Here are some interesting, random signs and things we saw on the trip:
"Nature rules--stay on the trails."
And on one of a series of billboards for a store farther up the way, it advertised "chileware." What?
On a Baptist church sign in Tucson: "Will you persevere in resisting evil or repent of your sins and be born again unto the Lord?" (Or?)
"We couldn't afford a billboard in New York or L.A., so here it is." (Willcox, AZ)
This is just to let you know we made it home. Of course, I could spend a lot of time and words telling you about the beautiful drive from Gila to Socorro, but I've pretty well run out of words.
Interesting things along the way: the Very Large Array outside of Socorro (you know, where the movie "Contact" with Jodie Foster was filmed with all those big radiotelescope dishes) on the San Augustin Plain; and a stop in Los Lunas at Starbucks because that was the first one we came to, and Los Lunas is not far from Albuquerque. Except for a few places in the state, there are thousands of square miles in New Mexico with no Starbucks--it can be a long dry spell.
And, at last, our first view of the Mansion, in which we saw no blackened roof nor smoke coming out of the windows or any such thing, so all is well.
It's good to be home.
The Residence Inn in Tucson was a vast improvement over the Inn & Suites, but it still had a couple of drawbacks--the free wireless Internet in our room didn't work, requiring a short spell in the business center in the morning, and the breakfast was way below average. Yes, you guessed it, I've become a breakfast snob. The bacon was not good quality, the home fries were dreadful, and the scrambled eggs were just plain eggs. It looked like the cook had just thrown the eggs in a pan, let them cook completely hard and then cut them into big chunks. And once again the coffee was undrinkable. When I can tell from the first sip that the coffee is going to create major heartburn, I don't go any further. It's a good thing Starbucks has locations in pretty much every city and major town in the country.
The (roundabout) drive from Tucson to Gila was unremarkable until we got off the interstate to take a side trip to Bisbee, AZ, when we passed through the small town of St. David and passed the Holy Trinity Monastery, RV Park and pecan grove. No kidding. I guess you do what you have to to make a living.
Bisbee is an turn-of-the-century mining town in the mountains in southeast Arizona, close to the Mexico border. Since many of the markers on the buildings indicated that they were built around 1900 to 1904, it must have really been booming for a while. It's still a great little town that now spreads outward from the main streets of town up into the canyons. We only walked around a little part of it, but I'm sure we'll go back and explore much more. Next time, skip Tucson and just go directly to Bisbee.
We arrived pretty early (10:30), so the first order of business was some coffee at the Bisbee Coffee Company, which appeared to be a local hangout with free wireless. We did not indulge, at least not in the Internet access. We wandered around the main part of downtown admiring the architecture and well-kept buildings. Gradually we found ourselves heading to the Bisbee Grille in the same building as the Bisbee Coffee Company. Guess what? Several of the guys who had been sitting there with laptops in the morning were still there.
Lunch at the Bisbee Grille was really good. I had the bleu burger with a side of garlic mashed potatoes, and Steve indulged in a Reuben sandwich. The menu provided its own entertainment, full of grammar and spelling errors, and complete with a confusing web/email address. Apparently someone doesn't know the difference and decided to put everything in together: www.bisbeegrille@yahoo.com. Hoo!
We doubled back the same way, since it was the fastest way back to the interstate. Past tiny villages and mobile homes and small houses with solar panels and satellite dishes. Some had windmills and one even had a fancy 3-propeller wind turbine. If I lived out there, I'd try to get some free power from the wind, too. That trip had involved two passes through Tombstone, where we didn't stop. Others had told us it was very touristy and yes, they even had the graveyard fenced off and charged admission. Nah.
The journey got more interesting and breathtakingly beautiful once we left I-10 and started heading northeast into New Mexico toward Gila. We were up in alpine forest when we crossed the border from Arizona into New Mexico. The road immediately deteriorated, of course. From there we continued up, and up, and up, into the mountains through Apache Pass. The tight switchbacks reminded us of some mountain passes in Europe. When we reached the top, there were a viewpoint place to pull off and the view from there was incredible.
From there we dropped down out of those mountains. I should mention that as soon as we had crossed over the mountains from Arizona, the vegetation changed from scrubby brush to lush grass on the New Mexico side, and it was quite lovely. I've been living for years in the city, but sometimes a place like that can make me think, "yeah, I could live here."
