Bouncing Around Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio - 2012

Before it slips my mind again, let me introduce you to our new GPS.  She’s been with us for almost six months now and we’re getting used to each other.  Like her predecessor, her name is Nuvi because we are decidedly unoriginal when it comes to naming inanimate objects.  Unlike her predecessor, an American male who tended to get hysterical if you didn’t do exactly what he told you to do (and then pouted if you ignored him more than twice), this business-like woman issues her instructions in a stern voice and recovers very quickly with the next option if you didn’t follow instructions the first time.  She seems to know when you’ve deliberately ignored her or when you’ve simply over-shot a turn and issues her next directive accordingly.  She does not recalculate, she adjusts.  Smart woman.  However, she does share her predecessor’s slight dyslexia…what she tells you is up here ahead on the right is very often up here ahead on the left.  And vice versa.  Nuvi I had trouble pronouncing Walmart, rolling the “wal” around in his mouth like a wad of chewing gum; Nuvi II cannot pronounce “supercenter”(it comes out sue-purse’-in-ter) but we love her just the same.

So with Nuvi II’s assistance, we located our campground in Glendale, Kentucky and made forays from there northward to Fort Knox to visit the General Patton Museum.  The museum is in a state of transition, with the Armor School and its remaining armor units -- the 194th Armored Brigade and the 316th Cavalry Brigade, having been moved to Fort Benning, Georgia and replaced with a museum devoted to the subject of leadership.  We did see replicas of Patton’s pearl-handled revolvers, his reconstructed staff car and various bits and pieces of military attire.  There’s a sizeable auditorium where a constant loop of the George C. Scott movie, Patton, is played.  Not far from the museum, the highway passes within a short distance of the National Gold Depository where the nation’s supply of bullion is stored.  Tours are not allowed, not that there’s anything left in there anyhow, but we were able to pull off the road and take this photo.  Altogether, this was not an exciting trip and we were soon on our way back to Glendale.

At the visitors center in Elizabethtown (called E-town by the locals) we picked up a brochure for the Swope’s  Cars of Yesteryear Museum and we’re so happy we did.  It’s a little treasure.  The museum sits amid several Swopes owned and operated car dealerships and is open to the public with no admission fee.  The cars are beautifully restored, although not all to original standards.  The gorgeous saddle tan and burgundy roadster probably was available in basic black when it was brand new.  One of my favorites was a ‘56 T-bird in  a desert coral color.   There was also a Nash Metropolitan – remember them? – which looks downright roomy and comfortable compared with some of the sub-compacts of today.  Not to mention a little more stylish.

The next day we took a scenic byway to visit the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace NHP near Hodgenville at the site of Sinking Spring Farm once owned by Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, Abraham’s parents.  The memorial surrounds the log cabin where Lincoln was born and is reached by 57 steps, one for each year of his life.  Unfortunately the farm was lost in a land dispute and the Lincolns moved to Knob Creek where Abe spent his boyhood.  It’s hard to imagine a family of four living in the small square cabin which has only one window and one door. A knob, by the way, is what they call hills around this part of Kentucky.   The scenic byway led us eventually to Bardstown with its historic downtown.

 

 

Naturally we had to pay a visit to the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History and the Bardstown Historical Museum.  The whiskey museum told us more than we needed to know about bourbon.  We were told there’s a building in town with a cannonball imbedded in a wall, a scar from Civil War days, but we weren’t able to locate it on a quick drive-by and with serious storm-clouds gathering we opted to forego history and head back to the coach before the skies opened up.

Our final night in Glendale was on the soggy side with a heavy rain that lasted most of the night but at least the tornado warnings remained much further north of us.  It was still dripping the next day as we pulled out for the drive to Huntington, West Virginia.  We encountered fairly heavy rains around Lexington but by the time we reached our campground, it was merely overcast.  We’ve often stayed at campgrounds that are “multi-purpose” but never one that was both an RV park and an airfield.  Air activity was up and running by 9:00 the next morning with someone practicing touch-and-goes on the grass strip behind our coach.  We were gone most of the day so it didn’t bother us in the least and by the time we got back late afternoon the skydivers were making their last jump of the day.  The group we saw was very accurate, landing on their feet within a few yards of the clubhouse.  Good thing, too, because just beyond the hedgerow is the Ohio River. 

