GRAND CANYON, and bust…
We made it to the Grand Canyon last night about 9pm after leaving Gallup< NM at 2pmish. Today we woke up early and made a light breakfast, and then found the hike to the Trancept and Bright Angel Point. BEAUTIFUL. Spent hours there, just looking and taking photos, and looking around the Lodge, and looking at the chipmunks and a deer.
Tom had seen a mule earlier in the morning, just walking around the campground. It’s a beautiful day. I even had enough bars to call my dad from the Grand Canyon. He and I were here on the south rim in 1978, and we took a mule ride 1/2 way down. We could see that path from this side. Tom was also here once before with his Uncle Bob, and they walked down and back up. Yikes. So then a slow day of showers and siesta, and we will go back to the rim for sunset in about 2 hours.
But let me go back to Gallup… We left Gallup about 8pm on Sunday night after leaving Santa Fe. We gassed the Cacafuego, and were going to drive to the Petrified Forest and camp so we could see that first thing Monday and then come out here, but at about 9:30pm I was having trouble with the Transmission. I couldn’t get out of low gear, and it was quite unnerving. So we tried to pull off, but the road we pulled off on was frightfully dark so we got back on Route 40 West and finally limped off at Chambers, where we thought we had seen a sign for an RV park. By then my nerves were SO rattled, that I just turned around and we parked in the lot of a Trading Post/gas station for the night, praying that someone would show up in the morning.
Well, we had a batch of visitors all night long for what seemed like such a deserted spot: two truckers who didn’t like the price of gas, two motorcyclists who didn’t mind it, and other cars just kept coming and going all night long.
Tom finally got up at 5:30 or so and took the moped to a Mobile station we’d seen on the other side of the exit, but there were no service stations for MILES, so we called AAA. After much negotiations, we found an independent tow company who would tow us back to Gallup, and we’d see.
But the first thing the tow truck driver did was disconnect the drive shaft, ’cause it messes up the transmission if you don’t. Remember the tow we got back in f……g Rockdale? No drive shaft disconnect there… So back to Gallup to a Mom and Pop Service place and after much wrangling…They first jumped the battery and took her for a drive, started up nice then, but why running so hot? And while it was still cold, she would shift, but once hot, she would not. Well, it seems that little handyman fan is not enough for that big of an engine and why didn’t the guys in Rockdale notice that?
And yes, the transmission was shot, and by the way, I’ve never liked how the brakes felt. So do we put more money or consider our options. But wait, we have reservations for tonight at the GRAND CANYON! So we rented a car, threw all the camping gear in it and high tailed it out the the Grand Canyon, after deciding that we will leave the Cacafuego there for junk. We will deal with that when we get back, the nice folks there were good enough to let us leave her there.
Options are: buy something or rent something. Fortunately, Flagstaff is big enough we can do either. We will keep you posted, but that was the biggest.
Santa Fe was great, it was Spanish Market, just like when Tom and I were there 4 years ago. Great art, and food, and many things to look at. We had such a nice day, and such a nice siesta in the Cacafuego after the all night drive. It was so much fun being “home” again. We are all saddened by the pulling of the plug, yet strangely relieved that the stress is off. THanks for all the posts and emails. They get me through.
-Ann
July 26 and 27 – The End of Texas (and a run for the border)
Not wanting to disappoint us with their reputation, the RV was not ready until 2pm in the afternoon. Nothing of interest happened in the morning. I finished Dad’s Christmas ’07 scarf. He did not want to wear it, as the temperature measured 94 degrees.
After noon we were gently kicked out of our motel room, and so we went and sat in the shop, subtly pressuring the mechanics.
Finally, we left. We stopped in some town around 6:30 to get two tires replaced on the right rear axle. The only place open at 6:30 on a Saturday is the Wal-Mart supercenter. We drove on into the night. Around 9, dad went to sleep. At 9:30, I followed suit. We drove on route 84 to route 320, heading for Roswell, New Mexico.
