A Grand Side Trip, October 20, 2011

First, a postscript from yesterday: the Ramada Limited in Holbrook AZ was a good choice.  The price was incredible - $55.00 including taxes – and the room was clean and quiet.  They have a fitness room with a really nice treadmill and elliptical.  I want people to know that there are good rooms for not much money out there!

Today we did not travel very far west on our trip.  That is because we traveled north – to the Grand Canyon.  We filled the gas tank for $3.39 a gallon and drove west a short distance to Winslow for a touristy photo-op.  Yes, they have a statue of a guitarist “standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine sight to see…”  As part of the display there is a wonderful mural of the “girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowing down to take a looks at me.”  There is also a beautiful red, flatbed Ford parked near the corner.  As you can see by the photos, we had fun with this.

Then we drove on west through Flagstaff and then headed north on state highway 180 and state highway 64.  The highways took us through miles of National Forest land and into the mountains.  At first the mountains were heavily forested with tall, straight pine trees.  This gave way to grassy stretches of land with piñon bushes and that gave way to mountain desert land.  It was soothing and beautiful and we saw some fortunate folks who lived in lovely homes on lots of land with great views.  We also saw homes of people who had settled in very remote land and seemed to be providing their own electricity with solar panels.  There is certainly enough sun to use solar power for most needs.

Yesterday and this morning Dennis did not seem too enthusiastic about this side trip, but I could not get this close to the Grand Canyon without a visit.  I suspected that movies, videos, photographs and paintings did not show the “real” canyon and its power.  When we reached the park, our new senior lifetime pass saved us the $25.00 admission fee (yay!).  We found a parking space and got out with the camera, wearing walking shoes and ready to walk part of the rim path.

When we reached the rim path and got our first glimpse of the Canyon, we stopped in our tracks, awestruck.  Dennis said, “I hope you are happy to know that I am glad, now, that you made me do this side trip.”  I stood for a few minutes in silence just breathing it in.  The Grand Canyon wears its age like a solemn, coat of many colors, just waiting for us puny humans to begin to appreciate our relative insignificance.  It brought tears to my eyes to see such powerful beauty and to try to imagine what it took to form this natural wonder.  I usually think of our planet as a finished product, but here as we have driven through so many changing landscapes and especially today, it has become clear that our planet is a living, changing entity.

We took many pictures, but we agreed that no photo can really do it justice.  We wanted to try to capture the many faces of the canyon.  There were many overlook sites that became crowded with other tourists – all of us with cameras and taking different pictures for different reasons.  We were surrounded by people speaking a wide variety of languages.  We easily identified German, French, Spanish, Japanese and several variations of English.  It was great to see people from all over who were awestruck by the natural splendor of this great National Park.

We tried to capture the colors, the layers of antiquity, the fabulous rock formations, the gaping chasms, and the scale.  We are including a few examples with the understanding that it simply cannot convey what we saw and felt.

 

We walked the half mile to the Geology Museum, stopping for an occasional picture.  The museum helped me to understand a little more about the formation of the Grand Canyon and the ineffable time scale.  We walked around and read the displays and thought about what we were seeing.  I would like to do a hike into the Canyon at some point, but I have to admit that it looks pretty intimidating!  I bought a book to begin to learn about the preparations I need in order to be able to do a hike.

I have to give a big shout out to Lisa G. today.  As we were walking the half mile back to our starting point, she texted and sent a picture of Pearl to let us know that Pearl is OK.  Thanks Lisa!  It was great to see our kitty and know that she is still doing her kitty best to guard the house.

We drove back to Williams AZ and found a motel room.  Tomorrow we will cross the state line into California for more Rte 66 adventures.  This was a grand side trip and we want to return.  (I am secretly planning a luxury land cruise!)

To Arizona by camera

The painted desert .... the size is beyond any representation photographically!!



Cool Welcome To AZ sign


See that black smudge in the sky? That's from a burning semi that put a major slow down on our progess.


The following are some images of the petroglyphs. Very interesting!!!

From Petroglyphs to Painted Dessert, October 19, 2011

Today was a combination of natural wonders and lots of driving.  But I want to start by raving about the hotel in Santa Fe that housed us for two nights.  The name of the place is the El Rey and it is on Cerrillos south of downtown/Plaza area.  The room was not huge, but it was spotlessly clean and ultra-charming.  The building is the old-fashioned stucco/adobe style whitewashed to a glistening shine.  The kind people who run it provide a lovely level of hospitality and a wonderful complimentary breakfast each morning complete with warm tortillas and homemade chili sauce.  My favorite service is that one of the staff knocked on the door of our room after we returned from touring yesterday.  He pointed out that our front tire looked very low – we had observed this and thought we’d find a station in the morning to fill it up.  Instead, this nice person got a compressor and came back and filled the tire for us!  Okay all of our readers – let us know when you received a service like this while you were staying in a hotel.