Once we were in Gila, we were on dirt roads the rest of the way. Several miles on one road, turn right, several miles on another, four miles on a third. And up and down and single lane.
Casitas de Gila is a lovely place backing up on the Gila Wilderness. They have 90 acres including half a mile of a creek and the cliffs on the other side. While we were talking outside, Mike fetched his binoculars and showed us about 12-13 javelinas feeding down by the creek. We had time for a very short hike down to the creek (without meeting any wildlife), and on the way back up saw a fantastic sunset on the mesas. We had no sooner returned to our casita than we saw two gray foxes taking a shortcut across the backyard right out the window.
The stars out there are so brilliant! No light coming from anywhere, so we could see not only the biggest and brightest like we do here in the city, we can also see millions of smaller ones. And it's so quiet out there. No TV, no cell phone reception.
More tomorrow on the last day of vacation--Gila to Albuquerque.
No water. That’s how
we started the morning at our room at the Inn & Suites in Tucson. I turned on the shower to get only a
trickle. No matter how I tried it, the
water just wasn’t coming. I brushed my
teeth while Steve called the front desk to ask about the water. Meanwhile, there wasn’t even enough water to
completely flush.
In our business, we always
say the small things are indicators of larger issues. How about the alarm clock that was blinking, the ironing board
that was hung in the closet incorrectly and hanging out the door, or the fact
that there was no shower curtain? That
should have been a dead giveaway that maybe we didn’t need one because there
was no water.
If we hadn’t been certain
before, that decided it. We were
checking out and finding somewhere else to stay. While we were packing the car, we used the (slow) wireless
Internet in our room to find a Residence Inn in another part of town and made a
reservation for Friday night.
On our way to the front to
check out the free breakfast and decide if we even wanted to try it (we
didn’t), another couple was standing outside. “Do you have any water?” she asked. No. Grrr. They were also packing to leave.
To add insult to injury, the
front desk attendant said, “It’s the city’s problem, not ours.” Well, no, lady, if you’ve got a hotel full
of angry guests because they have no water (and another was complaining about
no heat and another about a dead phones), it’s your problem. Right there standing in front of you. They grudgingly gave us a $25 credit and said they generally don't do that. We're in the business--always ask.
Then the first order of the
day was breakfast. We drove over to the
area we had been the night before where there were lots of restaurants. Apparently, not many people in Tucson eat
breakfast, because there just weren’t many places to eat breakfast. We noted locations of various Starbucks
along the way. I finally saw “Beyond
Bread” and thought they might at least have breakfast sandwiches. We stepped inside the door and found the
menus in a rack right in front of us. Looked good, and I decided on the breakfast egg sandwich. We stepped up to the counter to order, but
the cashier was obviously mad that something had gotten on her sleeve, so told
us to go wait in the other line. So we
did. But before that cashier could wait
on us, the first one had cleaned off her sleeve and said, “I can help someone over
here.” We looked around—how many
someones were there? Just us.
I ordered the egg
sandwich.
“What kind of bread?” she
asked.
I looked around for a menu
to see the options. Behind her was a
whole wall of rolls and small loaves which I had assumed were for purchase of
the whole loaf. And there was not a
menu in sight. So I asked what were the
choices.
“Any of these behind me;
it’s written in great big letters that you can read.”
I can’t believe she said
that. “Okay, we’re going to Starbucks,”
and we left. And I said, “if the people
at Starbucks are rude, we’re outta Tucson right now. Just get in the car and keep driving.”
So far, Tucson wasn’t leaving
a favorable impression on me.
Fortunately, the baristas
and cashiers at Starbucks were friendly and helpful, and we finally got some
coffee and pastry for breakfast. Did I
mention by this time it was nearly 10:00 a.m.? I could hardly even see straight and was getting a caffeine headache
from the lack of coffee. I'm used to two cups of really good coffee every morning by 7:30 a.m.
We headed west of the city
toward Old Tucson and the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum (ASDM). One look at Old Tucson and we decided to
skip it. It’s the old movie set area
where they’ve filmed over 300 westerns and now they’ve turned it into a theme
park with saloons with dance hall girls, shootouts in the street, etc. Nah, we’ll skip that. You can’t even get something to eat without
paying to get in the gate first.
