Rocks and Snow

Feb. 16-20

It’s been a sporting few days. We did lawn bowling on Thursday. Saturday was the rock-climbing competition.

Peter, Joanna’s grandson, took up the sport a year and a half ago. He goes to the Black Rock Bouldering Gym, where he found that he has a natural talent for it.

Actually, nobody climbs rocks. Instead there are walls that look like irregular peg boards. Various hand grips are affixed to the walls. A climber has to follow the grips, large and small, of one color to the top of the climb.

There are other rules, too, but I don’t know them all. In the competition, a judge rates a climber’s performance.

The gym was packed. There were at least two elimination rounds. Climbers try various routes of varying difficulty to build points. At the end of the day, the top five scoring men and the top five women compete for prizes.

Patrick, Joanna’s son, is also a climber, but he is newer to the game. He told me he is competing in the novice class. He completed several climbs. 

We left when their round was finished and had lunch. Another group was going to climb for two hours. When all the results were in, we would get a phone call.

The call came a little after five, and Peter was one of the top five scorers. 

So we went back to the gym to watch the finals. Peter didn’t finish in the money, but he did well. It was amazing to watch him following a strategy to get up the problem walls. 

Sunday we went to the house and made a Chinese dinner.

Joanna’s son Chris made a filling of ground pork and several other ingredients. Kristin, Joanna’s daughter-in-law, had prepared ground beef for spring rolls.

I watched granddaughter Natalie and learned how to wrap dumplings and spring rolls.

I love Chinese dumplings, and these were excellent. The spring rolls were hands-down the best I’ve eaten.

Joanna and I went to a restaurant called Bavarian Point in Mesa for dinner. It’s in a strip mall, and my cousin Bill introduced us to it a few years ago.

We shared a dish of roast duck, red cabbage, and a dumpling. 

I paired that with Warsteiner dark. As lagers go, this one is pretty much near the top of the category. It has a lot of flavor and none of that sour yeast taste at the end.

Monday was Presidents’ Day and we enjoyed our last day in Phoenix by hanging out with everyone at the house—Patrick, Kristin, Peter, Natalie, and Chris. 

Then one of Joanna’s friends whom everyone calls Bitsy showed up. With her were her son, another Chris, and her two grandchildren, London and Dane.

There was a crazy card game called Uno. Those young enough to have joints fit for it played Twister.

It was almost as loud as being with my five grand-kids. 

For dinner later, we went to one of the best Mexican restaurants I know, Barrio Queen in Scottsdale.

The mole there is the best I’ve had. It’s not too hot and they make it with cuts of chicken. The chicken is without skin and bone and so is not really the heart of the dish. The sauce is what makes it.

If you’re ever out here, I suggest you try it. Unless, of course, you’re allergic to chocolate.

Chris had roast pork that I sampled. It was an unusual flavor. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe they put lime juice in marinade. In any event, that was outstanding too.

Tuesday morning is when things got very strange. We were going to move out and head to Holbrook, Ariz., 25 or 30 miles from the Petrified Forest. I had seen the Petrified Forest on my old View-Master slides when I was 8 years old and have always wanted to go there and see the red stone logs on the ground.

Now I was going to be driving in the neighborhood, so I had to go there.

One of the news channels was on, as usual, when we were eating breakfast. Top story was a monster snow storm on the way.

So back in the room I booted up and checked Accuweather. Yup, lots of snow in the works for New Mexico and almost everywhere. Even Los Angeles was going to get snow.

Yipes. Time to change direction. Holbrook wasn’t due for much till Friday. So we could go there. 

Our next stop, Gallup, was in for something between 10 inches and 10 feet beginning to fall on Thursday, just about when we would be pulling into town.

Accuweather was telling me to take food and blankets in the car in case we got stranded. 

What a nightmare. I was supposed to be escaping snow, not driving into it.

So I changed plans. We’d go to Holbrook, but scratch Gallup and Santa Fe, which were going to be snowed in.

Holbrook is definitely worth the trip. Or maybe that should be “the trip is definitely worth having to stay in Holbrook.”

We rode into snow-covered mountains and then came to the Tonto National Forest. This is Wile E. Coyote country. There are balanced rocks, crewcut mesas. Some of the cliffs are full of cracks, looking like something made of giant red Legos.

We ran into a few brief flurries, but even I didn’t mind, my snowphobia notwithstanding.

We stopped at the Holbrook Visitor center for directions and got to see the old jail. Dawn, the lady at the counter, told us that the Petrified Forest National Park was closed because the roads were icy.

There’s not much else to do in town. Even the Butterfield Stage Co. Steak House has shut down. The hotel, a Best Western franchise, is right next to Denny’s, but that would be a last resort. Too much like a diner and no beer.

We wound up at Mesa Italiana Restaurant, not far from the hotel. The steaks were OK. I’d grade them around a C-plus or a B, not a very good grade in cattle country.