While others were jumping out of planes, we were in downtown Huntington visiting the Museum of Radio & Technology, another freebie, crammed chock-a-block with old radios, phonographs, shortwaves, computers and television sets with round screens.  When faced with those monster radios with their knobs and dials, fabric-covered speakers and wooden cases one cannot help but hear the ghostly voices of their favorite radio shows from childhood.  Why did we always sit on the floor and stare at the radio?  Were we just practicing for the days when television would come along and knock the radio off its entertainment pedestal?

Our next stop was the J. Taylor Auto Collection, generously displayed to the public at no charge by the proud owner.  This 1930 Cadillac limousine was reported to be air conditioned.  I’m not sure how well it worked but there was a tiny fan affixed to the steering column, pointing straight at the driver’s face.  With its V-16 engine, the car probably could have reached sufficient speed to keep things cool inside, even without the little fan.  This was another stellar array of impressive old cars, including the ‘64 Impala one of the docents drives back and forth to work each day. 

Rarely do we travel on Sundays but we’re on a condensed schedule so we traveled through the hills and hollows of West Virginia, enjoying the sunny skies and pretty scenery.  We arrived in Cambridge, Ohio shortly after noon and got hooked up before dashing off to town in search of a Sunday newspaper.  And aren’t we glad we did!  Howie noticed a sign for a museum and we followed the arrows to the National Museum of Cambridge Glass.  We arrived with an hour to spare and the hostess volunteered to stay late if we didn’t finish our tour by closing time.  The Cambridge Glass Company opened in 1902 and continued operation until 1958.  The museum is maintained by the members of an organization devoted to the collection of Cambridge glassware.  Beautifully displayed and lit in sparkling glass cases, the array of shapes and colors was dazzling.  The blues, reds and greens were particularly rich and vibrant.  It wasn’t so much a downturn in the economy that put Cambridge Glass out of business but a trend toward…yuk…plastic, cheaper products from the Orient and a lack of interest on the part of the American housewife in tending to large collections of stemware.

With only two days in town, we made haste on Monday morning to visit downtown Cambridge.  Signs led us to Mosser Glass, founded by a former employee of Cambridge Glass.  We were shown through the factory to watch pressed glass pieces being made.  It’s a  fascinating  process which has probably not changed much over the ages.  The guide told us that machines sometimes do the pressing but in the case of Mosser the glassmaker pulls the heavy lever to compress the molten glass into the mold.   With an abbreviated range of colors and patterns, Mosser continues to survive in a niche market.  They also have a second factory which makes glass products for the pharmaceutical trade…beakers, funnels and such.

Our final stop in Cambridge was The Hopalong Cassidy Museum and Antique Store.  The museum was free, thank heavens.  It would be difficult to decide how much that experience might be worth in terms of admission fee.  I did see a photograph of Guy Madison, just like the one I had as a pre-teen.  If only I’d had the foresight to save all that clutter.

Whirlwind Tour–Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky–Spring 2012

Given the severe tornadic activity in the past few years, we were just a little jumpy at the idea of crossing Tornado Alley so we put our heads down, pointed the coach due east and got across the plains as quickly as leisurely touring would allow.  Except that we kept inadvertently using the Interstate to just to get around town, our stay in Clinton, Oklahoma was uneventful.  Clinton is home to the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum (the National Route 66 Museum is back up the road in Elk City) and we were fortunate enough to pay a visit on a lazy Sunday afternoon when admission fees were being discounted.  The museum is a little short on artifacts but long on story boards and blow-ups of photos from the heyday of The Mother Road.  The parking lot was filled with motorcycles, all ridden by folks speaking a foreign language; German, perhaps, or Dutch.  We surmise they were doing a grand tour of the historic road, living out their Jack Kerouac fantasies.  Our visit to this museum reminded us we should make a point of watching “ The Grapes of Wrath” the next time it’s on TCM.

Only rarely do we do one-nighters but decided to stop in Checotah, Oklahoma for just a little shut-eye before leaping into Arkansas heading to Conway. We took comfort in the fact that our site was within an easy dash to the tornado shelter, a half round metal thing with murals painted on the side.  It didn’t look all that substantial.

This was our second visit to Conway, a sizeable city which describes itself as being between Toad Suck and Pickles Gap.  And it is.  We had reservations at the Corps of Engineers campground at Toad Suck Ferry, a pleasant spot on the river.  The riverfront site we were assigned was nowhere near level and so we opted to move inland.  The park is used heavily by Conway school children on outings and so most mornings we were greeted by noisy groups of kiddies at play.  Fishing is also very big in this neighborhood and many of our neighbors were towing boats, not cars. 