The Arizona Sonora Desert
Museum saved Tucson. We spent the
entire day there, and it was truly lovely. Rather than being a museum with all indoor exhibits, it’s really a
wildlife and botanic preserve over 21 acres. They have some animals in enclosed habitats, of course, like an ocelot,
bobcat and some others. Other areas are
discreetly fenced to keep some of them contained or at least separated, like
the javelinas. Much like the wild pigs
in Australia, given free rein they would tear up the whole area. And since it’s miles from Tucson, over the
mountains and in the far northern reach of the Sonora Desert that goes way down
into Mexico, it was quiet and peaceful. It was just the decompression we needed. Lunch was café food at the Ironwood Terrace Café but we ate
outside on the patio. After lunch we
continued wandering around through the free-flight aviary and finished at the
hummingbird house. It was great to see
hummingbirds that we don’t get to see in Albuquerque, including Anna’s,
broad-billed, and Costas hummingbirds. The
signs also indicated they had calliope and magnificent, among others, but they
zip around so fast, sometimes it’s hard to tell what they are. The broad-billed hummingbirds were
particularly spectacular, with an orange beak, and “black” patches along their
heads and necks that turn iridescent purple in the sun. And ASDM is next to the Saguaro National Park, so it was everywhere. All of
the plant life was well-marked, so I also learned to recognize ocotillo cactus
and palo verde trees, among others. We also watched the free-flight show with Harris Hawks.
Dinner was another
challenge. The Residence Inn is just
two buildings over from an Olive Garden, so we thought we would rest a while
and get over there early before it got crowded. Hah! At 5:40 the line was
already out the door. So we walked
across the street and found a “Sauce” pizza place—with a line. We finally ended up across that parking lot
at “On the Border” and had to wait 20 minutes for that. The food was good but not outstanding. The chips were fresh and the salsa very
good; the rest of the meal was okay. Not quite the Mexican food experience we were seeking. I think we have to get out of Tucson and
away from chain restaurants, perhaps, to find that.
The evening ended with a
short trip to Trader Joe’s to buy a bottle of wine for dinner tonight at
Casitas de Gila in southern New Mexico. Oh, and chocolate. I need
chocolate!
The drive from Sedona to Phoenix was straightforward. The amazing thing is how sensitive saguaro cactus is to environment. There aren’t any along I-17 until suddenly you come over the hill just north of Phoenix and there they are. And they only grow in certain areas and up to a certain altitude. The other amazing thing is how quickly the climate changed from below freezing in Sedona to nearly balmy with palm trees in Phoenix.
Steve needed some new shirts, so we went to Nordstrom at the Fashion Mall on East Camelback Road. The sales guy in “men’s furnishings” recommended the Nordstrom Café, and we had exactly the lunch we were looking for. Mine was fabulous—salad with grilled shrimp, avocado, red pepper, corn and cilantro-lime vinaigrette. Steve noticed that all of the people cooking had chef jackets on. Nordstrom may be fortunate enough to have interns from the local culinary institute.
We had intended to find “Old Scottsdale” but it was across six lanes of traffic on the other side of Scottsdale Blvd., and we sort of waved at it as we drove by. In retrospect, it was a good thing we didn’t park and spend time there.
The first sign of trouble in Tucson was the sign that said exits 255-259 through Tucson were closed. That’s 8 miles containing every exit in the main downtown area. We got off at exit 254 and started looking for a place to stay. We had intended to find the historic district, which we expected to be an “old town” area like ours, which is a challenge when a big chunk of the city right by the downtown area is torn up by construction. We found El Presidio, the old fort in the downtown area. That turned out to be one-half of one block. Surely there must be more! We’ll try to find that tomorrow. So we persevered, wandering all over the city near I-10 looking for a hotel. We ended up in South Tucson near the airport, industrial district, etc. As always, we of course ended up in the least desirable part of town. Eventually we ended up back on the west side of I-10, headed back to where we started. We crossed back under the highway through downtown (again) and finally ended up at the Inn & Suites. Not as nice as the suite in Sedona, but we have a refrigerator and free wireless in the room—hooray!
