fotonomadic: Bagdad to Zuni

We're back in L.A. after one of our most inspiring (and fun) trips so far, and I'm finally getting around to throwing some shots up. We made it as far east as Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Before we hit the border with Arizona we pulled off the interstate and tracked down the little package store (and now boarded-up motel) where they filmed "Bagdad Cafe."

Our first few days were in Sedona - hiking and wandering, not shooting much.

Coffeepot Rock.

We spent a lot of this trip in folk art shops, galleries and museums. They're everywhere.

I came home with a newfound obsession with Mexican folk art and am working on building my own first little Hell-themed nicho.

Sunset over a Sedona parking lot.

Pushing east we hopped off the 40 and visited a couple famous stops on Old Route 66, starting with Twin Arrows.

Twin Arrows was a hybrid of the old and the new - from the Depression-era Valentine Diner to the postwar Trading Post and Gas Station.

The huge wooden arrows once used to lure traveler's in off the highway are falling apart. I'm too young to have visited any of these old independently owned tourist traps that Route 66 was famous for, but it's a drag that they've all been replaced with Clone Formations of McDonalds, Exxon and Taco Bell that make an off-ramp in New Jersey indistinguishable from one in Texas or South Dakota. America's like one bigass Wal-Mart.

Taylor shot the overgrown picket fence next to the Valentine. It's one of my favorites pictures from the whole trip.

Our next stop was Two Guns, Arizona. According to The Road Wanderer Website: "Believe it or not, (the name Two Guns) actually comes from the original inhabitant of the area, a wild, violent individual called "Two Gun" Miller. It is said that this eccentric hermit lived in a cave in nearby Canyon Diablo and was hostile to visitors."

Two Guns was also the site of a particularly bloody confrontation between the Navajo and the Apache in the 1800s. According to a former resident, a group of Cavalry soldiers were later ambushed by Indians in the Canyon just to the left of the old resort house (seen below) and had to shoot their horses and stack them in the mouth of a cave they holed up in for protection until reinforcements arrived two days later.

Two Guns was fenced off for years, but taggers and vandals have been making up for lost time.

A little something left behind by some "anarchist" (see: angry teenager with spikey hair and a Che Guevara t-shirt from Hot Topic) for all us petrol-slaves to chew on. Ironically, this location is off a mangled chunk of Old 66 and completely inaccessible by bike - meaning he had to cruise up I-40 in an automobile to throw up his velocipedian manifesto.

Two Guns eventually became a Wild West-themed amusement park, but just down a dirt access road is the ruins of a previous incarnation - a wild animal side show. The tiny cages they kept the big cats in are still standing just behind the Mountain Lion building and, with no shade or running water, they must have been a living Hell in that searing desert heat.

Old gas pumps used for target practice.

About an hour past Two Guns, in Navajo country, we passed this old service station and pulled off the 40. Here you can see the actual physical conditions of Old Route 66 in macro-detail.

Santa Fe, New Mexico - old world missions and Catholic Church Paraphernalia out the ass, amazing food, and more than 250 different art galleries and museums.

Taylor caught this shot through a broken wooden fence.

The San Miguel Mission is the oldest church in the country, built between 1610 and 1626. In the 1680s it was torched during The Pueblo Revolt but survived (unlike most of the Pueblo Indians who participated in it).

Heeeeeeeey boyz...welcome to the gay Archangel workout hour! Now swing those swords - and one and two!

Taylor's shot of the Votives.

He's gonna feel that one in the morning.

In three days here, this is one of the only spots where we saw any kind of graffiti. Santa Fe is a much older town - not a lot of young vandals on hand. The streets and buildings are in pretty good shape, considering some of them have been here 500 years.

Not the case on the Zuni Indian Reservation.

I felt pretty uncomfortable here, due in part to my own sense of horror at seeing the conditions that the native people have been conditioned to accept - and due in part to the fact that some people were actually staring at us like they wanted to drag us out of the car and chop our heads off with a machete. I would definitely like to come back here one day with someone familiar with the place so I could get a different perspective.

Zuni women baking bread in a traditional horno.

It took us forever to find the Old Zuni Mission (also torched in the Pueblo Revolt) as it sits on a dirt road with no visible signs to find your way.

We didn't take many pictures on the reservation because we didn't want to act like tourists at a zoo.

Apparently, the rampant alcoholism, domestic violence, grinding poverty and drug addiction that plagues Indian communities were deemed insufficient to finish the job the Conquistadores and early American settlers started, and a more expedient means was deemed necessary to assist indigenous Americans in wiping themselves off the map. So, with all the other dangers of everyday life on the pueblo, the Zuni have a new threat: L.A.-style street gangs.

Seeing a tag for the Salvadorean Mara Salvatrucha gang came as a pretty big shock on an Indian Pueblo. Zuni was a really sad place, and I left wondering how people could come together to help address some of the challenges the reservations are facing. 500 years of intense suffering is hard to work with.

It was a quiet ride back from Zuni.

To split the drive time from New Mexico to L.A. in half we stopped in Flagstaff for the night, which ended up being a lot cooler than I expected.

Somehow they've managed to save and restore old hotels and signs that would have been paved over by Target in most other cities.

Historic Motel Du Beau sign by Taylor.

Flagstaff train station.

Seriously, y'all. Please keep an eye on ya littl'uns.

We got out of Flagstaff just in time. The morning we left they got hit with something like two feet of snow from a storm that stretched from Los Angeles to New Mexico. Getting home required driving through it.

After hydroplaning across the freeway for the fourth time in a driving rain we had to pull over and wait the storm out in a little Arizona town called Kingman.