3/10-3/19 Pinetop, AZ/ Albuquerque, NM

     Sorry, it's been awhile since I updated this thing. From Reno, NV we all went home for a few days off before really hitting the road. We all met up at Buck's place and drove ten hours down to Imperial Valley, CA where we played a George Strait tribute at their mid-winter fair. We had a great time playing for a ton of country fans who knew their George Strait songs! My mom and her husband Eric drove down to the show so it was really great getting to see them again, too bad they couldn't bring my dog though!

Buck, Mom, and I on stage in Imperial Valley, CA

   From Imperial Valley we drove eight hours to Pinetop, AZ and played for five nights at the Hon-Dah Casino which is operated by the White Mountain Apache tribe. It was a little slow the first few nights and there was absolutely nothing to do at that place, but the last two nights picked up a little bit (fri/sat). They don't allow the bands to drink during or eight hours prior to their shows so it made for a boring day especially because this town literally had nothing to do, almost every cafe/restaurant was closed up and the only thing to really do was to walk around Walmart or try to pet the wild dogs hanging around the parking lot. We BBQ'd one day in the parking lot and another day we drove to Cooley Lake and had a BBQ there which was beautiful; the weather was about 70 degrees that day with some snow left, but very sunny. Overall it was pretty cold most of the time there.

  Our wild dog friend "White Fang". He likes tri-tip...

St. Patrick's Day in Pinetop, AZ

 Friday night was interesting, met some Apache folks that came to our show and they convinced me to hop in the truck with them and go to the bar in town...I made it back alive, but that's all I'll say about that decision. Sunday morning we left at 9AM and a bad snow storm hit the town just as we were leaving, we barely made it out in time. The rig, truck, and trailer did plenty of sliding down the mountain (7,000 ft elevation) and had a couple close calls, but we made it. We did have to pull over a few times because the windshield wiper blade on the rig broke so we jimmy rigged that on a few times. We stopped in at a local cafe in New Mexico about 35 miles from I-40 to eat where we found out that I-40 had been closed due to the bad snow storm. Finally got back on the road after an amazing breakfast and within an hour we had hit snow, rain, and straight into a dust storm just before getting into Albuquerque.

Just before the storm got bad leaving Pinetop, AZ

Buck standing in front of the truck when we stopped

for breakfast when I-40 closed down for a couple hours.

The ice covered the front so well that you could barely

hear the horn blow standing right in front of it.