The local dining guide was helpful but showed that pretty much all of the places to eat were not in the downtown area, so it meant venturing out in the car again. Now that we’re getting the lay of the land, we managed to find our way there and back.
Dinner at Pinnacle Peak Steak House may not have been fine
dining, but it was fun. Salad, “cowboy
steak” and ranch beans, and it was pretty good. The best part is all of the neckties hanging from the
ceiling. They have a “no ties” policy,
and if you wear one, they actually cut it off and staple it to the beams on the
ceiling. Pinnacle Peak is in Trail Dust
Town, one of those theme places made to look like an old west town. They have a gunfighter show, old time
photograph place and all that. This isn't a great photo, but maybe you can see all the ties hanging from that beam. Apparently if they cut off your tie, you get to put your name and the date on the white card that gets stapled up there with it.
Tomorrow—assuming we can find our way there—are the Desert Museum, the Saguaro National Park and Old Tucson.
I finally made it to the Grand Canyon, so the third time's a charm. The first time we tried (1993?) we had car trouble in Santa Fe that delayed us for a day and a half. The second time (2005) it was snowing really hard and it was closed. So here we are.
The day started with a brief stop at Wildflower and a chat with Ray and Ron. Much as I like the place, I still admit that Wildflower's mochas are not very good and neither are their blueberry muffins.
The drive up was beautiful. We took 89A up Oak Creek Canyon to Flagstaff, then 40 over to Williams to catch the train to the canyon. Along the way we saw ravens everywhere, especially on the roadkill deer, which appeared to be frozen. On a distant mountain I could see the snow blowing sideways off the top peak. Did I say it was cold? And somewhat windy?
In Williams the Red Garter is closed for the season. My sister stayed there probably 10-12 years ago and has talked about it ever since. Bakery downstairs, bed & breakfast (formerly brothel) upstairs. However, he closes in the winter until mid-February, so I may never get to see it. The battery on my little camera died, so we had to buy some more.
The train ride up was great. We were in the first-class Anasazi car. Drinks, snacks, commentary by our attendant Victoria, who has a very dry wit, and even entertainment by Barry, a fiddler-wannabe comedian. The scenery is beautiful with several segments through pine forest and a bit across a lower plateau. We saw ravens, hawks, elk and white-tail deer.
Victoria told us that the restaurant at El Tovar was 4-star, so we said let's try it. We're always looking to see how other "better" places do food and service than we do. However, it may have been 4-star in the past but it's not now. One place setting was incorrect, Steve's napkin had something really yucky on it, the tablecloth was dirty, and the service was what we call "immature," meaning the gal refilling the water glasses was reaching across the table to do it, the waiter was reaching across our faces, things like that. Those are things that definitely should not happen in a 4-star restaurant. And, unfortunately, the food was just average. I ordered the Idaho pan-seared trout with rice pilaf and sauteed vegetables. It was just okay. Steve had the Black Angus burger with a side of tomato-basil soup that definitely had too much salt. So, just for the record, 4-star prices without 4-star food or service.
I'd read about Mary Colter, architect and designer of most of the historic buildings at the Grand Canyon, so we spent most of the time walking around just looking across the canyon and at the buildings--Hopi House and Bright Angel Lodge. Some of the path around the rim was snowy and icy, it was really cold, and our time was limited, so we only saw a bit of the rim. And yes, that's a really big hole in the ground, a long way down. The colors were spectacular, and obviously my crummy little camera doesn't even begin to capture it. We did take some better pictures which I will post after we get home. It was really spectacular with the snow along the rim.
The log train depot at the Grand Canyon is one of only three in the country and the only one still operating as a depot.
Be prepared on the train ride--a photographer comes through your car taking pictures, and you're a captive audience on the train ride back when she comes back to try to sell you the photos. She skipped us entirely on the way up and then tried to argue with Steve when he said she had gone right by us and not taken our picture. Out of desperation, she tried to sell us the picture frame. I know they're trying to make as much additional revenue as possible, but I don't really like that kind of pressure.
On the way back we were in the dome car. We switched cars, but then so did Barry, so we got exactly the same jokes, songs and schtick as on the way up. He needs to expand his repertoire.
Our PSA (personal service assistant? or something like that) on the way back was Tammy. I'm sure she was nice, but she was so perky I wanted to smack her. My patience is limited for the rah-rah cheerleader type. That's probably a job I should not attempt.