There aren’t any pictures for this section, because it was dark. Very dark. Astoundingly dark. Even pictures of how dark it was wouldn’t convey how overwhelmingly dark it was. We could see thunderstorms in the distance: huge clouds lit up from the inside by their lightning.
At 3:05am, we reached New Mexico.
I woke up and sat co-pilot for mom, who had been driving since about we left Wal-Mart at 8.
Then I drove for a bit.
We reached Roswell around 4:30, which was actually 3:30 because we had reached Mountain Time (I have long stopped wearing my watch). I didn’t see any aliens.
We lost about half an hour in Roswell first trying to find a gas station, and then at the gas station. I got coffee.
I drove for a while longer, and then dad drove and I sat shotgun. Then we switched it around again, and I went to sleep, and the sun came up.
We reached Santa Fe at 7:01am, MST, and had breakfast.
We were worried, it being Sunday, that things would be closed (the yarn store certainly was), but we were fortunate enough to have arrived on the second day of the Hispanic Arts Festival. We wandered around and ate another breakfast of carnitas and breakfast burritos. Delicious.
We strolled through the fair for a few hours, and then went off to the Georgia O’Keeffe museum.
Then we went “home” for a nap (driving all night will require that), and then dad and I went to find internet at a cafe, and eat chips.
We split up after, and I wandered around and found another small market in the yard of a church.
Then mom and I went to find the “oldest house,” which was a simple, old, adobe house just… sitting there. Just chillin’. Nothing special. Very cool.
By 4, we were on the road again, headed for Arizona.
It got flat very quickly.
July 25 – Nothing at all
Nothing at all happened Friday. We drove back to Rockdale, stopped in Taylor for lunch at an “All You Care To Eat” pizza buffet. Classy. Then we saw Batman: The Dark Knight. It was very good. When we got to the motel in Rockdale, in a fit of restlessness mom and I went for a run. Then we sat around, had dinner at Sonic, and went to bed, being promised the RV at 8am the next morning. Needless to say, we were not convinced.
July 24 – Austin again
Not much happened Thursday. We’d exhausted Austin’s options, to some extent. So we played with the cats in the lobby at the Austin motel (there were two, but these might both be the same cat).
Then we walked around, and I ate a cupcake from the cupcake… pod.
We hung out for a while at Hill Country Weaver’s “Knit Buzz”—their separate building for their classes, sit-and-knit sofa, and kitchen with snacks. Very cute. We waited for it to stop raining, and then had lunch at Taco X-Press.
We got a room for another night at the Austin Motel. Dad went to find Austin Aikido (successfully), and the rest of us watched TV and did laundry.
I met this cat. It was very sweet and friendly (and not dirty).
Crank it UP!!
Willy Nelson: “On the road, agin,”
Martin Luther King Jr.: “Free at last! Free at LAST! Thank God Almighty, I’m FREE AT LAST!”
Tom Hickey: “Ow!ow!ow!ow!ow!
After ten days (not all of it wasted) we are finally travelling again. We meant to spend maybe three days in the Austin area, and were happy with the amusements of about seven of them. Austin is a swell town, much like other university towns large ans small, with coffee shops, an unofficial motto of “Keep Austin Weird” and they do a pretty good job. I got to go to one Aikido class there, so that justifies bringing my gi bag along. They seem to be a sattelite dojo from Takoma Park with three transplants from that dojo that I recognized – Violina Rindova, Dinee (sp?) and Nancy, both of whom I don’t remember their last names. Nice people, nice class, no pictures.
We struggled with the repair shop for days over the work schedule to get the new engine in the Cacafuego. First they said, “Wednesday evening or Tursday morning.” Then, “Thursday evening or Friday morning,” then “Friday evening or maybe sometime Monday.” Things got a little tense at that point. Finally, at 5 pm on Friday evening, interrupting the matinee of “The Dark Knight”, (which is, by the way, the best batman movie to date, by far), the service manager called and said the mechanic would work late and call him when he was done, and he would in turn call me, and it should, God willing, be ready at 8 am Saturday, after a test drive.
