the best part was

The Beach family, Charles, Doretta, Lela and Claude, set out from Cornwall, Ontario on October 18, 1921. This is Doretta's diary.

Caravansary Inn, Mecca. Cal. March 14th. Bright and pretty warm. Had breakfast and went over and got Mrs. Scott and went through the Glenwood Mission Inn, Riverside and it was something different from anything we had ever seen with its Spanish American Architecture. In the music room the pipe organ was built for the mission and has 38 stops and 2700 pipes. In balcony the paintings are rare examples of Spanish and Mexican Art. The garden of bells contain unique and interesting collection from all over the world, the oldest bearing the date 1247. The Spanish Patio with its tables for dining out of doors - is an attractive feature to the Inn. We also went through the Presidential suite where Taft and Roosevelt had entertained. The Arch and the Arcade and other portions of the Inn is typical of the early Spanish days and are filled with rare curios and antiques from all over the world. Palms, grape vines and flowering plants and the parent naval orange tree still alive and was sent from the Agricultural Department at Washington in 1874. Made the court very attractive, as you enter, besides several beautiful parrots around in the trees.

Left Riverside at eleven o'clock coming to Banning for lunch and on to Mecca about ninety miles in all, coming through some lovely groves of apricots, peaches all in blossom also orange, plums and prunes and the snow capped mountains on each side, made a very pretty sight, and through grape and date groves. There we stopped and bought some fresh dates and went through the packing house. They had six hundred trees and acres and acres of onions, also cotton. Between these agricultural districts there would be barren deserts covered with cactus, sagebrush and lavender and yellow flowers, growing in the sand. The road sometimes paved and sometimes dirt road and met so many Spanish families travelling in caravans. This is a quaint little town. The hotel has dining room, music room, office and waiting room and each bedroom is an individual cottage on the hotel grounds, which makes it appear more like a sanatorium.

Mecca, March 15th. Left about eight thirty, weather cloudy. Went right in the desert and going ninety miles and only passed one shack that the auto club had for accommodation for travellers, but we met about eight or ten cars. The desert was covered with flowers and a great many different species of cactus and several we had never seen before, especially a kind that grew on slim stocks in bunches, the growth being twenty or twenty-five feet high. The first ten miles we drove through a canyon on a river bed and all day the mountains looked so nice on each side, sometimes seeming quite close and sometimes in the distance which took the sameness of the desert away. Had picnic lunch, then on to Blyth quite a little town coming into it right out of the desert and on crossing the Colorado river into Arizona on a ferry and the roads much of the day was very rough, getting to Quartsite for the night, so called for the quartz found in that locality, and it was just a little place with a store, post office and a so called hotel, but you had to stretch your imagination to believe it as we had to use candles for lights and a notice on the wall said, requested to always put out the lights before leaving the room which we thought a huge joke. There had to move our watches an hour and at that we went to bed at seven, going a hundred and twenty miles.

March 16th. Left Quartsite at eight. Weather still cloudy. Had rained some in the night. Still passing through desert going sixty-two miles and roads very bad, but meeting a car or two several times, and from there on began to see a little shack where someone did live or had lived and some little so called towns. While in the desert we saw a different cactus, it was two or three feet across and some would be thirty feet high and the vegetation altogether different, and had to drive through deep ravines, where we could not have passed another car and had our first puncture. The last forty miles we began to see cattle and some cotton and paved roads. It began to rain just before we came to the paved road. We had another picnic lunch and father drove the rest of the day as Claude had a sore hand, the first he had drove on the trip getting to Phoenix about six fifteen, all very tired.

Phoenix, Arizona, March 17th. Commercial Hotel. Rained during night and forenoon, faired about noon and wind cool. Claude went to Dr. and had his hand lanced. Lela and I went shopping in afternoon and they had the car gone over at the garage. Phoenix is a very nicely layed out little city, the streets being very wide and clean. The Capitol grounds [LOC] and buildings were very pretty. Population about twenty-seven thousand.

Hotel Congress, Tucson Arizona March 18th. Weather bright but cool. Left Phoenix at ten o'clock after Claude had gone to the Dr. and had his hand dressed and we went to Post Office and got Dora and Karl's photo and letter for Lela. Road fair but through desert most all the way with snow capped mountains in the distance. Stopped to see men shearing sheep and they had twelve machines, each one operated by a man shearing one at a time, and a man packing the wool in great sacks. Saw quite a few eagles. After leaving Phoenix went about eight miles to Tempe, a little Mexican town of about a thousand inhabitants and most of the houses were built of adobe (mud). Had picnic lunch on the way, getting here about five o'clock, going a hundred and thirty-five miles. This is a city of twenty-seven thousand. We saw a piece of petrified tree in the hotel here, brought from the Petrified Forest of Arizona.

Hollen House, Lordsburg, New Mexico. March 19th. We left Tucson about 9.30 A.M., and had sixty miles of good roads at first, but the scenery was different and all the cacti disappeared and besides desert grass there were Spanish bayonets, and a couple of stretches of 10 miles each were barren not even a spring or grass, as far as we could see. We crossed the Arizona - New Mexico line about twenty-five miles from here and certainly saw some terrible shacks and wretched looking little villages, the people all Mexicans or Spaniards. We had a picnic lunch on the way and travelled 170 miles getting here about 5.30 and mother very tired. The proprietor and his wife were formerly from Kingston, Ont. We found the state of Arizona mostly all desert land outside of the towns and very unfertile on account of shortage of water supply.

El Paso, Texas, March 20th. Hotel McCoy. Weather rather cloudy. Left Lordsburg, New Mexico, about nine. The first fifty miles the roads were fine, snow capped mountains in the distance, but much the same, desert land. Went about ninety miles and crossed the continental divide, passed through Deming a nice little town with wide streets, but all the poor people lived in adobe (mud) houses made from a reddish soil and we had gone about a hundred miles, came to some terrible sand desert where we were almost two hours going the ten miles, and we came to a station on Southern Pacific and we stopped and got some gasoline. The agent told them that some people in a Ford car had been going through a couple of days before and they tried making a hard run through the sand drifts and the car turned over but no one was seriously hurt but they had to stop over a day, but we got along all right and after we got through had good dirt roads, until within twelve miles of the city and struck the pavement, although we only could see a shack once in a while. They told us all through the hills there were large cattle ranches. We got here about six o'clock running a hundred and fifty miles in all.

Rev 2003-02-14