While we were still in Amarillo we began to notice big ol’ moths zooming through the coach at night, bumping into things and making pests of themselves.  It was learned that they are called millers and that this was a big year in their cycle.  We were still pursuing them all across Arkansas and may finally be rid of them.  They can leave a welt if they hit you head on.

Except for the cocktail lounge at the Peabody Hotel, there is not much I like about Memphis, so it was no hardship to just stay on the Arkansas side of the river in West Memphis, get some chores done, do a bit of grocery shopping and hunker down to wait out a terrific downpour.            We were camped at Tom Sawyer, a campground which is smack on the Mississippi River and could see (and hear) the tugs moving the barges up and down the river.  The big diesel engines are felt more than heard and quite often the thrumming was enough to wake a body from a sound sleep.  This location is almost enough to make a person want to re-read Mark Twain.

The storm passed during the night and we had only overcast skies left for our drive to Paducah, Kentucky.  Given my aversion to bridges, it came as a rude shock that I’d plotted our course to take us over not one but two two-lane bridges, the first across the Mississippi and moments later one across the Ohio.  These are not shiny new bridges.  The lanes seem barely wide enough for cars to pass safely going in opposite directions so it was nerve-wracking to meet a procession of on-coming semis.  It seemed like a minor miracle that we didn’t clip any mirrors.

The main reason we headed to Paducah was to get off the road for Memorial Day.  We’ve visited the city before and had toured most of the major attractions.  The owner of the campground supplied us with so much information about what to see and do that we really didn’t need to go to the Welcome Center at all.  But we did because it is housed in a really gorgeous 1860s mansion.

The campground also provided us with free passes to the William Clark Market House Museum; we had toured the museum on our first visit to Paducah and without those passes probably wouldn’t have gone back for a second look.  And we would have missed out on a wonderful afternoon.  We were the only customers and the curator was able to spend time with us, pointing out various treasures and feeding us snippets of history.  

Following a devastating flood, a wall was constructed to keep the Ohio River from reaching the historic old downtown area.  When confronted with an ugly gray wall, what’s an artistic community to do but decorate the whole shebang with a collection of murals depicting the city’s various claims to fame.  This is the least threatening riverfront you can imagine; it’s proximity to the National Quilt Museum means there’s plenty of grandfatherly fellas wandering around, waiting for their wives to finish touring all the fabric shops that have mushroomed up around the museum.  Most of these men are loaded down like pack mules with bags of notions, pattern books and, of course, yards and yards of fabric.  They look bemused.  And bored.

During our conversation with the curator at the Market House museum we were struck with how much her narrative and personal touch went into making everything come alive.  When we told her we were fans of small-town museums, she urged us to visit Adsmore, located in Princeton, Kentucky. 

So the very next day we got an early (for us) start and headed up the highway toward Princeton, a forty mile drive.  Adsmore was built in 1857 by a local merchant.  But he fell upon hard times and sold the house in 1900 to John and Nancy Smith and their daughter and son-in-law, Robert and Mayme Garrett and their new-born daughter Katharine Garrett.  Ms. Garrett never married and when she died in 1984 the town was surprised to learn she had willed the house and all its contents to the Caldwell County Library District.  Fortunately she also left a sockful of money to refurbish the house and to keep it open as  museum.  This place is an absolute treasure!  Those in charge have found a unique way to show off the enormous stash of furniture, clothing, linens, silver – they stage tableaus where the house is decorated with trappings from whichever event is being highlighted.  We were lucky enough to arrive in time for Selina Smith’s (Mayme’s younger sister) wedding to John Osborne.  The parlor was decorated with wedding flowers, the minister’s Bible and reading glasses were on a table by the mantle and the photographer’s camera was at the ready.  The wedding gifts were on display, along with a mannequin wearing Selena’s beautifully preserved wedding dress.

We’ve toured quite a few historic homes and I don’t recall ever seeing one which showed so little wear and tear.  I was amazed at how fresh and pretty all the linens looked.  I saw only one bed skirt which showed signs of age, having yellowed in spots, and the mother-of-the bride’s dress was clearly in distress.  But everything else, including the most delicate laces, were in wonderful condition.  The table was set for a formal buffet (for 100 guests) and the cut-work cloth and napkins were pristine.  It was probably Katherine who took the time and trouble to preserve everything so well.

