Feb. 2: Smith’s Ranch Drive-In Theater, Twentynine Palms CA

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Smith's Ranch marquee eerily lit at night

photo by v snow from the Carload Flickr pool

It’s Day 33 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, and I finally made it to California. It took a four hour ride from the Phoenix area to reach the Smith’s Ranch Drive-In Theater of Twentynine Palms, in the shadow of Joshua Tree National Park.

This is your basic ancient, small-town, single screen drive-in. The Smith’s Ranch opened in 1954, and thanks in part to traffic from park visitors and a marine base, it’s still going strong.

Smith’s Ranch wins the low cost competition so far – admission for the double feature was just $5. The concession stand was basic, with hot dogs and popcorn, but the prices were good.

My timing worked out great tonight. I arrived in Twentynine Palms on a Thursday, and the Smith’s Ranch is one of the few drive-ins with a Thursday to Sunday schedule. The early movie was one I’d already seen, but that beats the heck out of a dark screen.

Miles Today / Total:  275 / 4484 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: Split / 23

Nearby Restaurant: Not only does it have great atmosphere, looking out over Joshua Tree National Park, the 29 Palms Inn has some great food. Butternut squash hummus, other vegetarian dishes, or steak and lobster if that’s what I wanted for dinner. Add some live music and those great views, and I’ll try not to feel guilty about how much I paid.

Where I Virtually Stayed: The restaurant experience was so nice that I wanted to stay all night, so I also got a room at the 29 Palms Inn. After the cookie-cutter efficiency of the nice chain hotels, I was glad to have another night where the rooms don’t all look the same. I slept in an adobe bungalow with a fireplace, then enjoyed homemade sourdough bread in the morning. There aren’t any chains that can give me an experience like that.

Tiny World Famous Crochet Museum

photo by Kathy Drasky

Only in Twentynine Palms: Just up the Twentynine Palms Highway in the town of Joshua Tree, you’ll find the World Famous Crochet Museum. Artist Shari Elf took an old one-hour photo booth, painted it lime green, filled it with little crochet pieces, and gave it this name. According to its web site, HSBC is using a photo of the museum in a “favours the unorthodox” ad campaign in airports around the world. Which matches that whole World Famous part, of course.

Next Stop: Rubidoux Drive-In Theatre, Riverside CA.

Feb. 1: Glendale 9 Drive-In, Glendale AZ

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Glendale concession stand and projection turret

The Glendale serves all nine screens from a single, well-designed projection structure and concession stand. Photo by Neon Michael from the Carload Flickr pool.

It’s Day 32 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, and it began with a seven-hour drive, my longest so far, from El Paso TX. What made that long trek worth it was the destination, the Glendale 9 Drive-In of Glendale AZ. With nine active screens and the friendliest drive-in employees I’ve ever encountered, the Glendale is my drive-in heaven.

The West Wind drive-in chain runs the Glendale, the last active drive-in in Arizona. (The Apache in Globe closed a couple of years ago, but this Google Street View from September 2016 looks just the way it did when it was alive. It looks ripe for revival to me. But I digress.) I’m looking forward to virtually visiting several other West Wind locations in California and Nevada over the next few weeks.

According to CinemaTreasures, the Glendale opened in June 1979, and it’s been in operation ever since. It started with seven screens, then added two more before converting all those projectors to digital in early 2013. Despite all that area to cover, it’s completely paved and has thoughtful landscaping touches such as flowering bushes near the concession stand and palm trees along the property edges.

At this time of year, the Glendale shows early movies, around 6:30, and movies scheduled at a time that would be early in June, around 8:45. Despite nine screens’ worth of all these choices, the only two movies I hadn’t seen yet were a Spanish-language film and The Bye Bye Man. I don’t like creepy movies but I enjoy knowing what the characters are saying, so that’s how I picked what to watch.

