Dining

2022-11-02 Leaving Deming, NM, traveling Tucson, AZ, 2022-11-03 Leaving Tucson, AZ, traveling to Borrego Springs, CA…

We had a leisurely morning at the campground because we have a relatively short day today…

We pulled out at about 11:00 am and headed west on the 10 towards Arizona.

The desert here is rather bleak and unforgiving, but there are interesting views aplenty…

We crossed over into Arizona eventually…

Arizona views are not that much different than those in New Mexico…

We exited the freeway in Tucson. We are visiting old Airstream friends who we met in Chula Vista, CA. They used to be “full-timers”, but they sold their Airstream and moved to a lovely house in the hills above Tucson…

On our way up the hill we passed a military base. There were literally hundreds of moth-balled airplanes sitting adjacent to the road. This went on for about a mile…

We continued up into the hills… after sharing a bottle of wine in their home we went out to dinner at a local “foodie” restaurant…

After dinner we retired to the Villa for the night.

Thursday, November 3…

We have a long day today. We headed out at 5:05 am…

Yes, it was dark, and these Tucson roads are bumpy…

After passing through a torrential downpour that caused freeway traffic to slow to 30 mph, we finally saw the light…

Arizona’s famous Saguaro cactus… These cacti live to be over 100 years old BEFORE they grow their branches…

We soon arrived at the Promised Land…

The bridge over the Colorado river…

We continued across the desert…

It has been more than 7 weeks since we have eaten Mexican food… (We rarely ever go to a Mexican restaurant outside California… too many BAD experiences…) So we stopped at Carmelita’s in Borrego Springs…

After lunch we drove the two short miles to the RV park and met up with our Airstream Club friends.

Happy Hours ensued; an enjoyable time was had by all…

November 8, 2022 0

2022-10-31 Marfa, TX.

We have an entire day to spend in Marfa. After a leisurely morning we drove into town (2 miles) and found The Sentinel. It’s either a newspaper supported by a Cafe, or a Cafe that sends all its profits to a newspaper…

We stopped in for Lunch…

It’s a great space in an old adobe building… Inside we can see the steel structure that supports the adobe walls…

Across the street they are building a structure to house artist studios, galleries, and workshops…

We walked around the neighborhood for about an hour. We saw lots of activities going on to support and improve the town…

After we returned to the Villa I looked at the other structures here at the Marfa Yacht Club…

This appears to be a residence…

This is the pool… Closed for the season…

This is another residence…

We invited the occupants of our two neighboring Airstreams to join us for Happy Hours. We always have lots of fun playing Airstream Bingo, finding common things among our new friends…

The skies were threatening, and we saw many flashes of lightning… Or were they the “Marfa Lights”???

An enjoyable time was had by all…

This being Halloween, you can see bonus photos of our grandchildren…

November 6, 2022 0

2022-10-30 Leaving Abilene, TX, traveling to Marfa, TX.

We left Abilene early. We have a long day today, driving to Marfa, TX.

While I napped Lynda visited the Visitor Center; they had a large exhibit about the area…

Apparently there was a large bomber base built nearby during WWII; it was decommissioned many years ago. However, during its construction several rattlesnake dens were unearthed, arousing thousands of hibernating rattlesnakes…

There is also a large meteor crated in nearby Odessa, as well as a giant failed oil tank that leaked…

We turned south at Pecos, TX, and continued through the Texas wilderness…

We passed through the “town” of Balmorhea…

Apparently, Balmorhea was a thriving farm town 50 years ago… Cotton was thriving and many families had a good life here. However, in the 1970s, as the cost of energy soared, the cost to bring up water from 300′ deep wells made the farms unprofitable, and, as you can see, the town died…

We continued south…

We stopped to see an historical marker… (stopping and walking across the street was not a problem…)

This canyon was an old trail, called Wild Rose Pass, due to the wild roses…

We didn’t see wild roses, but some prankster left a few plastic roses…

We continued through this lovely area…

We finally arrived at the Marfa Yacht Club…

Marfa Yacht Club is an Airstream-only RV park. There are 9 campsites, all covered with a shade structure. In the summer it can get hot here…

We quickly set up, then we headed into town. Marfa was begun in the 1880s; today most of the buildings have been retored and contain viable businesses, galleries, restaurants, etc…

This is the county courthouse…

You may have noticed a lack of people in town. Well, this is Sunday afternoon, and most things are closed from mid-day Sunday until Thursday. On Friday the tourists begin to show up and it can be quite lively…

Here is the rest of the story:

Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928 – February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism (a term he nonetheless stridently disavowed). In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy. He is generally considered the leading international exponent of “minimalism,” and its most important theoretician through such writings as “Specific Objects” (1964). Judd voiced his unorthodox perception of minimalism in Arts Yearbook 8, where he says, “The new three dimensional work doesn’t constitute a movement, school, or style. The common aspects are too general and too little common to define a movement. The differences are greater than the similarities.”

