June graduates!

congrats to my sister who graduated with her MA in marriage and family therapy this month.

desert danger zone

this is the rest area that i thankfully stopped to check my tires at before i entered hours of uninhabited desert. i had two flats and waited for hours in my car for AAA. they never came and eventually the sheriff helped me get to a hotel. the nearest town was wicket.

i became fascinated with these tiny desert highway towns that scrape out most of their living by servicing travelers passing through. i would look around at what seemed like a couple deserted dried out buildings and wonder why people even stay there.

when i chatted with the guys that were changing my tires, i felt at times that we could barely understand each other. i couldn't understand their mumbled country dialect and they probably couldn't understand my mumbley city dialect. i felt more like a rich city girl at that time than i ever have in the States. i wanted them to know that i wasn't that type but i suppose to them i was no matter what i thought otherwise.

a week after i got home from my trip cross country, i watched the animated film "cars" with my sis's fam. it was like watching an animated expression of the adventure i had just been through and it actually touched on many of the issues i had been reflecting on regarding "progress" and rural communities.

edit: the title of this post doesn't mean anything. it's just the silly title i gave this pic and i accidentally let it carry through to blogger.

oil aliens

i was strangely mesmerized by my slowly teetering oil sucking companions that were along my road side for hours in west texas.

random freak storms in the desert

this was also somewhere in the desert of west texas or arizona. it was super hot so the random rain showers were a surprise.

welcome to nowhere

driving through the desert of west texas or maybe it was arizona at that point. notice the "desert trees". it was my first time seeing cactus like that. i felt like i was in a road runner cartoon. :-)