Day Seven

I got up a little later than the day before and went for a run among the groves by the mesas. Then I went home and started getting ready to leave. Dad provided us with a light breakfast of fruit and yogurt, and then we paid a quick visit to the nearby cemetery to water the plants on the graves of my grandparents and two of my uncles.

After that, Dan and I packed the truck and headed to Santa Fe. Our room at La Fonda wouldn't be ready until 3:00, so we had lunch and browsed the natives' wares on the plaza. Once we could check in, Dan relaxed in our room while I took Audrey to see the sights. She was especially eager to visit the church of St Francis, patron saint of birds and other animals...

At his statue, she met a friend...










...and got to say hi to St Francis himself.












Then I took Audrey to the Loretto chapel to see the miraculous staircase. She was duly impressed.











Finally, I told her it was time to return to the hotel - Dan would be worrying about us, wondering where we were. Audrey liked our room, and after I got her to quit bouncing on the bed...











...she settled down and contented herself with looking out the window at the Loretto chapel, where she had been just a little while before.










While Audrey was admiring the view, I went to the spa and got a massage. Then I fixed myself up for dinner, and Dan and I had supper in La Fonda's restaurant. After dinner, we went for a stroll around the plaza and surrounding streets. There was quite a nightlife at some of the little bars and restaurants, and on the plaza itself, a lot of young people were hanging out talking, flirting, testing scooters, and admiring the low-riders and motorcycles cruising the square.

I found it fascinating to see such a mix of people all in the same place, casually getting along - teenage runaways and deadbeats, foreign tourists, and rich people in nice clothes on their way to or from one of downtown Santa Fe's many pricey restaurants.

Finally, though, Dan lost interest in the scene and wanted to go up to our hotel room. We've got a morning run planned, so perhaps I'll turn in, too.

Day Six

The day started with a morning run near the mesas. In previous years, I always did this run alone, so it was a real treat to have Dan along with me. He found it as refreshing and magical as I did, and we returned to the house ready for the day to begin.

Over coffee, we consulted our ghost town book and a map and made a plan to visit some of the ruins along the Turquoise Trail. We all know about best-laid plans, though. Although the road to the first town took us through some lovely scenery...











...when we got to the final turn-off, we found the road closed and a sign posted, warning against trespassing. So we went to the next town, where we saw a restored church...











...and a few ruins.











The final town turned out to be inaccessible, although visible from a narrow, winding dirt road. There wasn't much to see, but it was a disappointment, nonetheless, that we couldn't get close.

By now it was early afternoon and Dan hadn't eaten all day, so we went to Albuquerque and had quesadillas. Then we browsed some of the shops and Dan bought me some cute little silver bunny earrings that are a good match for my bunny bracelet.

We went back to my Dad's place, where we found Audrey waiting by the gate...









While Dan took a nap while I asked Audrey to share her adventures of the day. As it turned out, she had a much more interesting day than I had.

She waited for the paper delivery, so she could catch up on the news of the day...











She spent some time in my father's garden...









She paid a visit to my Uncle Bill...
















And she spent some time gazing pensively at the water that runs through my father's property, irrigating the fields in the area.

Dinner was homemade enchiladas for me and Dan, and a salad of spinach and craisins for Audrey. We were all very happy with the nice dinner.











We had been invited to my Uncle Mike's house for the evening, but Dan was a little under the weather after dinner, and I was tired, so we stayed in and relaxed. Tomorrow we're going up to Santa Fe.

Day Five

I got up at 6:30 and went for a sunrise run.










Then Dan and I had breakfast and broke camp. We considered using the available shower facilities, but the water was so hard that even our Castile soap left a residue, so I cleaned myself up as best I could and we set off for my father's house in Bosque, about thirty miles south of Albuquerque.

We stopped briefly in the Black Range so Audrey could admire the view...










...but for the most part I took no pictures because I was tired and there isn't anything worth seeing that I haven't photographed on earlier trips.

We arrived at my Dad's place exhausted, and were grateful to be able to unpack for a few days and take proper showers. Then, since my Uncle Lorenzo was working on his property across the way, we paid him a visit. He's converting an old mobile home into a replica train car for use as a rental or private getaway. I forgot to take my camera, but I'll try to get pictures tomorrow because it's really amazing what he's doing over there.

