Off To The States!

Yes, only a few days to go before we jet off to America for the first time as a family... and I can't wait. I seem to have put everything on hold... "until I get back from America" for about two months now!! I'm going to try and just let the flow of life (and Jakki's instructions) take me along for a couple of weeks. We'll be flying in to Las Vegas for a couple of days before driving on to LA and then looping back to Vegas. The trip is mainly to catch up with Jakki's family, we'll all be meeting up in LA, at her Mom's. Jakki's Dad's coming from Montana and Brother from New Jersey. Should be a good time. Jakki's Dad has only seen Texas when he was 6 months old.. and he had a lot to deal with at the time . He has never met Tennessee, other than on skype, and Tennessee is about to turn 5! A BIG trip then. If you want an insight in to Jakki's Dad, you should go read her entertaining blog post, The Towelmaster about him! Hopefully, she'll find time in 2013 to get back to her blog.

from our first trip to Salvation Mountain 2005

 We'll also be taking some time to explore the desert, returning to the Salton Sea and seeing how Salvation Mountain is holding up now that Leonard is no longer on site. It's going to be good to have our two boys with us this time. We've also booked a couple of nights at the Joshua Tree Inn, in the Mojave Desert, the legendary final haunt of Gram Parsons... so we thought we should probably take his room, No. 8. Looking forward to that. I love it around there, obviously we'll take a drive through Joshua Tree National Park. It's just a shame it's going to be the desert in January, rather than June... i could do with a little heat (and dryness) in my life! I'll have a good dig around while we're over there and see if i can find any interesting nuggets to share here when i get back. Happy New Year to you all!!

My interpretation of the mountain.

On another note, we watched the Searching for the sugarman dvd the other night and I highly recommend it. I'd not heard of Rodriguez before this year. I was sitting in a great little pub up in London (The Barley Mow in Shoreditch) and it had an an amazing dukebox. I heard these songs, but I couldn't place the voice. Another woman in the pub looked over at me and said i looked like a cool guy (ha!) and did I know who the singer was? A mystery, i asked the girl behind the bar, but she had no idea... or interest! so i scanned the dukebox but nothing seemed to match, so i scribbled some of the lyrics (and not having an iphone i waited until i got home later) and googled them... Rodriguez!
a quick hop to spotify and there he was. Now i suggest you go and have a listen. Totally unheard of in the States, or here... and yet a legend in South Africa! Really, you should watch the film, it's a lovely story.