The sun set just before we pulled into Williams, so we got to see it go down over the distant mountains and horizon.
Overall, it was a great trip to the Canyon. Sometime I'd like to go back, maybe in very early spring. I wouldn't go there "in season" in the summer. One of the train robbers (we had those on the train, too) said that in the summer they get 10,000 visitors a day. I can only imagine the crowds, the wait for something to eat, and lines for the bathroom!
We came right down I-17 in the dark back to Sedona and decided just to hit the deli section of Safeway for dinner. As were were just approaching the soup selection, Frank came over with a new pot of soup and insisted that we try it--tomato-basil. And was it ever good! That's the way tomato-basil soup should taste. If you're ever in Sedona, the Safeway on 89A south of the main part of town is quite upscale, good selection. They even have a Starbucks inside the store, which is where we're headed now for decent coffee and a good blueberry muffin on the way to Tucson--Day Five.
I actually cooked breakfast this morning and groused the whole time about the lousy kitchen and cookware in this timeshare unit. Sort of one of each thing, lousy knives, a 6" cutting board (what can you chop on that???), a stove that's not level and burners that won't sit straight. Nevertheless, I managed to pull off a feast of eggs scrambled with diced pancetta bacon, sauteed shallots and sharp Coastal cheddar, accompanied by toast and sliced mango.
Then over to Wildflower Bakery where I realized the mocha wasn't as good as I would like. They use chocolate milk as the base, meaning it's not as rich and chocolate-y as it should be. However, the ambiance is great and they do have free wireless, as opposed to Starbucks, which has much better coffee but is smaller and not as aesthetically pleasing, and charges you to use their wireless Internet. Bad Starbucks, bad, bad!
Of course we immediately ran into Ray and Ron and had about another hour-plus of great conversation. Ron is very much into personality types, as categorized by the Myers-Briggs and other tests, and how personality types affect learning and relationships. As tested earlier, I'm an INTJ, which makes for some interesting interactions. Apparently very few women are INTJ (Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging).
And while we were there, we received email from Mike and Becky at Casitas de Gila to spend the night there on our journey back to Albuquerque. The plan right now is to leave here Thursday morning, stop somewhat briefly in Phoenix, and spend two nights in the Tucson area. I'd like to see Tucson, maybe Tubac, Bisbee, Tombstone, whatever's around that we feel like doing. Then head across southern New Mexico Saturday, and back home on Sunday.
We headed down to Prescott today via Jerome, which is an old mining town perched on the edge of a mountain. We had visited Jerome last time and found it quite charming. From the valley floor, head up the mountain and climb, climb, climb. The main road in goes along the ridge with numerous switchbacks, and in the town itself the main street (only one), has about six switchbacks until you reach the "end" of town and start heading up to the pass. When you see a "little" house, you realize that the front of it faces the street up here, but there's actually 3-4 stories below it, and the foundation is next to the street on the switchback below. Jerome also has a fairly steady history of cave-ins and landslides since the whole mountain is honeycombed with mine shafts and tunnels and has become unstable. Nevertheless, it's a pretty town with lots of character.
We didn't stop in Jerome but kept right on going the 12 miles of switchback road through the canyons and up to the pass, then down the other side. It's another 15 miles or so to Prescott Valley and another 9 miles or so from there to the town of Prescott itself. It was originally the capitol of Arizona and has some great buildings. Most of them now date from about 1902 since Prescott was swept by several huge fires in the late 1800's and again in 1900. One of the buildings burned was a big hotel and saloon, and the plaque outside the building said that when the fires started, most of the liquor was saved. The people in the bar merely carried it across the street to the plaza (no buildings there), and they continued to serve drinks while the fire raged! Yep, that sounds like the west.
Lunch was at the cafe at the Hotel St. Michael (1901) on Whiskey Row. The building is lovely and the cafe is interesting. The menu said my selection was "potato-crusted Pacific salmon pan-roasted with sauteed vegetables, dill-infused basmati rice and lemon creme fraiche. Steve had the duck salad (calabrese) with slices of roast duck on a bed of greens with sundried tomatoes, pinions, and a balsamic vinegar dressing. While they sounded good, they fell somewhat short of expectations. They were obviously out of both dill and basmati rice, and the duck salad was not spectacular. Still, a good meal as long as you're not expecting something really outstanding.