The most interesting part of the Adsmore story, however, was Selina’s choice of a groom.  She met John Osborne while they were both touring in Egypt.  He was considerably older, a doctor and the third governor of Wyoming.  Do you remember a baddie from Wyoming’s early history, “Big Nose George” Parrott?  You’ve met him earlier in these pages.  His is a fascinating story and Dr. Osborne was one of the physicians who tried to figure out what soured George on the good life…and who wore shoes made from George’s hide to the ball when Osborne was inaugurated as Governor of Wyoming.  So here’s Selina, a wealthy popular Southern beauty, being married off to a wild-and-wooly Westerner. 

Photographs are not allowed in the house and the website is not overly informative so you’ll have to use your imagination to picture one of the photos on display in the house….it’s a photograph taken in front of the pyramids in Egypt, Selina and her sister Kate and Kate’s husband James are sitting on camels, dressed to the nines in what appears to be heavy winter clothing.  Kate and Jim were supposed to be chaperoning Selina on this trip but apparently weren’t doing a very good job of it.  Because right beside Selina, astride his own camel, sits Dr. Osborne.  The ladies were wearing those enormous wide-brimmed hats, all covered with flowers, looking ever so chic.  The gents had on top hats.  The camels wore goofy grins as camels always do.

So Adsmore gets a big A Plus Plus from us as a must-see if you find yourself in that part of Kentucky known as The Land Between The Lakes…Princeton isn’t between the lakes but it’s very close.

We have one more stop in Kentucky,then it’s on to West Virginia.  Stayed tuned.

Albuquerque to Amarillo–April and May, 2012

Our week-long visit to Albuquerque was pretty much taken up with things electronic.  The computer we purchased in Flagstaff had a couple of “blue screen of death” episodes so we went to Best Buy in Albuquerque and swapped for another.  That meant starting the mind meld process all over again and, once that was accomplished, it was discovered that the new computer was incapable of communicating with the old printer and so yet another trip to the big box electronic store was required.  At least everything seems to be functional and we can get back to the matter at hand – exploring, enjoying, experiencing.

Not being left with much time to revisit some of our favorite Albuquerque sites, we focused on our first visit to Tinkertown Museum located in nearby Sandia Park, New Mexico.   This home-grown museum is what puts the “quirk” in Albuquirky.  A seemingly endless string of rooms, sheds, hallways and open-air displays, this museum is a testimony to one man’s ability to collect, create and carve.  Starting when he was still in junior high, Ross Ward began carving miniatures and assembling them in scenes of circuses and towns.  It’s pretty apparent he never parted with anything!  Howie was delighted to find Esmeralda, a fortune teller he believes he first met when she  worked at an amusement park in Chicago several decades ago.  Old signs, walls made from bottles, license plates – it’s all here, randomly displayed in tribute to one man’s vivid imagination and acquisitiveness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somehow the jump from Albuquerque to Amarillo seemed just a touch too long so we decided to spend a couple of nights in Tucumcari.  It was quite an experience!  Tucumcari is just off I-40 about half way between the two major cities.  Our RV park, featuring all of necessities in good working order, looked like the set of an old Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western.  It was right on old Route 66 and was once, we’re guessing, a “motor court”.  There are a lot of towns and cities strung out along historic old Route 66, most of them trading on their relationship to The Mother Road.  Of all those towns we’ve visited, Tucumcari had probably changed the least.  It’s not a ghost town but it is a town filled with ghosts. With a population just over 5,000 there’s room for at least twice as many folks in a town that doesn’t sit on the Interstate but rather sprawls a short distance away.   The buildings are “as is”, not rehabbed to represent the good old days.  Wonderfully detailed murals adorn walls of buildings which are otherwise boarded up.  Old cars and trucks, dating to the early ‘50s are casually parked in lots next to diners and motels.

While in town, we paid a visit to the Tucumcari Historical Museum housed in an old building which has served as everything from a school to a hospital.  It is crammed to the rafters with odds and ends of life on the frontier.  From shards of pottery to antique dolls, this place had it all. And, unlike most museums of its kind, the ubiquitous display of barbed wire was not stapled to a board indoors but actually strung on posts to protect an open-air exhibit of fossils from nearby digs.  The town also boasts a dinosaur museum which is part of Mesalands Community College.  We deemed the entry fee too high for what we might expect to find inside and so we decided to by-pass.  We just wanted to visit the museum, not endow it.

