Graffiti Here and There

December 13-16

We set out on Monday to get a few basics from a Whole Foods store. We remembered that it was somewhere on Cerrillos Road, so all we had to do was drive towards the old town.

Of course, I missed it.

We wound up instead on a narrow side street in old Santa Fe. So we bagged the plan to go grocery shopping and looked for a place to park.

Joanna saw cars going in and out of a garage on the right. I backed up and went in.

A man met us and said parking was three dollars an hour. If we had dinner in their restaurant, we would get two hours free.

“Your restaurant? Where are we?”

It wasn’t a public garage. It was the parking facility for La Fonda, a long-time fixture of Santa Fe. The restaurant is in the hotel.

We dropped off the car and took a walk in the old town. It’s colorful enough, but most of it is filled with shops selling Southwestern souvenirs. There are also a few clothing stores, some eateries, and art galleries.

It was amusing exercise to walk around a bit.

The restaurant at La Fonda is called La Plazuela. We got there a few minutes early and waited for the place to open at four.

It’s a fancy space full of woodwork and colorful Mexican motifs. 

The menu was interesting. We both chose a main course called campfire trout. It came as a stack of filets with fingerling potatoes, haricots verts, pieces of bacon, all topped with a sunny-side-up egg.

It sounded too strange to be bad. And wow, it was better than good. What a mix of flavor. It’s pricy, but the next time you’re in Santa Fe, try it.

Since it was a fish dish, I wanted to try it with white wine. I had two interesting Chardonnays.

The first, and maybe the better of the two, was from Hess Shirttail Ranches in Monterey County, California.

The second, also very good, was from Hartford Court, in the Russian River Valley.

Tuesday was laundry day. 

We stopped at a laundromat called Wash Tub, which had gotten some rave reviews on Google. It was a mile or so up Cerrillos Road.

After doing the laundry, we set out for Museum Hill to visit the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art. We had seen several BBC art history programs on YouTube, hosted by a witty art critic named Waldemar Januszczak, who was born in Poland but speaks with an accent like Prince Philip’s. 

One of his shows was about Spanish baroque, and much of that episode was about the art of New Spain. So we wanted to visit.

We got there with no trouble but couldn’t get in. The place is closed on Monday and Tuesday.

We took it easy at the hotel for a while and then went to dinner, which was tasty but unoriginal: Outback. Joanna had salmon and I took the sirloin. 

I’ve been developing a taste for Cabernet Sauvignon. I never hated it, and if someone served it, that was fine. But I rarely ordered it.

There is a characteristic flavor in the wine. I can’t describe it, but sometimes it is too strong for me and overpowers all the other flavors. 

I had two glasses of California cab with dinner.

One was from Josh Cellars. The name didn’t ring any bells with me, but Joanna knew it. She had seen a commercial on TV.  The winemaker named the company for his father. 

The other was from Robert Mondavi. In my ignorance, I had always thought of Mondavi as one of the jug wine brands, like Carlo Rossi or Gallo, but I tried this one.

Both glasses were really tasty treats, complex, nicely balanced. 

I enjoyed the Mondavi so much that it surprised me. So I put his name into Google. He’s one of the guys who made Napa Valley what it is today. Talk about selling somebody short.

We got hit by howling wind, pounding rain, and a bit of snow early in the morning. It was all loud enough to wake us up. It wasn’t a complete surprise. I’ve been to Santa Fe three times and it snowed whenever I was in town. Once it snowed in October. 

Wednesday was another moving day.

We left Santa Fe before 11 and weren’t in a hurry. The drive to Gallup was about three hours.

So we left the highway near Albuquerque to stop at the Petroglyphs National Monument. I had been there before, back in 2009 when I was visiting Bob W., a friend who had retired as an engineer at the Sandia National Laboratory and who had written several articles for the magazine.

The area is covered by lava hills. Streets and businesses have names like “Molten Rock,” “Lava Flow,” or simply “Petroglyphs.”

The lava solidified into a light colored basalt. The surface slowly oxidized and darkened. Chipping away the coating leaves a pattern. 

Some patterns are geometric, including spirals. Some of those have bullet holes in them because they look like targets.

There are animals and human forms, too. Some of the images are believed to be thousands of years old.

I look at these line drawings and try to imagine ancient people carving their lives out of the desert and some form of expression out of the rock.

