Good To Be Back Home Again

When we left for Southern California a couple of weeks ago, I thought, "Gee! It will be warmer there, so let the fun begin!" Instead, the weather was record-breaking in its coldness and it even snowed not too far from Trudy's place where we were staying under the carport in our little teardrop trailer. And it rained, too. My flip flops remained in the suitcase.

Of course, as soon as we got home, the Cali weather recovered and temps were a balmy 75 degrees. Just my luck!

It was still a good visit and Trudy was much better after having picked up a vicious flu bug at our place during her Thanksgiving visit. Thanks to excellent nursing from Pattie and with Z's weekend respite care, she's back in the game and once again beating me at Words With Friends.

After a brew pub dinner and night spent with brother K and sis-in-law J at their Isabella casita, we headed back to NM, provisioned ourselves at Trader Joe's and drove north.

Now we are home and it's time to declutter and get rid of the dust rabbits (they are bigger than dust bunnies) which have accumulated since Thanksgiving. (I had the flu, too, and then there were Christmas presents to make and to buy and then it was time to go!)

And there is sewing and quilt making to do, AQS Quilt Week in Albuquerque, a Growing Dome to plant, and an Arctic Front coming in.

 Let The Fun Begin!

Salman Raspberry Ranch and Gardens

Yesterday we went for a quick visit to Salman Ranch, near the village of La Cueva, about nine miles away. Salman Ranch, store, gardens, cafe, nursery and raspberry fields are a busy place on a summer weekend, kind of like Tom's Farms in Corona, but with a real farm.

The summer rains have made the gardens riotous with native perennial and annual flowers carefully tended by a couple of guys who really know what works well in this high altitude-variable weather planting zone.

The gardens lay within the adobe and flagstone walled ruins of an 1850's grist mill and mercantile building where the tack and blacksmith shops once stood.

Benches are positioned here and there, making it a good place to just hang out and commune with nature.

Since it's raspberry picking season, the ranch's U Pick It fields were full of people enjoying a Sunday outside doing honest farm labor. Kids and dogs are welcome, and everyone was having a fine old time. After an hour of picking, M and I had four pounds of organic, local raspberries at the peak of ripeness.

I probably ate a pound while I was picking, but thank goodness the guy who assigned us our rows didn't really weigh us before and then after we were done, like he had threatened.

Here's our haul. The photo is significant: a meta moment, if you will.

Some of the raspberries were gobbled as soon as they got home, others were flash frozen and placed in freezer bags, and we made a cornmeal raspberry cake from the rest. More about that cake later. 

Standing on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona

“I was standin’ on the corner in Winslow Arizona,…..”

Winslow, Arizona is familiar to everyone who has heard the Eagles’ 1970s hit song “Take it Easy.” The town should be better known, however, for its La Posada Hotel, where we stayed this past December.

 The last of the Harvey House hotels, La Posada was built in 1930 when Winslow was an important railway stop and the largest town in Northern Arizona. 

 Architect Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter designed the hotel, decorating with original Navajo rugs and Pueblo pottery. Now the lobby and hallways are filled with amazing paintings, photos, and sculpture created by local Southwestern artists.

It's like living in an art museum.

 

Many famous actors and celebrities stayed there because it was THE place to stop when traveling through Arizona on the Santa Fe RR back then. Closed in the late 50s as rail travel declined, it was turned into an office building.

 

La Posada was restored and reopened in 2006. Tom and I ate at their world class (well, that's what they say on the website and yes, the food is good) restaurant last year and this time decided to get a room.  

When we got there, our reserved room had been changed twice, and Tom was very disappointed to learn that one of those rooms had been the John Wayne room, named, as others were, after famous actors who had stayed there. He complained the whole night about being in the Lionel Barrymore room.     

 “Who the hell knows who Lionel Barrymore is anymore?” he whined and rhymed.

Our room was small but cozy, and everything had been updated, yet preserving the old-time pre-WWII feeling. We had dinner and breakfast (check out the Yelp reviews), and in between roamed the halls, fabulously decorated with original rugs and other art..

I had time after dinner to sit in what used to be the ballroom and drink a blue martini.

The Navajo rugs can be bought right off the wall for hundreds if not thousands of dollars, while more affordable ones from Oaxaca, Mexico, can be found in the hotel's gift shop.

 

We spent a comfortable night with heat that worked and even a flat screen TV. In contrast to one reviewer’s comments about the trains running by and disturbing their sleep, we slept fine. Winslow is, after all, still a functioning train depot. 

 

 We left regretfully early after breakfast, anxious to make it home in one day.     Tom, still disappointed about the John Wayne room, paused on our way out, noticing the names of the other rooms on our floor.

 

“The hell with John Wayne!” he said,  pausing at a room two doors down from ours. “Next time, I want to sleep in Jane Russell’s bed!”

The poor man is becoming more delusional every year.

