After leaving Joshua Tree National Park, we were on our way to Arizona, stopping for the night in Blythe, California.
We saw a lot of windmills on the trip, especially in California and Texas. Cielo took this picture of some in California.
Blythe was not a classic tourist destination. However, the restaurant we ate dinner at - the Sunset Grille, right next to our Days Inn - at had some fine chicken fried steak on its menu, as well as the meatloaf "sandwich" shown in the foreground. According to this place, a meatloaf sandwich is bread, meatloaf, and mashed potatoes, topped off with a generous amount of mushroom/onion gravy. And it was really bigger than it looks in this picture.
The real fun at Blythe was the next day, as we went swimming in the Colorado River. Vernon didn't go very far in, but Cielo, Eero, and Alison got totally soaked. When we asked at the motel where a good place to go swimming in the river was, and the pierced and tattooed but very polite young man said 'oh, anywhere you can pull over.'
After leaving Blythe, it was on to Phoenix and then Tucson. Outside Phoenix, we asked at a gas station if there were any playgrounds nearby (we always tried to find a place for the kids to run around on driving days). After getting directions, following them until we gave up, then realizing we just hadn't gone far enough yet, we found this cool playground at a school. Unfortunately, as it was 115 degrees that day, these structures were really too hot to play on. Right after this picture was taken the kids ran over to where there were less interesting ones in the shade.