Some time later, back on the road, we crossed the Continental Divide for the first time on this trip.

We stayed at a Comfort Inn in Gallup, just off I-40. 

I had a craving for a burger. Joanna didn’t, but said, “I can always find something to eat.“ The Badlands Grill on Old Route 66 looked promising. 

That is, until we got there. We saw no cars outside. 

There were signs on the doors. We drove up and learned the place was closed for a private event.

We rode Route 66 for a while to find an alternative eatery. 

It took a few miles, but we came at last on the Historic El Rancho Hotel. It’s a quaint rustic country hotel dating to the 1930s.

I had a couple of house reds with my burger. Joanna had beans & rice with salad.

I’d rate it all as diner food. OK to eat, but clearly the kitchen has cut corners. 

I had picked up a bottle of Josh Cabernet Sauvignon at a nearby supermarket. It is fantastic. I wound up polishing it off.

Thursday brought us another step closer to Phoenix.

We saw billboards for a store called Indian Ruins. Hand-made knives, Jewelry made by Indians. It sounded like another Flying C. But were there any ruins?

We never did find out;. We exited to what I thought was the place but came to Indian Center instead. I figured we were in the wrong place and didn’t ask.

It was a small store packed with Indian themed goods, including Minnetonka moccasins, kachinas, dreamcatchers, and so forth. Also an old-fashioned soda counter at one end of the building. No hand-made knives.

We wanted to buy something to support the native enterprise. We bought two books, one on the Apache wars for me and another, “Outlaw Tales of Arizona: True Stories of Arizona's Most Famous Robbers, Rustlers, and Bandits” for Joanna.

Later we detoured to see a meteor crater, billed as a “natural landmark.” When I first saw the sign, I was doing 75 or 80 on the Interstate. It was a brown sign with white letters and I misread that as “national landmark.” I thought: National Park Service.

We took the appropriate exit and saw another brown sign pointing the way.

Then the signs got a little sillier. “Five miles to impact.” “Speed limit, cars 50, meteors 26,000.”

When we got to the parking lot, we learned that we had to sign up for a tour. I opted out. Come on, not to see a hole in the ground.

We left the Interstate and took Historic Route 66 at Winslow because of the Eagles. We hoped to see the statue “standin’ on the corner in Winslow, Arizona.” 

It wasn’t on Route 66, so I had no clue where it might be. It wasn’t by any means a loss, though. The change for 10 or 20 minutes was refreshing, and the stretch through Winslow is the best-kept part of the Mother Road that we had seen since Clinton, Oklahoma.

We had visited the Painted Desert on our last trip, but went back to the Holbrook Museum because it is also the tourist information center, and we needed Arizona roadmaps. 

I thought I had one in the trunk before we set out, but didn’t find it.

It’s a curious little place full of local artifacts, including a chuck wagon and the 19th century local jail. The walls are full of graffiti left by prisoners.

We made it to the Comfort Inn in Flagstaff, at the junction of I-40 and I-17 by 3:30.

We took the recommendation of the man at the desk and went around the block to The Taverna for dinner. It’s a Mediterranean restaurant. I had a dish called chicken santorini with a Greek salad and more Cabernets. 

The house Cab and one from Tribute in California.

The food was good. The wine was better.

The Tribute had a touch of alum, a little tartness, and a small bite. Not bad by any means, but the Josh and the Mondavi are more to my taste. The house red was mild but fine.

Joanna had a gyro with a Caesar salad. The kitchen puts feta in everything. I think it’s great. Joanna hates it.

That just about brings me up to date.

It’s Thursday night, and we arrive in Scottsdale tomorrow. We have some domestic chores to take care of—things like dry cleaning, buying a few birthday cards, stuff like that.

We hope as always that everyone is staying well and happy.

Love to everyone, and don’t shoot at any graffiti. It could have historical importance.

Harry and Joanna

Stuffed Full of Bull

December 11-12

We checked into a Comfort Inn on Cerillos Road in Santa Fe on Sunday. We’ll take a break from the endless highway and stay till Wednesday morning. 

The winds have slackened a bit. We get an occasional gust, but things have become less strenuous.

The strong winds of the previous few days are apparently very unusual. We asked our waitress at the Pow Wow Restaurant in Tucumcari about them. She said she had never seen anything like this before and called it “terrifying.”