He was a successful artist and art critic; he moved from painting to sculpture in the 1960s. In the early seventies Judd started making annual trips to Baja California with his family. He was affected by the clean, empty desert and this strong attachment to the land would remain with him for the rest of his life. In 1971 he rented a house in Marfa, Texas, where he would later buy 16 decaying buildings in Marfa, an entire decommissioned Army base, and over 32,000 acres of ranch land, collectively known as Ayala de Chinati.

The result is a town full of art, attracting visitors from all over the world…

Here is a perfect opportunity to turn an art deco former gas station and auto repair shop into, well, anything you want…

We had a great dinner here at the St. George Hotel… The first nice restaurant we’ve been in since October 10 – three weeks!

The food and service was wonderful. We returned to the villa. An enjoyable time was had by all…

November 5, 2022 1

2021-09-06 – 2021-09-11 – Traveling from Puyallup, WA to Redlands, CA

We are heading home…

September 6; Labor Day…

Last day of summer! (Even though school started three weeks ago – it’s still summer!)

Our grandchildren enjoyed a day at the beach!

We left Puyallop and headed south…

The Columbia River never ceases to please…

Remember when I said one barge on the Columbia River holds enough grain to fill 160 railroad cars? Here is where the barges offload the grain, where it is loaded into the railroad cars…

Portland has some great bridges…

And we are set up at a very nice RV Park in Salem, OR.

With a beautiful sky…

Tuesday, September 7:

We left early – we have a long day… The fog was a nice relief from the heat…

Wait! That’s not fog – it’s smoke!

There are four wildfires to the east of us, just over the hills… The whole length of the state…

At a rest stop we couldn’t see the mountains…

We passed through the delightful little town of Jacksonville, OR, located about 20 miles off the 5, west of Medford… We found out camping spot for the night – Valley View Winery, part of the Harvest Host program…

Still a little smoky…

We were the gusts for dinner at old Airstream friends who live a few miles from the winery… They lave 7 acres and a lovely house overlooking the Applegate River…

Fiery sunset over the river…

After a lovely dinner we returned to the Villa…

Wednesday, September 8:

As we left the winey in the morning we found a few wild turkeys…

We soon returned to California! Yay!

We saw lots of evidence of last year’s fires…

And we had some more smoke as well…

But soon the skies cleared as we approached Clear Lake…

After a tortuous drive over Hwy 175 we arrived in Cloverdale in time for a lovely sunset sky…

Thursday, September 9:

We awoke to clear skies and headed down the road…

We crossed over the Richmond bridge and the San Francisco Bay…

Still a little smoggy, but we could see the Golden Gate Bridge…

Still a little smoggy, but we could make out the city skyline…

Oakland is noted for its giant cargo container cranes…

And downtown Oakland is looking good…

BART running past us… We love cities!

We arrived at our RV park in Marina, just outside Monterey…

We drove into Carmel to stroll the town before dinner…

The beach is lovely, but cold!

We had a delightful dinner at a “Contemporary Mexican Restaurant”. First Mexican food since we left California on July 23… (We don’t eat Mexican food outside California – way too many disappointing meals over the past years…)

Friday, September 10

As we headed out of Marina across the Salinas Valley we saw fields and fields of lettuce…

Soon we saw vineyards…

We arrive in Paso Robles and parked just outside downtown. And a lovely town it is…

We stopped in for a wine tasting, hosted by this charming fellow…

But we are on a tight schedule, so we head south again, arriving at Los Olivos at about 4:00 pm…

We enjoyed a little wine tasting on the front patio…

Plenty of parking in Los Olivos, even on a Friday afternoon…

We parked in the Saarloos vineyard for the night, and shared dinner with Airstream friends at Bell’s in Los Alamos…

Saturday, September 11:

We arrived home in Redlands, California…

We shared happy hours drinking beer on the front porch with our son…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

Seven weeks and one day… twelve states… 7,000 miles.

The End

September 18, 2021 2

2021-09-05 – Puyallup, WA

Sunday, September 5:

We had an easy time boarding the ferry in Clinton, heading to Mukilteo, near Everett, WA…

We like ferry rides, and we usually leave the truck and go to the top deck. But this ferry ride was so short we stayed below…

It was nice that the traffic was light – no giant trucks to squeeze between…

Back on the mainland we headed south on the 5 and passed through Seattle…

It is a short drive today. We were soon parked at Courtesy Parking in Puyallop… The other two Airstreams belong to our host…

We spent the afternoon visiting with Lynda’s sister and her husband. They must be camera shy, because we have no photos…

We drove into downtown Puyallop and found the other feature of Puyallop: The Washington State Fair!