We bid a cheerful farewell and headed for the highway.  I had told Dennis that I HAD to walk today.  I have not worked out for a few days and it is driving me crazy.  So we looked over our route and agreed that we would visit the Petroglyphs National Monument, a part of the National Park Service, in Albuquerque.  It was my turn to drive and I loved the openness of I-25 south and I-40 west and the 75 mph speed limit.  We stopped at the visitors center for the park and had a nice chat with the ranger who gave us a map to the whole park and discussed with us the various trails.  The one I had targeted had a one dollar parking fee which I didn’t think was too outrageous.  He told us about the lifetime pass for seniors – yes Dennis and I are both seniors.  It cost us ten dollars and gets us into all national parks, national forests and a bunch of other places.  Since we went to Petroglyphs and to the Painted Desert, we have already “paid” for the card.

While we were talking to that nice ranger, his name is Patrick, he said that he had visited Michigan and visited several of our parks.  He agreed that Michigan is beautiful but said that one thing about our fair state bothered him.  No, it was not the cold or the lack of sunny days, it was the claustrophobic feeling he got from being surrounded by trees!  I had just been thinking about that yesterday,   meditating on the differences between my green and beautiful Michigan and the open-sky beauty of the southwest.  I had wondered if someone who grew up in the southwest would be troubled by the limited sight-lines of densely forested areas.  He confirmed that musing.  It was an interesting exchange.

We drove on to the entrance of the hiking area we had chosen, Boca Negra, and got out with our camera.  The canyon area had three short trails.  The first was not really a hike, but a short steep, rocky climb.  Dennis recognized the danger that it posed to his knee and went back down to the picnic shelter area after about one-third of the climb.  I took the camera and did the whole loop.  It was a good climb and I was able to snap some pictures of Petroglyphs that had not been damaged or defaced.  It seems like that trickster god, Kokopelli, has been at work out by the Petroglyphs and new glyphs have been added.  The other two loops were flatter and Dennis and I walked them together.  I felt so much better after this activity.

We got back in the car and I headed for I-40 west to Gallup.  I was thinking we would stop there.  As we left the Albuquerque area, I noticed a large smudge of black smoke on the horizon directly west.  We both wondered what it was.  In a few miles traffic came to a complete standstill.  We were moving at stop and go rates for 45 minutes.  We finally saw what the hold-up was – a huge accident on eastbound I-40 that completely closed down the highway.  The blackened remains of a semi were all we saw.  This was definitely the source of the large black smudge on the horizon.  It backed eastbound traffic up for at least 3.5 miles.  We felt sad for all involved and sent up a prayer for the victims of this accident.

When traffic started to move again, we talked a bit about our destination.  I wanted to stop in Grants for water, so we got off there and bought some water and talked  to the insurance company (still working on the Tulsa incident).  I switched with Dennis to let him drive for awhile.  Gallup was about one hour down the road.  Dennis didn’t want to stop yet, he thought we could get more miles in.  I looked up the various Arizona destinations that might have hotels and picked Holbrook which was 70 miles over the Arizona state line.  Then we had a discussion about the difference in our ideas about the journey.

I need to see lots of different areas and feel the differences and see the natural beauty of each area.  It is not about accumulating miles each day.  So we learned something today.  When we plan our next trip, I need to do lots of research (even more than I did for this trip) and specify which places are a “must see” for me.

The Painted Desert is one stop I had to make and Dennis agreed that he wanted to see it, too.  It is just outside of Holbrook.  We have to give a big shout out to Kathy Runstadtler for this visit.  Kathy said that we did not have to drive the whole 28 miles through the park and that the first few miles were are we needed.  What a great call!  We went to the Kachina Point area stopping at all of the turnouts to take pictures.  When we were near the Painted Desert Inn, we took pictures and I noticed that the path was only about a half mile from that turnout to the Inn, so Dennis took the car and I took the camera and walked the half mile.  I stopped 3 or 4 times to take pictures.  It is so amazing.  When you live in Michigan, it is hard to imagine such a dry landscape that is so colorful – not green, but colorful.  I know my pictures do not do it justice, but I had to take pictures.  Maybe I will be like Grandma Moses and discover my artistic abilities late in life and be able to paint some of the beauty I saw.