The little visit with my uncle energized me, and I hung out and tried to get caught up on news and blogs before dinner. My dad fixed us a healthy meal of fish, vegetables, and salad, with preserved apples from his property for dessert.

It'll probably be an early night for me. I'm pretty tired after such poor sleep last night. Tomorrow, we may go look for some ghost towns, but our plans often change on the road.

Day Four

I woke up to a beautiful morning in the Chisos Basin and went for a sunrise run. Then I returned to my cute little cottage to shower and pack.











Dan and I had breakfast in the restaurant, then headed out. Our goal was City of the Rocks, near Deming, New Mexico. But first, we wanted to check out the Terlingua ghost town.

We came upon some pretty odd sights as we drew near, including this pink cafe...













...and a place where you can get both liquor and art.











Presumably if you drink enough liquor, you won't care whether the art is to your taste or not.

As we neared the actual ghost town, we came upon this cool and somewhat spooky cemetery.


















Then I took a few pics of the remains of company housing...












...and the old theater, which now advertises itself as a restaurant, although I saw no activity to suggest there was any kind of business going on at all.











By now it was getting hot, so we got back in the truck and started north. Just outside of Valentine, we came upon this cool little place:











Prada Marfa isn't a real store; it's an art project. Cool, isn't it?

We got to City of the Rocks near dusk, chose a campsite and pitched our tent. Then we wandered around, admiring the rocks and the stunning views.












Supper was camp food, and we turned in early. I woke up around 3 am to find the moon shining through the mesh of our tent. I got out and walked around for awhile in the moonlight, taking it all in. City of Rocks by moonlight is a special place. It was only with reluctance that I went back to bed. We had another big day ahead of us.

Day Three

I got up at 6:30 and went for an early morning desert run. It was so amazing being all alone out there with just the road, the desert, and the sun casting a red glow on the mountains.

When I got back to camp, Dan and I had breakfast, then packed up and headed to Chisos, a part of the camp that's in the mountains. We arranged for a cottage at the lodge, but were told it wouldn't be available until 4:00. No big surprise. We gathered our gear, packed Audrey more securely than we had the day before, and set out on a hike.











We had a fine time going out because it was downhill most of the way. At the end there was a bit of a climb to a vista point, where we had Clif bars and water, and hung out for a bit.























Going back was trickier, especially the last mile, which was a steep uphill. By now it was pretty hot and I was sweating, so a cold bottle of water from the Chisos store was very welcome.

It was only one o'clock, and Dan and I sat down to ponder what to do until our room was ready. We were tired and dirty, ready to bathe and take a nap. Dan was especially anxious about his guitar, sitting in the hot truck, so I suggested he ask at the reception desk if they could keep it for him until our cottage was ready.

Surprise! Our cottage was ready for us early!

We drove up the mountain to our cottage and were completely delighted with it.










Audrey even got her own room!










So now it was time to shower, put things away, and just relax for a bit. After a little nap, we went down the hill to the restaurant, where we had dinner overlooking the mountains.

In the morning, we're going to go for a run, then head toward City of the Rocks to camp again. We'll stop in Terlingua on the way to check out the ghost town. I don't know if I'll have internet in City of the Rocks, so it may be Wednesday before I post again.

Day One

I had planned to get up at six, but I found myself wide awake at 5:30, thinking of all the things I still needed to do. No point in trying to go back to sleep, so I got up and got to work. There was still some packing to do, and of course there were some things we had to do for the housesitter, like put clean sheets on the bed and clean the bathroom, that had to be saved for last.

We were on the road by 8:00.










Although it was an nine-hour drive to Fort Davis, we found it not as tiring as when we've made the same trip in reverse, at the end of our vacation. I guess one always has more stamina on the first day.










There's not much of interest one can say about a day on the road. When we got to Fort Davis, we got checked in to our hotel, looked around a bit, and then had dinner. The hotel restaurant was booked, so we had to make do with a Mexican place up the street. It was okay, but we've had better. I wanted to check out some of the gift shops, but it seems every retail operation in town closes at 6:00.

Our evening plan was to go to the McDonald Observatory for their Saturday night Star Party, but when we got there, we found it quickly filling up with noisy children. We were both in a contemplative mood, and we also worried that the program might end up geared too much toward the youngsters to be much fun for us. But when the skies clouded over and they told us they would have to resort to a virtual tour instead of actual observations, we headed back down the mountain. We'll come back some other time.