They had a really interesting collection of special-shape liquor bottles, which are now collectors' items. To name a few shapes: pirates, a Greek dancer (to hold ouzo perhaps?), Napoleon and French soldiers, a judge, pirates, Mt. Rushmore, ships, cowboy, Indian, eagle, knight in armor, swordfish, elephant, Scotsman and, most interestingly, the Pieta. Kind of wonder what kind of liquor goes in that?
The phone is ringing again, thank goodness, and we're taking a few reservations. One of them said she saw our ad in New Mexico Magazine, which means the February issue must have hit the newsstands, and our ad is working--hooray!
They also had restroom tokens manufactured by Nik-o-Lok of Indianapolis, about the size of a dime, which we had to deposit in the main door of the "public" restroom. I guess that's one way to keep out the riffraff.
I forgot to say that Steve also got a call from someone at NM Magazine yesterday for a phone interview about breakfasts, which is a featured article in their upcoming May issue. Wouldn't that be great to get a mention in that? Nothing like free editorial.
After lunch we wandered around the historic district of Prescott, and we were somewhat disappointed. Not quite sure what we expected, but it didn't quite have the charm and character of Jerome. We did wander into a historic building-turned-JC Penney-turned-individual shops and found a candy shop on the third floor. Bought a couple of pralines which we didn't think were as good as those Steve's father makes. However, I did see an interesting quote, which may end of on my "laptop billboard"--
If you can't eat all of your chocolate today, it will freeze well. But if you can't eat all your chocolate, what's wrong with you?
We decided to come back to Sedona early. I also got a call from a board member of an association (I'm the VP and recording secretary) and they need a letter sent out no later than Thursday. So I have to draft that as soon as I finish this post and email it to him.
Did I mention some of the birds here? Not that I'm watching in particular, except that there are ravens all around, and we had just watched a Nature program the other night on ravens. Really smart, really interesting birds. Also mountain jays, gold finches, and we think mountain bluebirds here.
We came back the same way, up that mountain pass and down again, then through Jerome. The views coming that way are much more spectacular than those looking south toward Prescott. Looking north you see the Valley Verde, then up to the snow-capped mountains and mesas into the red rocks area of Sedona. I'm inserting some crummy pictures I took with my mini-digital camera. The first one is from the pass looking north toward Sedona. The second is back toward the pass we just came down, and you can see the snow on those mountains. The last one is the remains of a slag heap from mining that speaks to Jerome's past. What you can't really see are the abandoned mining buildings up on that ridge above the slag heap.
The day isn't finished yet, but I have that business letter to do (10 minutes). Steve is a little stiff, so he's spending quality time in the Jacuzzi. Later, we may be off to Fournos Restaurant to take them up on their offer.
Tomorrow? Possibly up to the Grand Canyon--the forecast for crummy weather has changed.
"If it's not one thing, it's another." -- Roseanne Rosannadanna
With us, it's always something, so life is one continuous adventure. Monday's adventure started with Steve's discovery that he had packed his vitamins but not his prescription medications. Also no device to download digital photos from camera to laptop, and also forgot a power cord/charger for a laptop. Fortunately, I brought mine, so we're acting like skin divers with only one tank--one works until the juice starts to run out, then we swap the power cord and let that laptop battery recharge.
The day started with early morning coffee and pastries at Wildflower Bakery. We discovered it early on our last trip here. It's a cafe at the Hyatt Resort perched on the edge of the mesa. Coffee, food, fireplace, view--what more could one need? Oh, and free wireless Internet! And it has this fabulous glass sculpture in the middle of the
dining area. At first the seating area by the fireplace was occupied by two guys deep in conversation, so we sat at the next table. However, when Steve's laptop started running out of power, he had to take my power cord over there and plug in his laptop. Soon we were both over there and engaged in conversation with Ray and Ron. By the end of it we had exchanged business cards and realized that what they were discussing would be of great interest to our friend Bruce back in Albuquerque. Oh, and before we left, Ray had brought over Shirley Fournos to meet us. She and her husband Demetrios own Fournos Restaurant here (Greek, Italian, Mediterranean) and have invited us to be their guest at dinner some evening before we leave!