At 8 am Saturday I was at their gates. I could see the mechanic inside, through the window, with the engine compartment still disassembled. They let me in and I sat for three hours with my book. (As yet another aside, I highly recommend revisiting the old John D. McDonald “Travis McGee” detective stories from the 60’s. Iconic stuff.) At 10:30 the service manager said that they were finished, they just needed to rebundle the wires and hoses, take it for a test drive, and let it go.
By 2 pm we were on the road.
By 7 am we were in Santa Fe.
With the time zone change, that was 750 miles in 15 hours, not including stops for gas, a visit to WalMart for a new tire. The rear wheels come in pairs, for a total of six, and when we were running low on the outer tire back in North Carolina, I guess we damaged the inner tire without knowing it, and as we approached a small town it started thumping like mad. Fortunately for us, the service department was still open, and we were the last vehicle, so all five mechanics pounced on the task, and we were back on the road within the hour.
We drove all night, in one to three hour shifts, and dawn in the desert was fantastic. It rained for a hundred miles, from Roswell NM half way tp Santa Fe, and the clouds were just breaking up as the sky lightened. Fog rose from the desert floor, and the sun broke brilliant on the cloud bank over our shoulder. This is the weekend for Spanish Market, and we parked just two block off of the main square in tyown where they hold the festival. We have toured the Georgia O’Keefe museum, had a siesta, and now we are laying plans for the final run to the Grand Canyon this evening. It’s just six hundred miles, so we hope to get there in about 15 hours. Our original reservations at the North Rim campground are for tomorrow night.
More, Back in Austin
Back from the move: we saw “Hancock”. Wanted to see “The Dark Knight,” but it’s sold out til 10:45pm and that’s way too late for us. We love the Alamo Movie Theatre, though, they serve food and drinks before the movie. Tom called the mechanics in Rockdale and they think it will be late tomorrow or early Friday. They had to order one more part. SSSSsheeeeeesh. We are tired of all this. For a while, the kids were tired of all of the driving. Now they are tired of all of the sitting. WE tire of hotel life, and we realized that hotels don’t really want you to read in bed. It has been seldom that the beds have lights next to them. Now, I’ll go look for some photos of the day.
Hamilton Pool
The artist at work
Lazin' in the River
Other thoughts by Ann
Of course, while we are RV-less, we have seen MANY RV sites inside the city or town limits, some within walking distance of some interesting things to do. But noooooo Rv for us… We are seeing clouds from Hurricane Dolly. All day there have been many fluffy clouds and the quality of sunlight has been very different, and as we came into Austin, we saw three separate rain storms ahead of us, and it started to rain just as we got out of the car. Very heavy, but very quick rain. Now there are very dark clouds to the east. A fabulous day at Hamilton Pool, a natural pool made by a source of water and then at the “other end” of the walk a bigger river, the Pedernales River, where we found a rock in the middle and just latched on while the water went by us. So did a snake, swimming his way by, and then a red squirrel came to the water to drink. The only signs of civilization were the sounds of some people laughing upstream and a wire across the river, upstream. BEAUTIFUL. Back in Austin, time for a movie
July 20/21/22 – Fredericksburg, TX
Okay, so I know some of this has already been said, but if I don’t cover it my brain will get confused, so I’ll try not to repeat everyone.
Sunday the 20th we left Austin for Fredericksburg, and stopped for lunch and a little shopping and antiquing in Boerne, TX.
Dad met this dog.
Then we found some giant chairs, and the king and queen ascended.
We continued to Fredericksburg and went out in the afternoon to explore. Fredericksburg is considerably cleaner and tidier than San Antonio– classic small town– and reminded us a bit of Rehoboth. It might be the enormously wide streets (which originate in the fact that you cannot back up an ox and must take your cart all the way round).
We found the bead store, first, for mom, and she happily stayed for an hour or so picking out strands. Dad paused for a wine tasting, and I set off for the local yarn store, Stonehill Spinning. They were closed. On the way, I saw a mama squirrel and her baby bothering her.
Fredericksburg is full of old, interesting buildings built in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s for the incoming German population. Those buildings now are mostly shops and boutiques, but their facades are still very cool.