The terrain between Tucumcari and Amarillo leveled out, although we didn’t lose that much in altitude.  It’s not quite as ugly as west Texas but there’s not much in the way of scenery to snag the eye.  And not many towns along the way to break up the boredom so we were happy to arrive in Amarillo and get settled in for a week-long visit.  It was hot and windy when we arrived and remained so for just one day.  Then a cold front blew in (blew being the operative word) and we had several chilly, cloudy days with a buffeting wind that rocked us to sleep at night and kept us bundled up during the day.  On our first full day in town we headed off to the Visitors Center to collect information on what do see and do in the area.  Finding ourselves just across the street from the main library, we hit the Friends of the Library shop to snag a few good books for the road ahead.  It being Monday, some of the city’s attractions were closed but we learned that the zoo was open and that there’s no admission fee on Mondays.  So of course we headed to the zoo.  It’s a little short on displays but they do have a very handsome lion and his harem of two, plus a pair of energetic tigers who were busily prowling around their enclosure.  We’ve learned that big cats sleep something like 22 hours a day so it was nice to see some up and about for a change.

 

Our campground is only a mile or so from one of Amarillo’s most famous attractions, Cadillac Ranch. The landowner, with time on his hands and the use of some heavy equipment, buried ten Caddies nose-first into his pasture, all canted at precisely the same angle.  For a period of time, they remained untouched but now they’ve been “tagged” by any number of graffiti “artists”.  There seems to be an endless stream of people willing to slog across the pasture to view the cars up close and personal, even though the cars can be seen quite well from the Interstate, even at 70 mph. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day it was off to visit the National Quarterhorse Hall of Fame and Museum.  The time-line exhibit was especially interesting, not so much for what was happening in the wonderful world of quarterhorses but for the events that were selected as milestones.  We didn’t know the microwave oven dates that far back (and I’ve yet to figure out how to use mine) and it was fun to see the Xerox 914 listed as a stepping stone to the future.  One of the interactive displays had film clips of various competitions for quarterhorses and I became intrigued with the clip on reining events.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The stops done at full gallop give a whole new meaning to the term “power brakes”.  It was well worth watching again….so I did.

Next it was off to the Amarillo Museum of Art on the campus of Amarillo College.  Much of the collection features Asian art, most of which was donated by just two families.  There are also a few Georgia O’Keefe watercolors and  photos by Weston, Stieglitz, Ansell Adams and Dorothea Lange.  Admission is free, which seemed appropriate.

With only one nice day forecast between cloudy and/or rainy ones, we headed out early on Wednesday for the 30+ mile drive to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, the primary reason we routed ourselves through Amarillo.  The canyon is the second largest in the United States (can you imagine Texas having the second largest of anything?), being 120 miles long and 800 feet deep.  It was carved by the insignificant sounding Prairie Dog Town Fork of the more famous Red River.  Palo Duro boasts an array of colorful rock layers, from bright red and white to yellow and gray, and has significantly more vegetation than the Grand Canyon so there’s an over-lay of bright green to compliment the earth tones.  There are plenty of hiking, biking and riding trails in the park along with camping areas and cabin rentals but not much in the way of paved roads.  There’s a two-mile long, 10% grade to get to the canyon floor on a road originally laid by the CCC.  Evidence of their stonework still exists at the El Coronado Lodge.

 

One of the more interesting characters to be linked to Palo Duro is Charles Goodnight who, along with Oliver Loving, trailed cattle from central Texas north into Colorado.  They were probably the inspiration for the main characters in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.  Goodnight’s  JA Ranch once covered over one million acres. How’s that for elbow room?   After leaving the canyon, we stopped in the city of Canyon to visit the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum on the campus of West Texas A&M University.  While a little overwhelming, this museum is particularly well laid out, with concise story boards and captioning and handsomely presented artifacts.  From prehistoric days to early pioneers through the oil boom days, this museum covers it all.  It does make a person a little cranky to see objects from one’s childhood (or, worse, one’s wedding presents) displayed as part of history in a museum, however!  We happily spent several hours combing the three floors of displays and could have stayed longer had we not faced a long drive home.

Weather permitting, we will be leaving Saturday for a hop-skip-jump across Oklahoma.  We weren’t able to get reservations in Elk City  to visit the Roger Miller Museum so we’ll be stopping elsewhere.  We’ll let you know if we see anything interesting along the way.

Hittin' the Road

The following posting was prepared several weeks ago.  We have a perfectly lame alibi – the computer ate our homework!  Are you buying that?  Actually, the laptop was showing signs of a nervous breakdown.  A replacement was purchased but it took some time to get it up and running and to do a mind-meld with the older laptop.  As all this was going on, we were hippity-hopping across Arizona, New Mexico and into the Texas Panhandle.  Unless we get blown away by these extraordinarily fierce winds, we can promise another update in the very near future.