On our way out of Winslow, we took the obligatory picture of Miss Pearl, not standing on the corner, but sitting. She is an anxious traveler, and I don’t think she was too interested in the Girl in the Flat-Bed Ford.

Obsessive-Compulsive, or Just Thrifty?

Husband Tom, I discovered long ago, has obsessive-compulsive tendencies, with his collections of outdoor magazines, pocket knives, binoculars, Western history books, maps, etc. Sometimes, like this time, it is just too much.

The other day, after dropping the kids off at Albuquerque Sunport, we decided to spend the night in a motel and go home the next day after our car was fixed. Everything went well, we did a little shopping, the car was repaired, and we were home before dark.

The next morning, with a sigh of satisfaction, Tom began to pull his "treasures from the motel" out of his overnight bag. The bags  of coffee--regular and decaf--I suppose we can use in an emergency if we run out. Tea comes in handy, even if it's generic. Soap still in its wrapper and the little shampoo bottles, unopened can go in the Airstream trailer when we travel, I admit.  I suppose we can always use chopsticks since there are websites devoted to nifty ways to use chopsticks. But the three paper cups and three plastic cups still in their wrappers? Don't we have enough glasses here? The cheap little pad and pen from the overnight table? How many of those do we have? The unwrapped plasticware set from our Chinese take out, complete with napkin?

You would think we were terribly poor, the way Tom collects this stuff. "Hey, we paid for it," is his defense.

Fortunately he never takes towels or we would be charged for them. And we never stay in places where they offer you a complimentary plush terrycloth robe. Thank goodness! (But when I travel alone, I like those places--- our little secret, okay.)

What about the Gideon Bible in the drawer? "Already got one---and besides, they want you to take those," was his cool reply.

Tom seemed so pleased with his "treasures," so I will probably wait a couple weeks before quietly throwing them out. Or maybe I can use those cups to start some seedlings. And I'll pop the plastic forks in the trailer, too.

You never know when you might need those things.

Johnny Depp, John Dillinger and the Little Bohemia Lodge

I don't think Tom will ever recover from being a history teacher. After our trip through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we made a beeline for the Little Bohemia Lodge, near Manitowish Waters, in northern Wisconsin. 

   
The reason, of course, is historical:  Little Bohemia is where the famous shootout between the Dillinger gang and FBI agents occurred as depicted in the recent film Public Enemies, with Johnny Depp (woot!) as bank robber John Dillinger. 

Oh, yeah, buddy!

Actually, the Lodge was pretty interesting. We settled in for lunch and after we ordered, Tom wandered around, taking pictures. The hostess was gracious enough to show him the room where the FBI shot through the windows, thinking Dillinger was inside. The FBI didn't consider whether anybody else might have been there, but just blasted away. The original glass with bullet holes is still there, covered by other windows to preserve it.  (Click any photos for a closer look.)

   
Tom followed the trajectory of the bullets and found they had penetrated a wall across the room, and then into the wall of the next room!

 

 The shootout was a public relations disaster for the FBI. One agent was killed as well as one innocent bystander. Two bar room patrons were wounded in their Chevy coupe as they left the Lodge parking lot. The headlines screamed, "Ineptitude!"

  
Dillinger and the gang escaped; witnesses are still mounted in the main hall. 

  
A glass case holds items the gang left after fleeing the scene, including Dillinger’s Ex-Lax. Maybe after taking the Ex-Lax he was “on the run” in more ways than one.

 Five years ago the former owner wanted to tear down the Lodge and build condominiums, according to the hostess/tour guide. Fortunately, the present owner had a cabin across the lake, and, thinking it a shame to have something so historical torn down, bought the lodge and re-opened it. Soon after, he was contacted by Universal Pictures asking to film on location! Despite the addition of a deck, the lodge is almost exactly like it was in the 1934 shootout, including the tables and chairs, so we were told.

 
While Tom took pictures, two diners asked him what he was “shooting,” (get it?), so he launched into a historical explanation. The couple was unaware of what had happened, and they hadn’t seen the movie Public Enemies. Tom took them to the bullet holes on the wall and explained what the hostess had said. 

While Tom (in history teacher mode) gave his lecture to the captive couple, I enjoyed the posters in the entry area.    

I like history, too, you know, especially if Johnny Depp is involved.

Experiencing Fall in All Its Glory

While we were teaching we never had the chance to experience fall in other places besides SoCal. In Southern California fall is hot. Kids wear new fall school clothes even though it's 90 degrees. By afternoon, faces red and sweaty, they desperately tug at new sweaters, wishing they hadn't been slaves to fashion. Walking home in those scratchy new clothes is an ordeal, finally ended at home where fall fashions are flung into a corner and replaced with tank top, shorts, and flip flops. Ahhhhh!!! That's more like it!


 Northern Michigan was cool and drizzly, the Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula shrouded in fog. We crossed into the unknown. (Not really, since we had been there before in the summertime, but I like the way the previous sentence sounds.)

