Today was a lot of driving and not much else. There were a few interesting stops: lava beds along the road; Guitano's "Old 66 Craft House," full of sculptures made frmo old car parts, shovels, etc; the Route 66 Elementary School, where we met with the principal Wayne Marshall. We have our meeting with Rich Williams - founder of the NM Route 66 Association - tomorrow morning here in Albuquerque, so we're hanging out in Starbucks again tonight.

One of the creations at Guitano's "Old 66 Craft House".

It's good for people who don't want to have to pay for a hotel - you get (in addition to your coffee drink) a comfortable place to sit, places to plug in laptops and battery chargers, climate-controlled atmosphere and enough light to read/write by. Basically, this gives you everything a hotel has that a campsite lacks, except maybe a king-sized bed and an ice machine. If every camp site had a Starbucks near it (or any cafe, for that matter), what use would hotels be?

Anyways, since I have time and not too much happened today, I'll just catch up on some things I've been meaning to write about:

• Some desert photography with the panoramic camera.

  We learned in Arizona how different desert photography can be. Ignore the excessive sunlight that could cause the exposure to be messed up... let's hope me and the Nikon can handle it. Still, much of the majesty of desert landscapes is the simple fact that they're so vast, and the great expanses of land that make such an impression on the very wide-angled eye can't be captured by a normal lens. Instead of a large expanse of horizon, you get a lot of blue at the top of the photo, a lot of brown at the bottom, and something interesting in between. Tall objects - road signs, hills, shadows, etc - can be used to frame the photo so it doesn't look cut off, but it's still hard to create something nearly as impressive as what you see. A panoramic camera helps - we picked up an advantix disposable - but who knows how well those will come out.

  Let me clarify: This is Arizona desert I'm talking about. Around the border with New Mexico, things start getting much more impressive - as well as easier to photograph. From the flat, barren desert rise red-tinted cliffs, above which are constantly shifting cloud formations that we've seen every day we've been in New Mexico (and the "natives" tell us that the sky is always like that here). So great scenery that is easy to photograph (or so I think - I don't think I've developed any of the NM rolls, yet) leads to a lot of pictures ... I'm on roll 30 now, and just spent $40 more on film tonight. Something tells me that this summer will be much more useful than the film class (photography, that is) that I'm signed up for next semester.

• Driving to Albuquerque at night from the west (AZ) is a strange experience. For nearly a hundred miles before Albuquerque, there is almost total darkness. Towns are few and far between, and I didn't see any truck stops that were lit up late. And though we saw the dark outlines of many billboards, none had lights on or directed at them (a strange sight for someone from Los Angeles). Albuquerque itself might as well not even exist until you're right on top if it, as far as lights are concerned. The city "haze" or "glow" appears on the horizon well before you get there, but Albuquerque's geographic locale makes its bulk mostly invisible from far off. It lies in a valley ringed by mountains, but at something like 7000 feet, it is still higher than most of the surrounding area. So, until you top the hills right at the city's edge, you can't really look down onto any of it; then, once you do, a sprawling mass of lights jumps out at you.
• We've noticed one thing that all of the towns along Route 66 have in common: a post office. No matter how desolate or run-down the town, the U.S. Post Office is there. We've seen towns where half of the houses are falling down and missing windows, the roads have just enough gravel or pavement to make the car shake like a wooden roller coaster, and cows are the only sign of life - but, undoubtedly as we near the edge of town, a spotless new building bearing the eagle's head symbol of the USPS is waiting for us, always in perfect repair. People may have no places to live, eat or gas up in these towns, but I guess the mail must go through, right?