We also found a very good Cajun restaurant. Who knew?

After dinner we walked along the Puyallop River…

We returned to the Villa…

An enjoyable time was had by all…

September 14, 2021 0

2021-09-01 to 2021-09-03 – Bellingham, WA

Wednesday, September 1:

We left Riverside State Park in Spokane at 6:45 am. We have a long drive today to reach Bellingham this afternoon. Most of today we will be westbound on the 90, then north on the 5…

We passed a few lovely farms…

And we stopped where there was nothing green as far as the eye could see…

This area was designated as a solar and wind energy conservation area, but we didn’t see any solar installations…

We did see the Columbia River cutting through a deep gorge…

At the bottom of the gorge we crossed over a marvelous bridge…

We were shortly back into the green forests…

We arrived in Bellingham at the home of my brother…

My brother and his wife are big fans of our cocktail book. In fact, they presented us with the gift of two commemorative copies of the book…

They demonstrated that they have all the proper equipment to use the book…

We enjoyed happy hours and dinner on the view deck…

And we watched the sunset over the Bellingham Bay and Lummi Island…

Thursday, September 2:

We took a drive today to enjoy a short walk in the woods…

We soon found ourselves on a rocky beach at Point Whitehorn Park…

The walk back up the bluff looked just like the walk down…

We drove into Birch Bay and stopped for a lunch of grilled oysters. (Lynda had fish tacos…)

After lunch we returned home and again enjoyed happy hours and dinner on the deck…

Friday, September 3:

We had time for one quick walk along the boardwalk in Fairhaven…

Then it was time to head south again…

An enjoyable time was had by all…

September 10, 2021 1

2021-08-27 – The Oregon Trail caravan … Day 30 – Welches, OR

We awoke in the gloomy woods again… Did I mention we don’t like camping in dense dark forests?

Today we are climbing Mt. Hood. Not hiking, and not to the top. We drove up to the Timberline Lodge.

Mt. Hood is a potentially active volcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc, sometimes known as the “ring of fire”… It is located about 50 miles east-southeast of Portland. In addition to being Oregon’s highest mountain, it is one of the loftiest mountains in the nation based on its prominence, and it offers the only year-round lift-served skiing in North America. It is approximately 11,240 feet in elevation, although the official height seems to change now and then…

We are here to see Timberline Lodge, a National Historic Landmark located on the southern flank of Mount Hood just below Palmer Glacier, with an elevation of about 6,000 feet.

Publicly owned and privately operated, Timberline Lodge is a popular tourist attraction that draws two million visitors annually. It is notable in film for serving as the exterior of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining (1980).

The lodge and resort hotel is a four-story structure of about 40,000 square feet. The ground-level exterior walls are heavy rubble masonry, using boulders from the immediate area, and heavy timber is used from the first-floor up. The central head house section is hexagonal and sixty-feet in diameter, with a six-sided stone chimney stack ninety-feet high and fourteen-feet in diameter. Each of the six fireplace openings—three on the ground floor, three on the first floor—is five-feet wide and seven-feet high. Two wings, running west and southeast, flank the head house. Oregon woods used throughout the building include cedar, Douglas fir, hemlock, western juniper and ponderosa pine.

The architect of Timberline Lodge is Gilbert Stanley Underwood, noted for the Ahwahnee Hotel and other lodges in the U.S. national park system. He produced the design. Then, his central head house was modified from an octagon to a hexagon by U.S. Forest Service architect W. I. (Tim) Turner and the team of Linn A. Forrest, Howard L. Gifford and Dean R. E. Wright. A recent graduate of the University of Washington, forest service engineer Ward Gano was structural designer.

Timberline Lodge was constructed between 1936 and 1938 as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project during the Great Depression. Eighty percent of the WPA’s $695,730 total expenditure on building costs went toward labor. Skilled building trade workers received ninety-cents an hour; unskilled laborers received fifty-five cents an hour. Some of the skilled stonemasons on the project were Italian immigrants brought in after working on The Historic Columbia River Highway and other roads in Oregon. About a hundred construction workers were on site at a given time, and lived at a nearby tent city. Jobs were rotated to provide work.

We were here not only to see the Lodge, but for lunch…

I love seeing these old lodges. I love to see the lifestyle of the residents. Here we see a typical writing desk that these lodges always provide…

Another feature of the Lodges is the array of large windows facing out to the prime views…

We returned to the Villa in the dark gloomy forest campground.

An enjoyable time was had by all…

September 5, 2021 0

2021-08-26 – The Oregon Trail caravan … Day 29 – Traveling from Cascade Locks, OR to Welches, OR

It was great to spend these few days aong the Columbia River, but today we head to the mountains.