The first order of business was to go to Walgreen's and get at least a temporary supply of his meds. Not that he wouldn't have been able to make it through the week, but it's thyroid medicine, so he would have been feeling pretty lethargic by the end of the week and pretty bad for the next week or so. Not acceptable when the solution is easy and available. We were told it would be 20 minutes before his prescriptions were ready, so we wandered around Walgreen's and did a little unanticipated shopping. Normally I'm not a shopper--just get what I need and get out of there. But I must have been in one of my rare shopping moods because I started picking stuff up. Refrigerator magnets that are the bulldog 
clip type, but infinitely cuter than the purely functional ones at Office Depot. Also a small notebook to keep notes of our trip for blog material ("Life. Get one."). And best of all, a tiny mini digital camera (10 bucks!) with adapter to download the photos to my laptop. What do you think? Cute! And it's smaller than a credit card, about 1/2 inch thick. Slips right in my pocket. It doesn't take really crisp, clear photos but it will suffice for now. Also, it's very sensitive to movement, so I've ended up with some really blurry photos. But, heck, it's digital, so I just erase those and take some more.
The 20 minutes eventually turned into 45 minutes. Get me out of Walgreen's before I buy the store! In our wanderings, here are some of the things we heard (I love to eavesdrop): "Kristin gave me a whoopee cushion for Christmas." "What in the world is that thing?" "A vibrator, I think." "I heard I-17 is closed between here and Flagstaff." Did I mention that it had continued to rain but it was snow on top of the mesas just a couple hundred feet higher?
Lunch was at Picazzo, an upscale pizza place with gourmet pizzas and great salads. We got the lunch combo, a slice of pizza and side of salad. Of course, not too many choices on the special, but the pepperoni slice was good, with a thin, flaky crust, and a side of really good Caesar salad. By the way, this is where three years ago we got the "recipe" for one of the salads we make for our high teas, pear, gorgonzola and spiced pecans with raspberry vinaigrette.
I have to admit that the day was fairly icky. By lunch it had stopped snowing but it was still cold and overcast. We made a short trip to Safeway to pick up some ingredients for dinner that we had heard discussed on a Splendid Table podcast--French bread rubbed with shallots, topped with pancetta and baked. Steve went further to add eggs scrambled with sauteed shallots and Hollandaise. It was pretty good but needs more tweaking. The bread needed to be sliced thinner and have more pancetta.
We spent the afternoon reading and just hanging out, with a foray out to snap some pictures of snow on the mesas. What I was trying to capture was that the snow was on top of the mesas and the clouds were so low that the tops were completely obscured.
We had rented a movie, "Man of the Year," but watched cooking shows on the Food Channel until we both fell asleep on them.
I did finish Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, which turned out to be a fairly good read, especially if you're a Jane Austen fan. Light, but interesting. Now I'm reading 
Empire Falls by Richard Russo. So far, so good.
Yesterday was Day One of vacation--yay! We managed to get out of town fairly early, only needing to stop at the B&B for something we forgot and at Starbucks, of course, and then got on the road to Sedona.
The scenery out here is incredibly beautiful--lots of mesas and canyons with the train tracks pretty much paralleling I-40, so we passed lots of trains.
Our first adventure was trying to use a new toy Steve had gotten for the car, a wireless adapter so he could play tunes and podcasts on his iPod through the stereo system on the car using an "unused" FM spot on the radio. It worked, sort of. The trouble was that the instant there was any signal on or near that FM frequency, the iPod dropped out. The farther away from cities we got, the better it worked, but it dropped enough to be really annoying. He said his other option was the device that actually plugs into the cassette player. He hadn't gotten that one because he couldn't remember if the car actually had a cassette player (it does).
One of the things about living way out in the country is that things tend to get chucked out into the yard rather than disposed of properly, so some people have whole collections of junked vehicles and appliances around their property. The coolest thing I saw was "Washerhenge" somewhere east of Grants, where someone had taken their abandoned washers and dryers and arranged them in a rough circle out in a field, a la Stonehenge. Who says junk can't be art?
We got off the highway at Gallup in an attempt to find a Walmart and get the cassette adapter. We never did find it until, of course, we got back on the highway and saw it down at the end of the frontage road. Oh, well. And it was snowing pretty hard in Gallup.