We joined up again, went grocery shopping, and I met this cat.
Also I finished my socks that evening,
so I started another pair.
We passed Monday morning with more strolling, and found a few treasures, like this lighttree.
Then we went to the Fredericksburg Pioneer Museum, run by this adorable old couple whose family has clearly owned the property since the buildings were built in the late 1800’s. She wore a very prairie-esque dress, and he had lots of stories to tell us. It was fascinating, and they were very cute.
There were three antique spinning wheels on the premises, each in a different little cottage. Squee!
That last one is a walking wheel! I’ve never seen them in person before. Very exciting for the spinner-historian in me.
And in the end, Clint agreed to hold the sock.
Next morning we were up bright and early for an adventure. We went and climbed Enchanted Rock, which is the second largest hill/dome of solid pink granite in the country, next to Stone Mountain in Georgia. There isn’t a whole lot to say– it was fun!– so I’ll leave you with a collection of just pictures.
Phew. We came back and swam in the pool and took naps, and then headed out again around lunch time. I went to the Java Ranch to sit and work on my college writing seminar placement essay. Mom set off for the post office, which proved to be about two miles farther than she expected. Dad went shopping and had lunch at the local canned foods-jams-jellies-and-sauces store by sampling everything there on a cracker. Sarah stayed in and watched TV and read and napped.
We met up about four hours later for ice cream. Then we went back to the room for some TV and chill time before dinner.
… Where we saw this puppy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And dad made another animal friend.
Tomorrow we are going back to Austin to wait for the RV. We are talking about a 24-hour driving marathon to get the heck out of Texas, as, though we are enjoying it, we are all sick of the stationary-ness of it all.
Sunday, July 20, 2008 (Tom)
Sunday, July 20, 2008
We have had a series of pleasant, yet eventless days, here in the land of the lotus-eaters, where each day is much like the one before, and prospects for tomorrow are not much different than today.
I am exaggerating, of course, but staying in motel rooms is not half as much fun as roving the country like gypsies so the ennui is palpable around here, despite specific activities each day to keep ourselves entertained.
Friday was travel day, as we left Austin and went first, back to Rockdale to scavenge the Cacafuego for gear and clothing that we had been missing during our first hiatus in Austin. We drove from there to San Antonio, and along the way we saw a roadrunner and longhorn cattle, neither of which we managed to photograph, and we stopped for lunch at Sonic, which is an old-fashioned car-window fast food place that, apparently, everybody in the country takes for granted except us easterners. We also stopped at a farmer’s market and bought hand crafted goat cheese from a toothless old texan in a straw stetson hat.
Our hotel in San Antonio was a bit of a dive, in the shadow of the interstate, but the price was right, and we were only about ten block out from the downtown tourist district, so we could walk back and forth and get our exercise with only the occassional detour around a wino or two on the way. The Alamo is downtown, surrounded by gift shops and office buildings, much like Liberty Hall in Philadelphia, of Graceland in Memphis, and it is oddly unnerving to stand and contemplate the solemn history of the place with neon and chaser lights behind your back. There is a plaza there, with great gobs of human activity surging back and forth, including kids with plastic light sabers and sombreros, as well as belligerent street preachers and two, or maybe even three, arch-rival ghost tours who would, I think, gladly make of each other fodder for next season’s spiel.
And, it was HOT. Siesta time is a serious business when the sun burns down over a hundred degrees from two to five pm. We didn’t notice if all of San Antonio shuts down for siesta, but we certainly did. In the hotel with curtains drawn, naps being optional, and then out again after six pm. The first night we visited the Alamo, then dined on the Riverwalk, which is a long maze of meandering walks along the canals and channels of the San Antonio River as is cuts through downtown, lined with restaurants and cafe tables, and with tour boats and dinner boats plying trade up and down the waterways. It is pretty, but the food was tourist grade, much as we expected.