So now we're settled into our room at the historic Limpia Hotel.










We're pretty happy with our accommodations, and I hope to be able to browse some of the gift shops and see more of the town before we leave for Big Bend in the morning.












I'm not sure if I'll be able to post tonight - it depends on if we're camping or not.

Observations and Lessons Learned

Here, in no particular order, are this year's observations and lessons learned. The accompanying pictures do not necessarily have anything to do with this post. I just like them.

1. Castile Soap: Don't leave home without it! I guess I don't travel enough (okay, I know I don't travel enough) but somehow I missed the memo that castile soap washes off clean in hard water. I found some travel size Dr. Bronner's at Central Market the week before our trip, and used it every time we had to stay the night at a hotel with hard water. Wonderful stuff.
   
2. Coffee Mug: At home, I have a cup of chai tea every night, but this has been a hard tradition to continue on the road. Not only can one not put styrofoam cups in the microwave, but anything you put in them, from evening tea to morning coffee, tastes awful and is probably unsafe. Last year I found a plain china mug for $1. At that price, who cares if it gets broken? It lives in my suitcase now, and this year I had tea every night.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Travel Dress: I had always been a little skeptical of the value of a travel dress, but this spring I broke down and bought one of these in basic black. What a great purchase! It dresses up or down, is cool on hot summer days and looks fabulous layered with sweaters in cooler climes. It can be stuffed in a suitcase, then put on and worn as-is, no ironing required. I wore it with heels and a cashmere sweater for an elegant dinner in Santa Fe. I wore it with flip-flops on the day we went to Balmorhea and was able to change into a swimsuit and back into my dress in a jiffy. That evening I layered it with a blouse and some ballerina flats to go out to dinner. Best. Dress. Evah.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. General Order of Things: In retrospect, Dan and I should’ve gone to Big Bend and Chaco Canyon first, then done the hot springs and massages last. I was so stiff by the time we got home that I had to go out the next morning and get a massage.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Big Bend: If you’ve never been and don’t have a friend to advise you, stay at the Chisos Mountain Lodge. Big Bend encompasses over 800,000 acres and several very different environments. Chisos is centrally located, with many options for getting to know the area. It’s too crowded to get the true Big Bend Experience, but it’s the ideal place to get educated and plan your next visit.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. Chaco Canyon: I don’t think there are enough superlatives in the English language to describe it. One of the best things is that it’s so far from any points of civilization and so hard to get to via a long and poorly maintained dirt road, that anyone who makes it out there is likely to be dedicated and deeply respectful of the place. It’s a great place to get away from noisy, obnoxious tourists who have little appreciation for what they’re seeing. Best of all, Chaco inspires and challenges assumptions. We all need that.
   
7. Prada Marfa: We zoomed by too quickly to grasp what we were seeing, and there was no good way to go back. This has got to be some of the cleverest art ever, though.
   
8. Pie: The Pie-O-Neer Café is worth going out of your way for. A good thing, since it’s located about an hour from anywhere.
   
9. Organization: I continue to get better at this. Last year, it was the clear plastic organizer for toiletries that can be hung from a bathroom hook or towel rack. This year I put pajamas, socks, and underwear into their own bags and greatly reduced my frustration in finding things.

Well, this pretty much covers it. Thanks to all of you who have followed along, and to those who have blog-hosted my wayward bunny while I've been away. From here forward, I'll be posting at my regular blog. It's great to be in my own home again!

Day Twelve

I did not want to work out this morning. I had been stiffening up since my mountain-running at Big Bend and was grasping for any excuse, but Dan didn’t wake up and say we needed to hurry and get on the road, and the hotel treadmill wasn’t in use. Since no one was willing to help me skip my workout, I did a half-hour interval session while watching a silly TV show about Mayans being from space. Does anyone but me think it’s a little insulting to say that just because we don’t understand certain things about an ancient culture, they must have been aliens from another planet?

Before we could leave Kerrville, Dan and I had a very important stop to make: Wolfmueller’s Books. We go to this bookstore nearly every year and rarely leave empty-handed. They specialize in Texas and Southwestern themes, both fiction and non-fiction. This year I scored, buying seven books, several of which will go on in my rare book bookcase. Two are about the Texas port of Indianola, destroyed by successive hurricanes in the late nineteenth century.