Tonight we are going to plan our next few stops.  I must see the Grand Canyon from the ground, so we will plan what, when and how.  I know that some of the things that we “must” do have nothing to do with the traditional Rte 66 tour.  We talk about it often.  The introduction of freeways killed many of the small towns along Rte 66.  The casinos killed many of the small tourist shops along Rte 66.  It seems to me that Rte 66 introduced Americans to touring new areas, meeting new people, and seeing sights that are outside of the everyday purview – and that is what we are doing.  Traditional or not – this is our Rte 66 tour!

Postscript:  We have met so many nice people and have had so many “small town experiences” – here is an example from this evening.  After we ate dinner, we went into the town of Holbrook to buy a bottle of wine at the Safeway.  When we went through the checkout line, the cashier asked if we had our “card” and we explained that we were from out of town.  So, he turned to the woman in line behind us, a person he seemed to know well, and asked her if she had her card.  She said no, but she had the number and told him.  He entered her number, we got a $10.00 discount, and she got points toward a gasoline discount.  They both wished us well on our journey and we thanked them for their kindness!  The random acts of kindness have more than made up for the one random act of mean-ness we have experienced.

Santa Fe Pictures

Great coffee place down town Santa Fe. Thanks for the tip Steve!!


This was a great museum.


The Loretto Chapel. The stairs were featured in 'Unsolved Mysteries' because there are no visible means of support.


The other side of the Lorreto Chapel. Stunning even though it's privately owned.
St. Frances Cathedral . Very beautiful church as you can see below.




STEVE!!!! Why don't we have a banner???????

Santa Fe: Too Much to See, not Enough Money, October 18, 2011

We traveled very few miles in the car today but many on foot.  We decided to see three places and do some shopping (a favorite pastime in Santa Fe it would appear).  To get our day started right we stopped at Holy Spirit, a coffee shop on San Francisco Street. My brother Steve gets a special “thank you” shout-out for that stop.  He was so right – the place has, as they claim, the best coffee in Santa Fe.  Now properly caffeinated, we headed for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.  It is a fairly small museum and had many of her drawings and paintings and a visiting exhibit by Robert Henri. 

It was a special treat to see so many of O’Keeffe’s paintings and to see her work as it changed over the years.  In each exhibit hall there were quotes from the artist about her work and her thoughts on painting.  Dennis particularly appreciated her thoughts on color.  She clearly saw something the rest of us don’t see.  For a person with a red/green color challenge (Dennis), this was a great observation.  Dennis has always claimed that none of us see colors the same way we just assign names to colors and try to agree on them.  It was clear to us that Georgia O’Keeffe had an otherworldly relationship with color and form.  We didn’t bring the shrinking ray with us, so we did not bring home any of her paintings!

We walked through the Plaza – keep in mind that it is a Tuesday morning in October – and it was packed with tourists, visitors, and locals.  It was fun to watch the people and listen to them shopping, haggling, playing music and planning their lunch stops.  We were in search of the Loretto Chapel with its amazing spiral staircase.  We only got turned around once (much better at navigating roads!) and headed in to see the chapel.  It is now privately owned and maintained and the entrance fee was $3.00.  The staircase is referred to as the miraculous staircase.  It was built entirely of wood with no handrails and no vertical supports (check out the pictures).  A beautiful balustrade was added many years later for safety purposes.  The chapel itself is beautiful and has great acoustics – I resisted the urge to sing since there were lots of folks there.

We were starting to get hungry so we walked over to the Blue Corn Café and Brew Pub.  This was a great choice for lunch.  Their green chili cheese tamales were delicious.  We will have to try those at home – I’ll invite you, too.  Their beers were excellent.  They offer beer in three sizes – pint, 10 oz, and 4 oz.  I had two four ounce beers so I could try different “flavors.”  Both were excellent.

Sufficiently fortified and needing to walk, we set out for some shopping.  There are way too many shops and many sell similar stuff, but many are unique and uniquely expensive.  I did pick up some earrings, though, and some piñon incense.  Dennis went to the park to listen to music and wait for me.  He said that he felt like a true tourist because he was approached by a panhandler.  Since we were at the Plaza, we went to see the cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi. It is a beautiful church and Dennis took many pictures, but we were especially taken by the music ministry section.  My dear friends at St. Mary Magdalen you should see how neat and tidy the area is!  And they have two marimbas!  But when we saw the banner, we had to take a picture.  I’m sure our music is every bit as lively and lovely, but I bet it is way different.  We both wished we could have heard the music ministry during a liturgy.

Our feet were very tired by that time so we found our car, stopped to get a bottle of wine, and came back to the hotel to plan our travels tomorrow.  We love the glorious sun here and we did not feel cold at 65 degrees, but the locals long for rain.  Their average annual rainfall is 14 inches.  There are pluses and minuses in every location.