As I mentioned yesterday, in the day of the wagon trains the actual trail had ended at The Dalles. Since there were no dams, the river was a wild raging beast, flowing from canyon wall to canyon wall. The emigrants dismantled their wagons and used the wood to build rafts. They attempted to float down the river. Some even made it, but many lost everything. A man named Barlow thought he had a solution; he found a trail up over the mountains, from Hood River and around Mt. Hood. And he made it a toll road, so he made a lot of money…

Today we followed that trail…

We followed the road through the town of Hood River. It would up the slopes of the Cascade mountains…

We almost caught a glimpse of Mt. Hood…

It was a beautiful drive, past wineries and forests…

At the base of Mt. Hood is the Glacier Public House – a convenient stop for lunch…

After lunch we continue along the trail established by Mr. Barlow… His road was eventually completed and it was the heaviest, most used method for bringing a wagon over the Cascade Mountains…

We found our campground – another gloomy, heavily forested place… We set up the Villa…

Happy Hours ensued…

An enjoyable time was had by all…

September 2, 2021 0

2021-08-22– The Oregon Trail caravan … Day 25 – Pendleton, OR

We drove to Walla Walla, WA, today… The drive was interesting.

We are visiting the Whitman Mission National Historic Site.

Quite an interesting short history…

The Whitman Mission is outside Walla Walla, WA. Its about a 45 minute drive from Pendleton…

This map helps see the context of the Whitman Mission…

The story of the Whitman Mission:

Background: Samuel Parker and Marcus Whitman journeyed overland in 1835 from the Rocky Mountains into portions of the modern states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington to locate potential mission locations. They were looking for potential sites to establish a mission with the goal of Christian proselytizing and “civilizing” the native peoples.

During specific negotiations over what became the Waiilatpu Mission, six miles from the site of the present-day city of Walla Walla, Washington, Parker told the assembled Cayuse men that: “I do not intend to take your lands for nothing. After the Doctor [Whitman] is come, [sic] there will come every year a big ship, loaded with goods to be divided among the Indians. Those goods will not be sold, but given to you. The missionaries will bring you plows and hoes, to teach you how to cultivate the land, and they will not sell, but give them to you.”

The Mission: Whitman returned in 1836 with his wife, Narcissa, mechanic William H. Gray, and the missionary couple Rev. Henry Spalding and Eliza Hart Spalding. The wives were the first known white American women to enter the Pacific Northwest overland. Over the next few years the Mission interacted with the people of the Cayuse tribe, teaching them their Christian beliefs and teaching them farming techniques… Things were not without conflict, but the mission seemed to be thriving… They built several buildings on the land the Cayuse had sold them. The emigrants along the Oregon Trail stopped at the Mission for rest and medical care; many stayed on in the area. The Whitmans adopted a family of 7 orphans whose parents had died along the trail…

Conflicts: There were many through the years. The Whitmans never considered the Cayuse as equals in intellect or in culture. Disease was rampant, and most diseases affected the Cayuse far worse than the white people. Other native tribes sought to sow mistrust of the white men amongst the Cayuse. Measles became epidemic, and the treatments Dr. Whitman gave to the whites cured them, but the Cayuse, taking the same medicines, continued to die.

Violence: In November, 1847, a small band of the Cayuse approached the mission, and in the subsequent violence, Dr. and Mrs. Whitman were murdered. Eleven others were also killed, including two of the adopted orphans. As many as 30 survivors were taken hostage by the Cayuse. They were released a month later in exchange for a supply of blankets, handkerchiefs, clothing, tobacco, rifles, and ammunition. A few years later, the Cayuse turned in five of their men, who went to trail, were found guilty, and were hanged.

Aftermath: This was the end of the first Presbyterian missionaries in the Pacific Northwest. Whitman Mission closed, and was eventually destroyed.

In 1859, the Presbyterian Church opened a seminary in nearby Walla Walla, and named it Whitman College…

The Visitors Center had displays and told the story… It differs a bit from what I have read through other sourses, but the essence is the same..

We walked the grounds. There are outlines of where the buildings used to be…

This is where the Oregon Trail came through the property… More ruts to see…

The Whitman Memorial ia atop this hill…

About halfway down the back side of the hill are the graves of the 13 who were killed on that fateful day…

And now it is time for lunch… We drove to Walla Walla. This is the center of the region’s wine making industry. The town appears to be very prosperous, until you see that downtown has been taken over by wine tasting rooms, restaurants, and tourist trinket shops. Not necessarily a bad thing – it’s better than boarded up storefronts. But it felt a little like Disneyland. I doubr that residents do their daily shopping and other errands here…

We found an interesting restaurant called “Bacon and Eggs”…

We enjoyed a nice lunch… Lynda ordered Bacon and Eggs… I had Lox and Bagels…

Back in the RV Park our “Cook-out Committee” had put together a pioneer dinner, using cast iron cookware, much like what the emigrants would have used along the Oregon Trail…