My class at ACA
On Saturday, I got up and made my escape to Alamo City Aikido, the local ASU dojo, in the hopes of a little exercise and a change of pace, since I haven’t been training much at all this year, and it is about time I got back into it. I had packed by aikido gear for just such an unlikely eventuality, that I would find myself in a town with a dojo, and with time on my hands, and it turned out that the family could do without me for a few hours after all. The local sensei was an alum of the Washington DC dojo, so he knew my teachers, and told me that I was welcome to visit, but he would not be there, and that he suspected I would outrank any of his local students and would I mind teaching class? I ended up doing just that, which was a little uncomfortable for me since I felt out of shape, but we all had fun, I guess, and they bought me lunch.
Stephen Spielberg works with Angelina Jolie on her characterization of the title role in THE SOPHIA LOREN STORY
Ann and the girls were out touring the Alamo interior and getting lunch, so we all rendezvoused for siesta and a swim under the freeway, then went out for the evening to first tour some of the other old missions, then dinner (away from the Riverwalk), then a ghost tour from one of the snipey, fractuous, and frankly-creepy-wouldn’t-feel-comfortable-passing-him-on-the-sidewalk tour guides. They passed out infra-red thermo-meters (laser pointers), magnetic field detectors (stud finders), and dowsing rods (bent coat hangers on a spool) and tramped us around downtown pointing them at things and listening to stories about the old spanish garrisons and vigilantes and such. It was mildly amusing and moderately irritating at the same time, but it gave us something to do.
- Lunch in Boerne (Bear Moon Cafe)
This morning we shook the dust of that town from our car tires and had another travel day, this time to the Texas Hill Country, which is much like the Texas flatlands, only hillier. We spent a pleasant hour or two in the crafts and antiques town of Boerne, and had luch at the local coffeehouse, with a homey character and a sophisticated menu. I had Yucatan chicken and lime soup, as an example, and I hope to recreate the recipe someday.
Now we are in Fredericksburg, another lovely town of arts, cafes and wineries. I had small tastings at two wineries this afternoon, within two blocks of each other, and there are at least three more further down Main Street to hit tomorrow. The German heritage of the place apparently is responsible for the town policy of encouraging open containers of beer and wine on the sidewalks,which is, in my opinion a very civilized way to live, at least until someone puts an eye out, or something.
Dinner this evening was crackers and toothless texan goat cheese, with a jar of local jalapeno jelly for counterpoint, with bananas and Nutella for dessert, enjoyed in the comfort of the Super 8 Motel. We are all content with a quiet evening tonight.
Saturday in San Antonio and Sunday in Fredericksburg
Mission San Juan
The Alamo "Cottonwood Tree"
nice walkway in the Alamo
Elinor was there too
So, being the hungry tourists we were, we went to the Riverwalk Place for Mall food. A good time was had by us, even thought the food was normal. We did walk home via The Riverwalk and that was lovely. Especially once we got out of the food area and the crowds died down a little. There are a few lovely mosaics to be found, and yes, fish do live there along with the many ducks.
Back “Home” to swimming and laundry, while we wore our swimsuits, I could wash everything else. Late afternoon is when we set off to see the Missions, and dinner at Rosariao’s, which was great and fun, and then off to an awful Ghost hunt. It was tauted as being Scientific, but it was just dumb. (in my opinion) Some people were amused, we had “instruments” too, but it was not full of enough ghost stories for me. One instrument measured the differing temperatures on a building, so most of the buildings were let’s say 90 degrees, but a section of something cold, like 60 degrees, might indicate a “field of energy”. Then there were dousing rods, that could also detect energy fields, and if one wanted to obtain one’s own pair, that could happen for a mere $20. For two handles and two coat hangers taken apart? I don’t think so. Back to the hotel and sleep and then Sunday to travel to Fred’burg…
Ducks
- Enjoying Blizzards on the walk home
I did like the inner courtyards of the Missions: especially San Jose’s. It was large and green, but I could imagine it busy with people shopping and visiting and gardening and tending their flocks. Concepcion had a small quarry close to it, with an artists’ conception of how the locals broke and carried rocks to build the mission. All very interesting.