 Visiting Northern Michigan and its Upper Peninsula in the fall has been a treat. We couldn't get enough of the reds, oranges, yellows, browns, greens of the changing leaves. I haven't seen New England's leaves but I'll bet the U.P. is a contender in the leaf color contest.

This isn't peak leaf looking season. That's in a couple of weeks when I bet it's even more spectacular.

Even piles of leaves in our campground are awesome.

On to Wisconsin tomorrow. Special Lawbreaker Edition: Dillinger

On the Road Edition

Tom has taken me to Salisbury, England, to eat Salisbury steak.

He's taken me to Kentucky to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken.

We've had New England Clam Chowder in New England and Manhattan Clam Chowder in Manhattan.

And now he has taken me to Gas City, Indiana

to get gas!

Will the excitement never end?

Tom wisely says, "It's better to get gas in Gas City than to have gas!" (I wonder if he was talking about me?)

PS-Quilty Buddies: On my way to the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat!

Iggy's in St. John's, Arizona

Route 66 Booth at Iggy's Restaurant

On our trip back from California we stopped in St. Johns, Arizona, looking for a place to have breakfast. After driving through town and not finding anything that looked good, me wondering if we would have to end up eating lunch instead of breakfast, we finally found Iggy’s right downtown. We passed it by the first time; it looked like nobody was inside. 

No cars parked in front, quiet. Too quiet. Usually that's my signal to pass up a place, but we were starved. Tom hopped out to check if they were open and they were. 

We went in and ordered. Looking around, we realized that somebody had lovingly decorated the place, each booth devoted to a theme such as Arizona history, Disneyland, Veterans, and even a Chile Booth, with all different kinds of chiles hanging from the booth's ceiling, posters identifying chiles, even a glass case showcasing various hot sauces.

Chile Booth

 While we tucked into our very tasty breakfast, a breakfast burrito for me and ham and eggs for Tom, we talked with the server, wondering why there were no other customers.    

“Because this is a Mormon town, and they don’t support us.  They want us out,” she ruefully replied. Apparently she and her husband had started the business four years ago with high hopes, but because it included a bar that served alcohol next door, (with a separate entrance, she was quick to point out) they had been effectively shunned by the majority of the 3200 residents of St. Johns, 2600 of which were Mormon.

The bar itself is discreetly tucked to the side with a closed door separate from the restaurant. The restaurant had some regular customers, including what the server called "airline people," who came through regularly, and some foreign tourists, but with the sagging economy, fewer and fewer were making it.  

Strangely, she said, whenever the civic leaders of the town want to show off local businesses, they always bring important visitors to this restaurant. Then they ignore it the rest of the time.

“We figure we have 30 days left, and then our million and a half dollar investment will go belly up,” she said, sadly.  

Too bad. The breakfast was great, the décor delightful. With a prime location in the middle of town, a varied menu, reasonable prices, and great service, this is a restaurant any community should be proud of----and support.   

 The economy is worse than we thought, and  what looks like religious intolerance very much alive in St. Johns, Arizona. We will be coming back in December, and hope very much that Iggy's is still there. If anyone knows about this situation and has another take on it, add your comment. We'd be interested in hearing another side of the story.

Ironically, St. John's has this city motto: "Town of Friendly Neighbors."

Country Mice Go To The Big City

We just returned from a two week trip to Southern California, in particularly Orange County (OC) and Riverside County, part of what is called the Inland Empire (IE).  That's where I grew up (OC) and where we've spent the past 40 years (OC and IE).

The family is still there in OC and our teeth needed cleaning. Yes, we are having a hard time separating from dentist Pat Brown and hygienist Melissa. Son Z is there, too, as is Tom's fam. Plus we needed to take the rest of the stuff from my parents' place and more stuff gleaned from our old house back to New Mexico. That's where we live now, the northern part, since we moved here a little over a year ago.

Ms Pearl has increasingly become a Nervous Nellie in the car, standing and panting the whole way to California, so we gave her what she calls "Ruthies," a little something to relax her. We only gave her half a pill, so she panted quietly and stared a lot at I don't know what.

Partay in the back seat with Ms. P!

Visiting with Tom's mom, dad, sister and her kids and their progeny is always an adventure, a happy, circus-like atmosphere with kids and their parents running around, lots of chat, and good food to make it even better. We were lucky to see all the nieces and nephews in this branch of the family, some who flew in from Seattle and San Francisco. Christmas in July is now its official name.

We had a beach day. This is Newport Pier beach on a Monday, not too crowded, really. We had time to visit with friends and I got in a little shopping. One thing I noticed when we were visiting were the many places to go and things to do and people to see in the OC and IE. Gee, you could make a song out of that last sentence!

We missed home, though, and are glad to be back here at the Nickel and Dime.

Even though Mignon, that devil, did it again, reached through the growing dome's vents for the last broccoli plant, some cucumber plants, and a bite of bell pepper! Time to fence the dome.