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