Miles Today / Total:  455 / 4209 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: The Bye Bye Man / 22

Nearby Restaurant: It’s not a proper restaurant, but whenever I’m in range of a QuikTrip convenience store it goes on my short list of places to eat, and this one’s less than a mile from the drive-in. If the Glendale 9 is my drive-in heaven, QuikTrip is my convenience store heaven, not just because I grew up around QuikTrips. Great microwave sandwiches, a surprising array of rolling food, impressive coffee and fountain drink selection, always clean, and lately they’ve added pizzas and other food cooked to order.

Where I Virtually Stayed: The nicest close hotel wasn’t a hotel at all but the Gas Light Inn bed and breakfast. It was a little less expensive than the type of chain hotels I usually choose (those without 6 in their name), but it was very comfortable and a lot closer to the drive-in.

Only in Glendale: Just south of the Glendale city limits, Don Parks has two adjacent houses full of collected statuary and other oddities. As documented by the Phoenix New Times, it starts with a 23-foot Paul Bunyan and continues with “a Captain Crook from an old McDonald’s play area, a plaster statue of a grizzly bear wearing spectacles, and a dinosaur from an old Sinclair gas station. Perched on the roof of either house are oversized pairs of spectacles that Parks made himself.” That barely scratches the surface; you should check out the New Times’ slide show.

Next Stop: Smith’s Ranch Drive-In Theater, Twentynine Palms CA.

Jan. 31: Fiesta Drive-In, El Paso TX

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It’s Day 31 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, the end of Month 1, and it marked a visit to an unusual drive-in. There are only two Fiesta Drive-Ins in the US, and they happen to sit just over two hours apart. Yesterday was the three-screen Carlsbad NM version. This one was the Fiesta of El Paso TX, the one that shows adult movies.

According to CinemaTreasures, this Fiesta is not the Fiesta Drive-In that operated in El Paso from the 1950s until the early 1980s. Its commenters suggest that the adult version opened before 1999, and that it has switched to digital projection.

More clues come from a 2015 article in the University of Texas-El Paso newspaper, The Prospector. The author said she interviewed Fiesta manager Lee Wilson, who said that the movies change every night and that the theater has “two large outdoor movie screens, a projection booth and a concession stand.” But every other source I’ve seen says the Fiesta has only one screen, and the overhead view from Google Earth shows only the one obvious screen with its back to US 62. The official Facebook page mentions “an 80ft outdoor screen,” so I’m guessing that the UTEP reporter misread a note.

Unlike most drive-ins, the Fiesta encourages patrons to bring their own refreshments. “The theatre is BYOB, meaning bringing your own beer, booze, babe, burger, barbecue, etc,” Wilson said.

That Fiesta Facebook page, which lists the business’s start date as 1981, sometimes lists its movies, but the service is pretty spotty. Previously shown titles include Superstars Open Wide and Registered Nurse #3. Because Registered Nurse 1 and 2 left so many unanswered questions.

Miles Today / Total:  146 / 3754 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: not counting this one / 21

Nearby Restaurant: I can’t visit a place this close to the Mexican border without trying some authentic Mexican food. The L & J Cafe downtown provided that plus plenty of cold beer in a sports bar atmosphere. I’ll bet this place is great on weekends, albeit even more crowded.

Where I Virtually Stayed: Call me crazy, but I thought the closest place to stay was a great bargain. Sure, the Value Place is the kind of chain that features long-term, no-frills lodging near military bases, but it gave me a full kitchen, a decent TV and a full-sized bed for the lowest price I’ve paid all month. And it was the only hotel close to the Fiesta.

Only in El Paso: With all this talk about the border between the US and Mexico, few think deeply about what that border really is. In El Paso, it’s the Rio Grande, but rivers can shift over time. One chunk of land used to be on the Mexican side, then shifted to the US after the Flood of 1864. The Chamizal National Memorial commemorates “the harmonious settlement of a 100-year border dispute” as it provides a peaceful urban park.

Next Stop: Glendale 9 Drive-In, Glendale AZ.