The street signs in Amarillo were rattling so hard we expected them to tear loose and go flying.

This isn’t even supposed to be the windy season. That’s in March or April.

The winds are connected to the tornadoes that tore through the Midwest at about the same time. According to the National Weather Service, the storm system in the Rockies “ingested a couple” of other, smaller storms. That system ran into moisture in the Mississippi Valley, The resulting thunderstorms spawned the tornadoes. 

At least, that’s what I understand them to say.

Some of the tornadoes crossed the route we had traveled a few days earlier. But we were in New Mexico, well away from the tornadoes by that time.

We stopped for gasoline shortly after we entered New Mexico. It was a Phillips 66 station, and since we are celebrating all things related to the Mother Road this trip, we had to stop there. 

Gas prices are higher in New Mexico than they were even in New Jersey when we left.

I started pumping regular at somewhere around $3.70 a gallon. Then I saw that regular out here is rated at 86 octane. My car owner’s manual says the car needs at least 87. 

I took a few gallons and then moved on.

The brought us to a place that seemed to be taking a page from Wall Drug’s playbook.

The Flying C Ranch gas station and arts and crafts store starts is at exit 234 in Encino, New Mexico.  Its billboards start way far out, maybe 40 or 50 miles.

Every mile or two there is a Flying C billboard touting something at the store: fireworks, knives, man stuff, girl stuff, kid stuff, snake products, hats, boots. They become more frequent as you come closer to the exit.

That builds to a crescendo. There must be more than a dozen billboards. Lined up like Cadillacs at the ranch on both sides of I-40.

Even before I saw that, I was planning to go to the Flying C. By now, though, I was expecting a theme park, like Wall Drug.

I pulled up to a pump first. The gas prices were like those at the Phillips station. I had to opt for middle grade gasoline at $4.10 a gallon. It is rated at 88 octane. OK, that should make up for the 86 octane that I bought 20 miles back.

Flying C isn’t quite Wall Drug. No animatronic T. rex, no arcade full of Western lore, no kiddie rides, but it was still worth the stop. All the pocket knives are made in Red China. Indeed most of everything was made there, so it was off our shopping list.

There is a collection of knives hand-made by a local artisan. They are beautiful, but they are not something that I’d carry. They are the kinds of artifacts that collectors put into display cases.

I might be very upset if I forgot to take a $400 sheath knife off my belt at an airport and had to surrender it to the TSA.

Joanna bought a lap blanket made In Mexico. The colors are similar to one she has in her TV room.

Fireworks ran from the familiar small paper parcels of three-quarter inchers for a couple of bucks to a box taller than I am with an arsenal of ordinance for about one thousand dollars. 

As I say, no dinosaurs, but off in one corner is the star of the show, a full-grown stuffed bull buffalo, maybe preserved by Anthony Perkins at the Bates Motel. A sign says you can give it a home for $19,999.99.

We came to the Comfort Inn on Cerrillos Road around three in the afternoon. Much of the way had been through gentle hills dotted with junipers.

As we came north toward Santa Fe, there were snow-capped mountains on the horizon.

We went to an Italian restaurant called Rustica for dinner. It’s practically across the street, but location is not why we went. The menu included bucatini all’ Amatriciana, made with guanciale  That’s the bacon made from pig cheek, and it’s made that way in Rome, where I first ate it.

The only other place in the States where I’ve found it so far is Woodstack, a pizza bar in Pine Brook, New Jersey.

The Amatriciana is a spicy dish, laced with red pepper flakes. So Joanna opted for cavatelli with sausage and broccolini.

I downed my fiery pasta dish with something new to me, and apparently to the restaurant, Frescobaldi Remole Rosso. It was Tuscan and had much of the flavor of Chianti, but less of a tannic bite.

I followed that with a Banfi Chianti, Also good but very sharp by contrast with the Frescobaldi.

Sunday was busy, and in a great way.

We had a 10:30 brunch date with Jack and Sunny at their house in a development built on land leased from the Cochiti Reservation. Or at least, I think that’s what Jack once told me some time ago.

The table was beautiful. There was a casserole made with vegetables and eggs; sausage links; red, green, and orange fruit like Mexican tiles, and a champagne-style sparkling wine made by a local vintner, Gruet

I sipped the champagne with brunch, but started with a Bloody Mary. My last one of those was in New Orleans seven years ago. Very nice.