Beers at the bar were OK. I tried the Kilt Lifter Scotch ale from Four Peaks in Tempe. It was better than the company’s Hop Knot IPA. It wasn’t as bitter but had more complex flavor. It was malty, but not sweet, an attribute of too many Scotch ales.

Even better was a red ale called Liquid Amber, from Prescott Brewing Co. It had even less sweetness than the Kilt Lifter.

Best of all was Tower Station IPA, made by Mother Road Brewing in Flagstaff. I picked up a four-pack of pint cans at a convenience store next to the Mesa Italiana.

Running a little over 7 percent alcohol, it’s a very fine, full-flavored American IPA. Enjoying the hops, pine, and bite, I went through three pints before I had to go to sleep.

We checked the Park Service website Wednesday morning and found the park was open. 

When we got there, it didn’t look much like my old View-Master pictures. That’s because it was covered with snow.

The ranger also asked if we were bringing any petrified rock. Then she told us not to take any.

I learned only when we got there that the Petrified Forest is a small part of the Painted Desert, about 7,500 square miles of comically colored rocks. Some hills are red. Some are almost black. Many are striped.

There are areas called the Jasper, Agate, and Crystal Forests. One of them contains the world’s largest concentration of petrified wood. An entire valley floor is littered with broken stone logs. You can stand on a sandstone bluff and snap photos of them. 

One of the emerging logs of stone is the photo of the day.

The Agate Bridge is a petrified log that hasn’t broken yet. The ground under it has eroded away. It probably would have collapsed under its own weight by now, except that in 1917 a concrete support was built under it.

I don’t think any of these things are jasper, agate, or crystal. It was silica, probably from volcanic ash that invaded and petrified the wood.

They were part of the bluff, which is constantly eroding and releasing the petrified logs, which roll down into the valley. There are trails that can take you near them, but we had neither the time nor the footwear for that.

People have lived in the Painted Desert for millennia. There are petroglyphs in many places, including one particularly rich area now known as Newspaper Rock, with several hundred glyphs. Nobody’s allowed near them.

There are more glyphs near the Puerco Pueblo. What a great name: Pork City. It’s prehistoric, so nobody knows what the original inhabitants called it. 

I wondered: Did excavators find lots of pig bones there?

But no. nothing so strange. It’s named for the Puerco River that flows near it.

This is another large communal dwelling. But this one is made from stone, not adobe. The structure has been buried with fill dirt to protect it. I believe the exposed walls are replicas showing the layout of the original.

As you come down to I-40, which in this area is also U.S. 66, the historical Route 66 roadbed is gone. All that remains is a line of now disused telephone poles and the rusting carcass of a 1932 Studebaker.

The current power lines are a few hundred yards south along Interstate 40.

Near the beginning of the park road, we stopped at the Painted Desert Inn. It was built in the 1920s as a tourist hotel. It was later taken over by the government and remodeled by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

There were Harvey Girls working there at one time.

The walls have murals by a Hopi painter, Fred Kabotie. One tells a traditional story of the Salt Journey. Two brothers travel to bring salt back to their grandmother and encounter a range of adventures.

The inn was closed in the 1960s and almost demolished. A public campaign saved it and now it has been turned into a museum. 

The building is also called the Stone Tree House because it is made of local petrified wood.

When we came out of the park, it was time to head to the Holiday Inn in Deming, N.M., well south of the current snow line.

We had stopped in town for an hour on our way to Tucson on the fifth. We could hide out there for a couple of days and then head east and south toward the Alamo.

We crossed some high mountains. I think one pass was more than 8,000 feet above sea level. We rode through towns on plains more than a mile high.

We encountered a few patches of ice where snow had melted and run across the road, but any cars we saw abandoned along the highway had slid off the road a day or two before. 

I had to get through the mountains before sunset, though, because with the possibility of ice, I needed the visibility only possible in daylight.

We made that deadline, but it’s more than five hours from the park to Deming, even if you push the speed limit, which I did. We got into town a little after dark.

We had to stop at a Walgreen’s for beer and directions. Once you learn the secret—that you have to drive through a street disguised as the entrance to a strip mall—the hotel is easy to find.

For dinner we went to a place we can see from our window, the Lazy Lizard Lounge, which is in the Quality Inn.

It’s one of the few places serving food that doesn’t close at nine. As it turns out, we got there around 8:30, just in time. They keep pouring drinks, but their kitchen closes at 9, too.

I had a few Sierra Nevadas with a cheeseburger served on rye. The caraway gives it a happy little twist.

The beer from Walgreen’s is 7K IPA, from Santa Fe Brewing Co. Another good American IPA. It runs about 7 percent, and this one. too, I recommend to all the ale fans.

And here’s to clear roads and colorful rocks.

Love to all and to all a good night.

Harry