It all looks like last year's snow

And yet there is fresh snow on the ground after the spring is officially here for more then two weeks now. It keeps snowing and when I open a window or a door I can actually listen to the sounds of silence.

With all this white all around I find it hard to believe that less than three weeks ago we were rapidly advancing from the New Mexican desert through the north of Texas and straight from there to Oklahoma's warm and welcoming Tulsa. 

In the third day trough Missouri, with strong winds making us swaying in the car, to St. Lewis, meeting again with the mighty Mississippi and starting to feel the teeth of a cold snowy storm- all new to us.

Most of the fourth day we navigated in the Great Plains of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, covered with snow, still with the biting cold wind. Horizon turns into another horizon to still another. 

You really get the sense of how mighty this continent of one country is. 

 At dusk we entered the mountains of West Virginia. We dropped to the hotel's bed sooo tiered yet with a great sense of achievement. Tomorrow we will be in our next home state and new home for the next who knows how many years.

 The last day we went along the Appalachian Mountains for a while

 

then crossed them to Maryland and after another experience with snow we went down on the eastern slopes of the mountains toward the Sunny Pennsylvania. It was still windy and cold but the Sun was in the sky to greet us, welcoming us to our new life 

Little we knew about the weather of these parts of the country and soon enough we started to learn that snow here is not something notorious and special. It's normal even if the spring was officially announced to wake up to a White Passover- the Spring Holyday!  

This is part of our new reality we just have to get used to it and sooner the better.

Happy Passover to all

“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well" ( Antoine de Saint Exupיry," The Little prince")

Good Morning Phoenix- good night Albuquerque!

It was the second day of driving yet it was the first since the way from Carlsbad CA to Tempe AZ was for us some kind of a routine. We used to go there three times a year and visit with my brother and his family. The only family we had in driving distance. Now it will not be anymore.

For Phibi though it was the first time in her long life for going through such a long drive and Thunder shirt or not she was bit when we finally arrived at my brothers'. I always look at her trying to put myself in her "shoes", trying to figure out what is going on through her mind and what does she sees in her eyes. What is she thinking? What would she say if she could talk? Will she say "What the f…?" or will she say "Leave me alone please I am too old for this".

But she cannot talk and I try to explain to her what is going on hoping being such an intelligent dog she will make something out of it. I want to believe she enjoys herself a little bit.

As one who was born in the desert, the small desert called Negev in Israel; I love the desert and feel most at home in it. The dry air, the metallic blue skies, the ever astonishing miracle of the desert's plants, the mountains, the dunes, the emptiness so full, the never boring endless yellows, browns, grays, reds, sometimes greens. The place to ever see the bones of the land! The wonderful rocks.

 The second day was all deserts, big vast colorful, wonderful desert, even the forest on the mountains first contains the bands of Saguaro cacti on the lower slopes and then different pines and cypress on the higher picks are part of the complete whole huge desert now starting to bloom as spring comes in.

Desert or not, "The painted desert" of Arizona was where Phibi first met with snow. She wasn't a bit amazed as I was. For me the Petrified Forest within the pained desert was…I can't find enough superlatives to describe a place so beautiful, unique and inspirational. Thanks to Menachem's photos I don’t have to talk much. They are doing the talking for me.

It got late already and we had to step harder on the gas in order to get to Albuquerque, our destination for that night, so we joined in the nonstop trucks convoys along the I-40 that so sadly yet necessarily took the place of Historic Rout 66.

Without meaning to do it our rout east was most of the way along Historic Rout 66.

the old powerline along Historic rout 66

The passage from Arizona to New Mexico was felt only due to the welcoming singe.

 Otherwise it was the same stretching desert from one horizon to the next. In the last light of the second day we arrived to the hotel and had a good night rest.