Our plan was to stop at the historic La Posada Hotel in Winslow to have lunch and see what they've done with this Harvey House hotel. The last time we had been through, it wasn't open yet. The new owners have done some careful restoration and there was a great article about it in a recent Sunset magazine. I don't know how we did it, but we managed to miss Winslow entirely. We kept seeing the billboards and signs for Best Western in Winslow, Dairy Queen in Winslow, etc., but no mileage signs like Winslow - 15. There was also a huge amount of truck traffic mostly in the right lane, so we figured we were probably involved in a conversation and missed the "this exit" sign, probably blocked by a truck. The next thing we knew, we were back out in the country wondering what happened to Winslow. We passed through a small town, found out it was Payson and said, "wait! Payson??" When I looked on the AAA map we had gotten, Payson wasn't even on the map! How can you have a town on the interstate with an exit and not even have it on the map? If I had looked at the map a half-hour earlier and at least seen what the mile marker for Winslow was, at least we could have found it that way. Another oh, well.
We kept heading west listening to several podcasts of Splendid Table and Puzzlemaster, which we don't get on our local public radio station, before hitting the frequency interference problem in Flagstaff again.
Life is always an adventure for us, and Flagstaff was yet another stop on that journey. We saw the signs for the historic district of Flagstaff and thought we might find a little cafe somewhere. Some soup and a panini sandwich sounded good for lunch. What was I thinking? Their historic area is the old downtown area, which was pretty much closed on a Sunday afternoon. The only eatery that appeared open was the Collins Irish Pub and Cafe, which we weren't willing to gamble was non-smoking. We headed south and cruised around Northern Arizona University thinking there might be a "student ghetto" area on the fringe like at most other universities. Well, there was, but it was on the main street on the west side, which we had detoured to avoid a huge accident. We finally managed to find a Coco's and had an average lunch there. The best part of my lunch was the sweet potato fries. Steve had an omelette with Brie, smoked bacon and mushrooms, which he said was pretty good. And... right up the street was a Wal-Mart where not only did we find the cassette adapter, which works great, but it was also on sale--$5.29!
And during lunch it started to snow, and it just kept on snowing. We opted to take I-17 south and then cut over to Sedona rather than try 89A down through the hills and canyons. Been there, done that, and it's not a good road to take in bad weather.
Yesterday must have been a bad karma day for destinations. We found the street for the Fairfield and blew right by it, mostly because it's been re-flagged as a Wyndham Hotel. Wait.... wasn't that it? Then I pulled out the confirmation letter and looked at the logo. Doggone, it is the Wyndham now.
We checked into the room (and no, I don't want to attend your timeshare presentation, thank you). Our room is in the same building, exactly the same unit but one floor below where we stayed last time. It's a nice room, but the drawbacks are that there's no wireless Internet in the room (must go to the "computer room" in the activities building) and the armchairs in the living room are not at all comfortable. But I got to read for an hour and a half with no guilt, no interruptions. It was wonderful.
Maureen, one of our frequent guests who lives in Sedona, had invited us to her house for dinner and warned us that her house was somewhat tricky to find. We printed the detailed map in mapquest, so no problem, right? We're pretty familiar with the area, so we set off. Initially we had no problem until Steve said, "I know I saw Skyline Road on the way here." Then as I was looking at the map, the order of the roads didn't make any sense. Then we came to one and I said, "all right, something's definitely wrong here. We should not have come to that one here." Turn the car around. Ah, turn the map around. Of course, then the names of the streets are upside-down but the order is right. As we headed back, the roads then made sense, and we found that the sign for Skyline was completely obscured by a large pine tree the way we had been driving. That explains a lot. Immediately the road turned to dirt/gravel as all the canyon roads here do. We had no problem until we got to her mailbox and wondered fork to the left or right? I think she said everyone always turns left but we should take the right fork. Down the road we go.... into someone's driveway. And we can't turn around. And it's really, really dark. And it's raining. Backed up carefully to avoid the big stone pillars at the top of the driveway. Then called her. The rest of the evening was great. Good dinner, good company, beautiful house.
Maybe we've gotten all the destination bad karma over in one day.
