The road trip continues: Arizona to LA

After leaving Vegas we headed for Arizona, stopping off at Seligman, one of only a few towns on Route 66 that we didn't visit two years ago. There are several period buildings there plus the Roadkill Cafe which serves just that. An old cowboy called Dale, with two horses and rifles, persuaded us to pose for photos, thus officially transforming us from music journalists to tourists. This continued when we arrived in Williams  which was the last Route 66 town to be bypassed. There are a couple of western style bars there which are pretty authentic, and an excellent New Orleans cafe where we had a gumbo, but the main attraction is the railway based there which connects with the Grand Canyon. Before setting off there is a staged gunfight and after a couple of hours the train arrives at the Grand Canyon village. The views there are, as expected, awe inspiring but they were too much for John whose vertigo brought him to his knees. While I was hiking along the rim he was nursing several cigarettes well away from the edge.
The following morning we headed towards the Arizona desert, taking a look on the way at Prescott, an attractive town which for a while was the State capital. Further along in the small town of Quartzesite we sought out a curious memorial to Hi Jolly, a Syrian who set up a camel corps in Arizona. The camels died as the soldiers didn't look after them but killing a camel is still illegal in the State. The memorial proved hard to find and was unimpressive, comprising a small pyramid with a minute model of a camel on top. We ended the day in Palm Springs, an up market community where the temperature exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It's near Coachella, which stages the desert equivalent of Glastonbury.
Moving on to Los Angeles next day we found the cost of hotels to be exorbitant so landed up at a rather basic place in Culver City. An uninspired chicken and humus dish in Santa Monica followed. Next day we did the touristy thing again by taking the Warner Bros studio tour. It's pretty good actually with lots of info about the sound stages, props and costumes and close ups of the Friends set and stuff on Harry Potter and loads of other films and TV shows that have been made there over the last 96 years.
It was back to music on Friday evening at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica with guitarist Smokey Hormel and his combo, comprising double bass, organ, sax/trombone and bongos. Smokey has played with numerous artists including Johnny Cash, Tom Waits and the Blasters and this was an eclectic and entertaining set ranging from jazzy instrumentals to African rhythms and Americana. Vocal numbers included Roy Brown's 'Butcher Pete', Tom Waits '219', the Blasters 'Barn Burning' and Dolly Parton's 'When Someone Wants To Leave'. An enjoyable if rather short set in a venue I hadn't visited before.