We talked about many things, including the weather, because it was so out of the ordinary. Sunny said she was out in it and the flying grit actually broke her skin. She didn’t know it until a friend asked what had happened to her.

Now that the wind has died down, the weather is bright in the mid-30s. Jack said that’s a typical winter day for the area.

Somehow we veered off into rattlesnake stories. Like the baby rattler that Sunny found one day under the dining room table.

It’s 25 or 30 miles to downtown Santa Fe from their house, and the country is mostly undeveloped in between. Big cats have been seen in the area. Also a bear, which was hanging around for a while. Hikers, it turns out, were feeding the bear.

We got to talking about why I always wear a jacket, with a vest if weather permits. It’s for the pockets. As a homeless person, I have to carry my day’s essentials with me. 

I used to use a book bag, when I rode the train to the office. 

Now I travel lighter: cash wallet, notebook wallet, a couple of handkerchiefs, passport, car keys, door keys, loose change, money clip, pocket watch, switchblade. Everything needs a place.

So Jack and Sunny gave me a photographer’s jacket designed to carry all kinds of cargo securely. I’ll be switching to that in a few days. 

We met Karl and Jeanie at their house in town later in the afternoon. They used to live next door to my old house. 

They had been talking for a while—maybe a year or two—about making a move once their son and daughter had both finished high school.

Karl told me how they settled on Santa Fe. They had read about the climate and other attractions. 

Karl phoned an acquaintance and asked him about any unpleasant sides of living there. Nothing came to mind right away. He said would think about it.

A short while later, he called back. One of the downsides: No world-class Chinese food.

They asked about how we are managing the trip. We said we’re not booking far in advance because it gives us more flexibility.

It’s how we avoided two nights in Amarillo, and stayed in Shamrock and Tucumcari instead.

Karl said he understood that one. During the transition from New Jersey, he had crossed the country on the ground a few times. He stayed in Amarillo on one of those trips—but only once, during a trip between Santa Fe and New Jersey. He agreed it wasn’t the best place to stay.

We met at Karl and Jeanie’s house and then followed them to a restaurant called Pranzo, which they knew by reputation.

Another very good Italian kitchen. Joanna had linguine with clam sauce. I had a pizza. As a rule, I don’t usually eat pizza outside the New York-Philadelphia corridor. This was worth breaking the rule.

We followed them back to St. Francis Blvd., which connects with Cerrillos Road.

I’m writing right now on the 16th. Yesterday and today have been easy-going and not too adventurous. I’ll recap them in the next installment. This one has gone on long enough.

Be well, everyone, and don’t take any bull, especially stuffed ones. They cost too damned much.

Love,

Harry and Joanna

Getting Kicks

December 9-10

After I sent my first e-mail on this trip, I got this response from my friend Art:

“If you ever chance to motor west,

Take my way, the highway that’s the best.

Get your kicks on Route 66!”

What’s now known as Historic Route 66 joins 1-40 around Oklahoma City. The original highway came down in a southerly arc from Chicago and somewhere in or near OKC pointed just about due west toward Santa Monica.

I-40 runs on the same route as many sections of the old road.  Sometimes old 66’s path veers off to the north or south of the Interstate’s course. There are usually signs to tell you when that happens.

One of those places is in Clinton, Oklahoma, where we veered off to see the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum.

Route 66, built in the 1920s, was one of the original U.S. highways.

It had several names. It was sometimes called the Will Rogers Highway, at least in Oklahoma. I’m not sure if that name was used elsewhere.

It was also the Mother Road, a name Steinbeck used in “The Grapes of Wrath.” It was the route West for fugitives from the Dust Bowl.

One of the first things you see when you walk into the museum is an old Phillips 66 pump. 

Each room is dedicated to a decade or so of the road’s history. A room about the 30s includes a display of a migrant family camped by the car at the roadside. A push of a button brings up Woody Guthrie singing a song about the highway.

A big theme for the 40s is gasoline rationing, which encouraged hitch-hiking and bus travel.

There was a decorated van representing the 60s.

When we set out, I was hoping to see some of the novelties that Route 66 was known for. Maybe a three-headed snake, say.

I haven’t found anything quite like that yet, but we did see a barrel with baby rattlers at the museum. One of the rattlers had a picture of Winnie the Pooh on it.