 

As indicated in our last posting, we had extended our stay in Mesa for an additional month in order to wrap up repairs to the RV and to  ourselves.  We continued with various sorts of socializing, plus lawn bowling for Howie and beading for me. Then, having pretty much decided we prefer the Phoenix area over other snowbird migration destinations, we decided to go ahead and make arrangements for next season by purchasing a small house in a retirement community.  That was accomplished in a record-setting hurry.  Now having a base,  we were able to  shovel  a ton of cargo out of the coach and  into the house; we heard an audible sigh of relief from the coach’s rear axle!  And we discovered the Saturn has a back seat after all!

About this same time last year we had a new microwave-convection oven installed in the coach and it has never worked properly so we decided to return to Bullhead City and have it repaired while it was still under warranty.  That little endeavor pretty much wasted two full weeks and when we pulled out we still weren’t sure the thing would work properly.  By then the temperature had climbed into the low 90s and the last thing we wanted to do was test the oven, especially since we only had 30 amp service and couldn’t use both the oven and the A/C.  A few days later, when we’d reached a cooler climate, a batch of muffins turned out more or less the way they’re supposed to so perhaps the oven really is repaired.

 

Our next stop was Williams, a small town which bills itself as The Gateway to the Grand Canyon.  The town is also noted as being the final town on historic Route 66 to be by-passed by the Interstate.  It had been several years since we’d visited the Grand Canyon and we decided it was worth another look so off we went on a lovely sunny day.   We knew there were areas of the park which are beyond  our physical abilities to visit but we were surprised to learn that we could drive east about 25 miles on Desert View Drive and visit…you guessed it…Desert View.  That is also known as the East Entrance and is accessible from Flagstaff.

 

The Grand Canyon has five distinct ecological “communities”.  The most common seems to be a forest of dwarf pinion and junipers which occupy the mid level.  Some areas are desert and of course a riparian district inhabits the river’s bank.  There are some stands of Ponderosa pine which thrive on the South Rim.  The North Rim, being at a higher elevation, receives more moisture and supports a wider range of montane flora.  The area supports a wide diversity of plants, animals and birds, including the newly introduced California condors.

After being pulled back from the brink of extinction, the condors were released into the park and seem to be doing very nicely.  We had views of several pairs as they made good use of the thermals over the canyon.

 

 

 

Desert View boasts an observation tower, made of stone, where one can climb to the top for an even grander view of the Grand Canyon.  No extra charge for a view of the Painted Desert off in the distance to the east.  The canyon is narrower at this end, a mere 8 miles to the North Rim as the crow flies and is a busy thoroughfare for migrating birds.

 

We also stopped at the Tusayan Museum and partook of a ranger-led stroll to the ruins.  There, framed between the trees, was a view of the San Francisco Peaks still wearing their snow caps.  Mount Humphrey is the tallest peak in Arizona, topping out at slightly over 12,000 feet.

 

 

Flagstaff is an interesting city to explore.  The historic downtown stretches out along Old Route 66 and many of the old buildings are now restaurants and boutiques.  And, being a college town, there’s always interesting wardrobes to observe.  I’m not sure the short-shorts and tank-top look with knee socks and fur-lined Ugg boots will catch on.  But odder things have happened.  In a relatively short time we were able to get a number of chores done, including the purchase of a new computer.  This one is having fainting spells and it is making us nervous.  So the trip to Flag was most useful.

Now we’re on our way to Albuquerque and points east.

Mesa, Arizona – January & February, 2012

The new year kicked off with “more of the same”, what seemed an endless round of doctors, dentists and RV techs.  All three of us are aging, some more gracefully than others. 

Never in the five years we’ve wintered in the Phoenix area has Howie managed to visit the Barrett-Jackson car auction in Scottsdale but this year he ventured out with Russ and David for a day of gawking at the automotive superstars that materialize annually at West World.   This early example of a color coordinated camping rig created quite a stir but, having once owned a VW bus, we know that any traveling in this would be done in slow motion!  It might be fine in Kansas but would be a disaster for inter-mountain driving.

 

And remember the days when this little “smart” car was considered to be anything but a smart thing to drive?  You’d be deemed out of your bloomin’ mind to drive anything that tiny.  It would be no match for a Buick in a fender-bender. 