I now had a sack full of books and was happy, so Dan and I started toward home. It was great to be in the green rolling hills of Central Texas after so many days in the deserts of New Mexico and West Texas.





























As we neared home, the hills flattened out...
















...and then the landscape became cluttered with billboards, buildings, and other signs of human activity. The skies darkened and we had some real concern that we’d run into a storm, but the rain followed some sort of pattern of its own and we managed to avoid it. We went to pick up the pets and Pixel was unhappy, but fine. Cadbury, on the other hand, was still on his blog-friend tour, organized by his friends at the Houseful of Rabbits. I was informed that Cadbury would find his own way home in a day or two and let us know when he needs to be picked up at the airport. Brat.

Once I was home, I spent nearly three hours unpacking, doing laundry, cooking, and tripping over the cat. It’s important to me to put my life back in order immediately when I return from a trip, before I get busy with other things and lose the ganas to sort through a stack of maps and travel brochures or put away sweaters and travel food.

Tomorrow or the next day will be my vacation summary and lessons learned post. After that, I’ll return to posting at my main blog.

Day Eleven

I so did not want to get up at 6:30 this morning. Dan hadn’t slept well and woke me up a couple times during the night, so I was tempted to skip my morning run. But I reminded myself that I would missing my last morning run at Big Bend, so I dragged myself out of bed and went. Even though I was starting to stiffen up from the hill-running and mountain hiking the day before, it was a good run and I was glad I made the effort.

I had done most of my packing the night before, so it didn’t take me very long to get ready to go. We had the truck loaded by 8:00, had breakfast, and checked out.

I would’ve liked to have gone for an early hike, but Dan had his heart set on Balmorhea, which suited almost as well. I hadn’t been there in nearly thirty years and was curious to see it again. So we headed north out of the park, stopped in Alpine for gas and supplies at one of their organic grocery stores, then continued toward Fort Davis...











































...then picked up the road down the mountain...















...and to Balmorhea.











































Balmorhea was pretty much how I remembered it, except smaller. Isn’t everything you remember from childhood smaller? The water was cold and it took me awhile to get used to it. Meanwhile, little fish nibbled my legs and toes, which didn’t bother me for the most part, except for a few times when they bit hard and I had to shoo them away. I was curious to get a good look at them, so I finally forced myself to get my head wet, and after that I was able to tolerate the water just fine. My new swim goggles didn’t leak, so I did laps for a little while, swimming with the little silver fishes. But then some kids decided to start a game of water volleyball where I was swimming and there weren’t any other good places. I think there was a spot I could’ve used near the diving area, but the water in the section closest to the spring feed is much colder and last time I was at Balmorhea I got chilled over there and ran into some difficulty in the middle of the pool. No way was I trying that again in my older and hopefully wiser state. So I said good-bye to my fish friends and got out of the water.

With temps in the 90s, it didn’t take long for my hair to dry while Dan and I had a picnic of leftover tortellini from the night before, heated in foil on the sunny dashboard. Then, after what was really too short a stay, we got back on the road.

By now I was really feeling the lack of sleep the night before and the long stretch of I-10 made me sleepy. There’s just not much out there between towns, and even the towns aren’t much to write home about. This was the first time we had driven this stretch in daylight, but I wasn’t surprised to see that we hadn’t been missing much, unless you count this mural of Paisano Pete, the roadrunner. We didn't pass by the statue this year, but I've photographed it before.















For awhile it looked like we might run into some rain, but it remained always just a little ways down the road.





























It was a relief to make it into the hill country.

























































We thought we’d have to stop for the night somewhere between Fort Stockton and Kerrville, but we ended up getting all the way to Kerrville by 6:00, where we decided to stop for the night. We got a hotel room, showered, and went to dinner at a cute little restaurant near the historic downtown. Then we went to our favorite bookstore to see what time they would open in the morning, and decided to call it a night.

It looks like we’ll be home a day early, which suits us both fine, but in many ways I consider myself home already, back in familiar territory where I feel no particular urgency to do as much as I can before I have to leave. I’ll be glad to have part of Wednesday and all of Thursday to get settled in before going to my workshop on Friday. I see that the pollen forecast in Houston remains high. Joy. Time to start taking the meds again, I guess. Some day I’ll be in a position to move someplace where I don’t need pills just to keep breathing. It’ll be grand.

Tonight there's a storm outside my window. We left in rain, we return in rain. It's a funny world.