The 50s were summed up by a bright and shiny soda shop, which appears to be a replica of an actual place that operated on the road.

There’s another snack shop outside the building. It’s a tiny box-like structure that may be a restored original or a replica. 

We checked it out to see if we would get a hot dog. It was closed, but appeared to be complete. Maybe it’s used on special occasions.

In any event, all we had to do to get that hot dog was drive across the highway to the Hub Diner. That, too, looks bright, shiny, and authentic 50s.

I actually drank a Dr. Pepper. I haven’t tasted that in years.

We made it to the Sleep Inn in Shamrock, Texas, around three. The room was excellent, spacious and comfortable. 

I asked the lady at the desk about places to eat. She recommended a local restaurant called the Mesquite Canyon Steakhouse.

Reviews online were overwhelmingly positive. I also learned the place was BYOB. 

Triple J Liquor was practically around the block from the hotel. The steakhouse was about a mile straight up the road from there. So we were set.

I had picked up a bottle of Mirassou Pinot Noir. I read the description on the label. I didn’t get strawberry or raspberry. But it had the touch of cherry, also toast and oak. A very nice drink.

The food wasn’t great, but was OK. I might go back to the steakhouse if I’m ever in Shamrock again.

I had a small sirloin, tasty but a little tough, with two kinds of beans, green and pinto. They were fine, but I’ve had better.

Joanna had green beans, too, along with catfish and a baked sweet potato. We shared the potato and that was very good.

Friday we headed for New Mexico. 

The winds have become ferocious in the region. It was difficult to open the car door. Tumbleweed and grit are flying through the air. Nothing like the Dust Bowl, but the sky on the horizon is often gray and sometimes tan with dust.

On the way we followed about 20 miles of old Route 66 that ran a loop through Amarillo and back to I-40. 

It had been billed as a colorful preservation of the old road.

We passed lots of eateries in beat-up buildings, including Tacos Garcia, which a billboard had called “a Texas tradition.” We also saw rows of small motels deteriorating over time. Indeed, the entire stretch was rusty and broken, with several vacant properties.

I was originally planning to stay here, and now I’m glad I changed my mind.

We made a brief stop at Cadillac Ranch, where we fought the wind to get a close look. As you can see in the photo of the day, Joanna shopped for a car.

We stopped at a Texas travel information center for a few minutes. There was a sign outside warning of rattlesnakes, but I didn’t see any.

The wind was even fiercer here. There was one brief instant when we felt like mimes walking against the wind. No, really. We were actually stopped for an instant in mid-stride by the headwind.

There was a display inside about wind power. The windmill-driven pumps, a standard of Western movies, was instrumental in opening the dryer parts of the Panhandle to farming.

Last time we crossed Texas, we went pretty much through the middle of the state. The landscape was littered with oil pumps.

This time, farther north, there is an almost endless array of wind turbines generating electricity.

Right after we crossed into New Mexico, we made a similar stop. 

This time, we saw a cutout Billy the Kid with a red string tie added for Christmas.

We also met a man at one of those machines that press pennies into souvenir medallions.

He was standing at the machine pressing one after another. He was working from a roll of pennies.

He told us that he does this wherever he goes and trades the tokens with people all over the world.

We’re in Tucumcari, New Mexico. I stopped here mainly because it’s a comfortable day’s travel from our last stop and equally convenient to our next, Santa Fe.

I had heard the name and thought it would be a place of some size. It isn’t. 

I managed to find somewhere more interesting than McDonald’s for dinner—the Pow Wow Restaurant and Lizard Lounge. The resident lizard, a four-foot high alligator mannequin was dressed for Christmas in a Santa suit. Not quite as dapper as Billy the Kid’s tie.

Most of the menu was Mexican, which is all right for me because I haven’t had tamales for a while. 

Joanna’s system can’t take that kind of heat, so she opted for spaghetti and meatballs, which she said was surprisingly good. The meatballs, she said, were among the best she has eaten.

My tamales were very good, too. I couldn’t decide between red or green chili, so the waitress suggested I have both. 

We had a little of the house wine. I had a Pinot Grigio, and Joanna had Pinot Noir.

The white was OK. The red was probably from California and very interesting, a little bit nutty and spicy maybe.

After that, we called it a day.

Love and health to all. And remember to watch out for rattlers.

Harry and Joanna