 

 

Our “resort” is one of only four in the East Valley to boast a lawn bowling facility and Howie has since taken up the sport.   He, of course, assumed it was akin to bocce but was assured by the many Canadian participants that it’s more like curling.  To participate in one of the inter-resort tournaments, a player is required to dress all in white so it meant a mad dash to Goodwill and Beall’s Outlets to put together the “uniform”.  It turned out that finding a white belt was the most difficult, although with all the old geezers around here you’d think that would have been easy.

David and Shirley asked us to participate in a dance demonstration at their “resort”.  Somehow I misunderstood and thought it was just a casual demo for their dance class.  Oh, no, it was a full-blown Review held in the ballroom and with a great many folks in the audience.  We used to memorize the steps to many line dances with ease but these days we have difficulty retaining the sequence for the Ten Step which, as you might imagine, has ten steps.  Thank heavens the footlights kept the audience from seeing our feet and thus any missteps we might have made.  Thankfully no photos of this endeavor have surfaced.

 

We’ve just about exhausted the area’s supply of museums but we did pay a brief visit to the Mesa Historical Society Museum.  The main thrust of the collection is given over to Falcon Field which began as a training base for British pilots during World War II.  We found the museum somewhat neglected so we didn’t linger.

 

 

Again this year Russ participated in the Desert Woodcarving Show held at the Convention Center in Mesa.  He put in a lot of time and effort on this scene of the Superstitions but didn’t collect a ribbon this year.  This event showcases a variety of woodworking techniques and themes, some of which are humorous…or meant to be, anyhow.  

This is what passes for a knee slapper in the desert!  But it’s a dry heat.  

 

 

 

 

 

If Howie had always had a yen to attend the Barrett-Jackson auction, I’ve always wanted to pay a visit to the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show, also held at West World.  So, with two-fer coupon in hand, we raced north to check it out.  Arabs are a versatile breed and we saw them used as cutting horses, English and Western pleasure horses, pulling carts and jumping fences.  The Ladies’ Side Saddle competition was very interesting – the women all managed to look beautiful, unruffled and cool in spite of being precariously perched atop a horse and dressed in long skirts and hats with veils…under a broiling Arizona sun. 

While I would dearly love to see the Costume Class, it was scheduled for early evening and promised to be crowded so we opted instead to hit the road for home at a reasonable hour.  At least this time we knew enough to take advantage of the HOV lane.

Every year, towards the end of February, Apache Junction celebrates Lost Dutchman Days with a big parade and rodeo.  We thought this display of miniature horses pulling wagons filled with not-so-miniature people was especially appealing.

 

This being Arizona’s Centennial Year, the parade was longer than usual and by the time The Lost Dutchman rounded the corner, signaling the end of the parade, I was more than ready to head for home for a little nap.

 

 

Because we still have additional appointments with doctors and RV techs, we’ve decided to stay at least through March here in the East Valley.  Unfortunately the resort where we spent three months claimed not to have room for us for March and so we have had to relocate to another spot.  No big deal…the sites are roomier, the rent is cheaper and the people are friendlier so we’re “good to go” for another month of fun in the sun.

Wrapping Up 2011 – Mesa, Arizona

On December 1 we went into hibernation for the winter at a new-to-us RV resort in Mesa.  We selected it based on an activity roster that promised to keep us on our toes but thus far we haven’t participated in much.  Our time has been eaten up with doctor, dentist and RV tech appointments.  Not to mention a roaring case of terminal inertia.

The “resort” has dinner dances on Tuesday evenings and we’ve attended several of those.  Generally the music has been pretty danceable and we’re looking forward to more opportunities to “cut a rug” as the season progresses.  The meals are of the stick-to-your-ribs (thighs, butt, etc.) sort.  My palate never learned to think of gravy as a food group but here it’s the base upon which the food pyramid is built.

We’ve yet to meet many of our neighbors (many won’t arrive until after the holidays) but we’ve bumped into many old friends and acquaintances while trolling through the grocery stores.  It never ceases to amaze us that we run  into more folks we know here  than we ever did back East, living in the same place for years.  Russ and Rochelle are here at the same resort and so we’ve spent time socializing with them.  We ladies have taken several beading classes together and the guys have been fooling with computers, Russ having taken the giant plunge into the world of bits and bytes.  Next the guys need to get organized enough to start biking again.  Knees permitting, I’d like to give pickleball a try.  Or maybe lawn bowling.

The weather hasn’t been what we’ve come to expect of The Valley of the Sun.  Our arrival was greeted with a few days of heavy rain and it has been on the chilly side ever since.  The space heater runs nearly full time and we are not eager to see the first month’s electric bill!  

