Championing the makers, artists, and wanderers in all of us.
After seeing the Phoenix Symphony’s concert Star Wars vs Star Trek – The Music of Deep Space during Phoenix Comicon, we asked a few fans about their favorite pieces and made a video.
It was cool that we happened to catch three people who were so passionate and knowledgable about music from both franchises.
What movie or tv music are you a fan of?
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We don’t order date shakes at home in Phoenix. We could. There are a couple places that serve them, since date palms grow here.
But we only look for them on road trips through a certain western Arizona/eastern California corridor.
If you’re headed from Phoenix to Los Angeles on the 10, there’s the Hadley Fruit Orchards store in Cabazon near the dinosaurs.
The decades-old farm store recently moved to a shiny new building. They still have a little cafe, and it’s still a great place to stop for snacks – all kinds of specialty trail mix and dried fruit and veggies, much of it from the local area and/or their own blends.
Shakes come in a reusable souvenir cup. Last time, we got there near the end of the day and they said they were out of regular date shakes but had banana date shakes. So they must mix them in advance-? Anyway, you could mostly just taste the banana, and it wasn’t the same.
If you’re on I-8 headed for San Diego, I’d recommend skipping the well-publicized Dateland and opting for Martha’s Gardens in Yuma instead. Coming from Phoenix, it’s about another hour down the freeway but worth it. The shake we got at the Dateland Travel Center tasted overly, artificially sweet with dates in clumps. The Martha’s Garden shakes were blended well and sweet without being sickeningly so.
The Martha’s Garden store is smack in the middle of a working date farm, down a dirt driveway surrounded by rows of palm trees. While Martha’s store shelves are mostly stocked with bulk dates, they do sell some other local products like honey and salsa.
From the counter at the back, you can order sandwiches, date shakes, coffee, or a shot of espresso in your date shake. Behind it is a room of tables and chairs – and a couple outlets if you need to recharge.
Have you ever tried date shakes? Do you have food/drinks you only get on road trips?
July was our trip to Pasadena, nicknamed “the City of Roses.” I took this photo in the inner courtyard of its iconic City Hall.
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It seems to me that Indiana has an unusually high concentration of places named after other places. When I tried to ask my aunt about this, she didn’t think it was weird that her state has cities named things like Kokomo and Brazil. She brought up the fact that a lot of states have places named after presidents, for example.
But I’m not talking about the various Madison Counties or other places named after notable people or landscape features. I mean the ones named for a very different and far away place for no obvious reason. In Arizona, we have Miami and Florence. Indiana, however, has cities named Peru, Rome, Warsaw, Mexico, Cairo, Dublin, Paris, Alexandria, London, Manhattan, Jordan, Holland, Versailles, Shanghai, Milan, in addition to those above.
Does that seem unusual to anyone else?
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The first year I went to BlogHer, I challenged myself and fellow attendees to a photo scavenger hunt. It was just a fun way to share what we were seeing of the city and connect.
This year, BlogHer is in LA, and I thought a SoCal photo scavenger hunt would be in order.
If you’re in Los Angeles this week, see how many of the things on the list below you can spot. Tag photos #LAphotohunt16 on Instagram and/or Twitter.
#10 is for whatever else you think belongs on the list.
Since conference schedules tend to be really packed, feel free to take some creative license! (Like I did the last time.)
The list has some room for interpretation. “Waves,” for example, could be in the ocean or your hair or when you’re saying hello to friends.
If you’re not going, feel free to post whatever you’re doing this weekend and tag it #notinLAphotohunt16.
Afterwards, I’ll share some of the scavenger hunt results here. Can’t wait to see what you find!