody…but time to head back down Texas way
△ And huge thanks always to these superstars for looking out
Some last summer shots and thoughts ▽
△ Booth 7 by the fireplace at the best bar in LA…according to our people who know some things about that
Let’s get out of these wet clothes…
▽ Few more notable Hollywood and Santa Monica icons while we’re at it
△ You know, City of Los Angeles keeps a sense of place that’s unmistakably LA by preserving a lot of their historic signage through incentivizing businesses to save them + some good old-fashioned give a shit. Heads up for boomtowns on the verge…lookin’ at you ATX
Best electric HOV I saw all summer. Easy goin to the Pali bluffs, where everybody knows the sun never sets on love 🤙🏼
Another blue cord day
Was time to hit the San Diego Freeway south for La Jolla to sit awhile with our girls of summer Diane and Jan, gone for a swim in the bay they loved so much
Paz y amor siempre chicas. Boy did we have a time huh?
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Early Oct – up and over the mountains out of San Diego and down into the Sonoran Desert for the long I-10 run back to Austin. First watering hole always Tucson…missions, mountains, saguaros, el mariachi, Mexican food which is not Tex- or Cal-Mex + everybody’s home girl singer Linda Ronstadt on the radio. And the best hotel swimming pool around if you favor stacks of striped towels and a well-shaken margarita. Beat that. You can breathe in Tucson
OTRA to El Paso by nightfall but always lunch in Texas Canyon always. Roadie sandwich on your tailgate, giant Flintsone boulders with a desert wind in the Apache lands of mighty Cochise. Really, pull over. Then andale through lower NM. Back up…few years ago hooked a right south to see about Tombstone’s full-bodied gunfight and bordello cred. Worth it. Embrace your tourist self and go if you have a half day laying around and you’re into the real romance of the West. The way they lived, wowza. Big right turn at Las Cruces to follow El Rio Grande to the Plaza Hotel El Paso’s beacon in the night. △ Welcome to Texas…drive friendly and really fast
Built about 1930, so cool deco details △ all around The Plaza + phantoms of old Hollywood touching you in the elevator. El Paso carries some legit heft in its history and architecture, just like San Antonio, Tucson and San Diego. They were big-time moneyed outposts for a long time, the train stations always give it away
The Plaza’s 17th floor rooftop bar/restaurant used to be Liz & Nicky’s penthouse back in the 50s when Liz Taylor was Mrs. Hilton for a minute. △ Penthouse view now is out over the hills of Juarez and El Paso’s hometown Triple-A ballpark. ¡Vamos Chihuahuas!
3 thousand-miles roaming the West only happens with the singers and bands who can get you there and back. Bob, Willie, Merle, Ray, Dwight, Bonnie, Buck, Gram, Lowell, Linda, Emmylou, Jerry Jeff, Nancy and John, can’t ask for more. Some gone these days but they’re all still out there if you’re not afraid to ride
Another epic endless summer ends where it all began. But hey mid fall, back in the land of an uncrowded pool on an uncloudy day, not sure it gets much better nowheres. Thanks for the ride along