Over the years we’ve settled into a Christmas routine that does not involved exchanging gifts with each other but usually results in the purchase of some major gift to our domicile.  This year was no exception…the coach got a new toilet.  And will soon be getting new seals for the slides, along with other assorted bits and pieces to make it whole again.  We’re all starting to show our age.

One sunny Sunday afternoon we went off to Tempe to scope out The Festival of the Arts.  Finding a parking spot was quite an adventure…I don’t know who reaps the benefits of the exorbitant parking fees but it must keep some civic budget balanced for the year!  Most spots were $10 but we found one for $5 several blocks from the main festival site.  It’s an enormous festival and we noticed than many of the exhibitors had come quite a distance to participate.  It’s always fun to see the creativity expressed at such shows…who knew you could do so many things with old hardware?

One of the biggest reasons we keep coming back to the East Valley every winter is to partake of the cheap produce.  In summer months we often find ourselves in areas where the growing season is short and grocery costs high so we do enjoy the opportunity here in Arizona to have fresh melon, pineapple, bell peppers and whatever other fruits and veggies catch our eye.  And at prices that won’t break the bank.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas (or whatever other holiday you might celebrate) and we send along our best wishes for a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.

Coachella Valley, Etc. – November, 2011

We spent a little over two weeks in the Coachella Valley, first in Desert Hot Springs and then in Indio.  Because we’ve done a fairly thorough job of seeing all the sights in the area this time we mostly paid visits to the shopping emporia all along that glittering strip from Palm Springs to Indio.  We even made the drive further west to the outlet mall in Cabazon and were delighted to see almost all of the retail spaces were open for business and the parking lot quite full for a weekday. 

The small cities that stretch along I-10 from Palm Springs in the west to Indio in the east all run together as one.  There are many attractive residential areas where the famous and near-famous live (or lived).  Heavy applications of water keep the lawns green and the flowers blooming; you can’t help but wonder what happens if the water runs out.  The nearby mountains are sometimes difficult to see thanks to blankets of smog rolling eastward from Los Angeles.  During our entire stay my eyes burned and I did a lot of coughing and sneezing.

Roger and Cathy drove up from their winter quarters in Niland to have lunch with us one day.  It was great to see them again and spend some time catching up on all the chit-chat from when we saw them last in early spring.  If the timing is right, we may catch up with them again in March.

Our next stop was Colorado River Oasis in Ehrenberg, Arizona where we found old buddies Galen and Betty Jo work-camping and other friends Jim and Pat camped at the river’s edge.  We were expecting to see Rick and Carol toward the end of our stay but they revised their travel plans and came in early for just a few days.  At least we were able to have a little visit, and some of Carol’s delicious oatmeal pie, before they headed north to Lake Havasu.  They’ll be back but long after we’ve flown the coop.

As part of their work schedule at CRO, Galen and Betty Jo have to act as activity directors or over-seers.  They’d never played Snakes and Ladders before and so we dug out the rules and the equipment and set about “teaching” them the game.  One set of rules was particularly appealing….verbal abuse of opponents is encouraged and we’re all good at that. 

Another day we drove north along the river to Parker, stopping in Poston along the way to visit the memorial dedicated to the 17,000+ first and second-generation Americans of Japanese descent incarcerated there following the attack on Pearl Harbor.  The protrusion at the top of the memorial is actually a spout to keep rainwater from staining the column.   The internment camp was smack in the middle of the Colorado River Indian Tribes’ reservation.  Although we couldn’t be sure, we think we found some of the old barracks still in use as housing and as part of a Head Start facility.  A '”no trespassing” sign kept us from exploring further.  We’d hope to visit the CRIT museum at tribal headquarters but it was closed for the long Thanksgiving weekend so we had to content ourselves with celebrating Black Friday at Beall’s Outlet and Wal-Mart in Parker. 

Given that most full-timers are a little on the silly side, we joined Pat and Jim at the river bank to give our “mascots” an  opportunity to enjoy the view and do a little fishin’.  Here’s Gus and Gunther trying their luck.  Good thing we weren’t counting on them to provide the fish for dinner.

 

Just before heading to Mesa to hibernate for the winter, we had a chance to have lunch with our pal, Betty, at her winter digs  in Desert Center.  She was, as usual, up to her ears in “projects”.  On the drive over we were well past Blythe before realizing we were going to be an hour early for lunch, having forgotten we’d be in a different time zone as soon as we crossed the Colorado River.  It took us no time at all (literally!) to drive the 50 miles to Desert Center but two hours to drive back!  A Senior Moment strikes again.