Negative News Is Good News

January 14-20

My last dispatch ended on the 13th, so we were still in quarantine in Riverside.

It’s not a bad place to be isolated. You’re not going to miss anything.

We ate a lot of takeout from Big Skyy across the street. 

The day we got the news that we were positive, we had planned to go to a branch of The Spaghetti Factory. I thought it might be worth a try. We may have gone to one in upstate New York some time ago, but I’m not sure.

Anyhow, that didn’t work out, because we went straight back to the Quality Inn for some takeout closer to home. 

The end of our fifth day, though, we decided to venture out, and we drove over to The Spaghetti Factory, after all. It was better than New York Pizza in Riverside, but not so much better that I’d recommend another trip there.

The sausage had no flavor of fennel or sage. The wine was OK. The sauce was meaty, but also a little sweet. Definitely edible, but that’s about all there is to say about it.

The next morning, the 15th, we started heading east. We’ve been keeping highway drives to three hours or so between stops. So we went back to Blythe, still in California but very close to the Arizona state line.

We had enough of California. So I had tried to get us into Quartzsite, Arizona, but that’s one hell of a popular place. It was booked solid.

We went to a Sizzler Steakhouse for dinner at Blythe. It was the only place in town that looked promising. We had tried Steaks and Cakes during our previous stop in town, and I wan’t in the mood for more gristle.

When I walked into Sizzler, I had a bit of culture shock. You order the way you do at a fast food joint.

But it was better than that. We had a couple of sirloins with some house red. Not great, but good, and the price was light.

We were back in Scottsdale Sunday afternoon, the 16th. We finally got a chance to do the laundry.

Food is good in this town. We went back to Barrio Queen twice. Joanna loves a broiled fish dish they serve. I tried tamales one night, and they were good, but even better was the second time, a trio of enchiladas in three kinds of mole: red, black, and green.

I’ll have that the next time I visit the Queen. 

We went back to the Grapevine one other night, and Joanna even tried pizza at Grimaldi’s.

But we hit town on a low note. We were still running symptoms, an occasional cough and nasal congestion.

I tried to book us for tests. No openings anywhere and no help finding any online. You ask about tests, get 20 locations, and for each one you have to click day by day to learn there are no openings. 

Apparently they can’t write code that will give you a hint.

We went to Walgreen’s Monday morning and got a real surprise.

We had been to several drug stores, and saw signs that over-the-counter tests were sold out. Many of the signs showed marks of age.

This morning, though, Walgreen’s was in stock in a big way. We were limited to four at a time. Joanna bought two and I bought three.

We waited till Tuesday morning to try the test. Damn it, but they both turned up the single blue line. Just like that. We were covid-free and good to get boosters.

Patrick had sent me a connection to Albertson’s, where his family got their shots, and it worked perfectly.

We managed to land appointments for Wednesday morning

We were feeling so great that we went out to take a walk in the Desert Botanical Garden.

We sat on a bench among spikey and palmy things looking like props for “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Dale Chihuly, the artist who works in glass and was featured in the museum in Oklahoma City, has done a number of works that are integrated with the garden.

We got our shots on time. And took it easy for the afternoon before we went back to Barrio Queen.

Thursday, the 20th, we took off for the next leg of the journey to the east.

Instead of following I-10 to Tucson, we took U.S, 60 and 70 to a town called Safford. I’ve been reading a book about the Apache wars, and the route goes through the San Carlos Reservation. An early Arizona governor mentioned in the book is named Safford.

Part of U.S. 60 is known as the Superstition Freeway. Fans of old Westerns know about the Superstition Mountains and the Lost Dutchman Mine. This is ground zero for that legend.

There’s a sign for the Lost Dutchman State Park at Exit 196, so I had to take us in that direction. 

The last reference we saw to the park, though, was another sign indicating a left turn from Idaho Road to a main thoroughfare called Apache Trail. Just about everything there is called Apache.

I don’t know how far we went on Apache Trail, but there was no more mention of a park of any kind.

Maybe that’s part of the joke. The Dutchman Park, like the Dutchman Mine, is lost in the Superstition Mountains. Yes, there is a website for the park, but I’m still skeptical.

Later we came through the Tonto National Forest, a fantastic landscape of steep rolling hills covered in saguaros. 

Very eerie, and quite beautiful. The tall cacti with their arms aloft seem to add to the sense of space as the hills plummet and climb.

We came to the Best Western on U.S. 70 in Safford a little after two, and I put this together.

So here’s wishing everybody a single blue line on the test strip.

Stay well and keep happy.

Harry and Joanna

Off the Grid

January 7-13

We’ve been lying low for more than a week in Riverside, so there hasn’t been much to write home about.

We had been taking it easy, nursing head colds—the occasional cough, runny nose, fatigue. The usual stuff. 

We were thinking about getting flu boosters, and you can’t do that unless you’re Covid-free. So we went to a pharmacy that charges for a test. You fill out a form on-line and submit it with a photo of your driver’s license. Then you drive to the store and line up in your car.

Very appropriate, I guess. After all, this is California, where the drive-in wake was invented. 

A remarkably short line, I have to add. That’s because instead of those free tests that never seem to be available, this one costs $99.

You already know where this is going. We both registered positive.

Nobody was excited. The pharmacist told us to isolate for five days. 

That was Sunday, so this is day 4 of quarantine.

The only difference is that we have our meals delivered. In a couple of cases, we did a curbside pickup.

The only decent food in the neighborhood is at the Big Skyy Bistro, the Chinese restaurant across the street. They recognize Joanna as soon as she calls.

We tried a place that bills itself as New York Style Pizza. I was craving pasta, so I don’t know about the pizza. I had spaghetti. It was mediocre at best, but I was so hungry that I went through it all.

I haven’t been hitting much wine, but did a glass of Josh Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon with that. That wine is terrific. It’s smooth, and it has a lot of flavor. I think it could make anything taste good.

We’ve gone out for a couple of short walks, but there’s nothing to see. From what I have seen so far, the city is pretty enough, but bland. It’s also littered with trash.

At first sight, the neighborhood of the hotel seemed very well kept and pleasant. The streets are lined with palms. 

There’s a snowcapped peak north of the city. Roses and birds of paradise are in bloom.

When we got a closer look, from the sidewalk, the streets and gutters are full of litter. There are homeless people, many of them outwardly hostile, living on the streets.

Some of them are raiding trash cans and throwing what they don’t want on the ground.

The place is as filthy as New York.

We’ve been going to sleep early and getting up late. We’re also taking naps.

We’ve had enough California, so we’ll start heading back on Saturday. We’ll stop at Blythe and then go back to Scottsdale, where we’ll plan our next move.

Keep well, all.

Love,

Harry and Joanna

Desert Wonders

January 4-6, 2022

We spent most of Tuesday, the fourth, getting ready to head west.

It’s amazing how much junk only two people can accumulate over just a few days.

The handout breakfast at a hotel is usually a fallback for us. We usually bring our own yogurt, bran cereal, and almond milk. 

I know: almond milk sounds weird, but we both like it. Besides, it keeps better than cow’s milk.

The less you have to move, the better off you are, So anything we didn’t need to use that day went into the car.

We also did laundry. I ironed another shirt and felt very accomplished.

I came across some rave reviews for a pizzeria called Pomo, on First Street, a short way from the hotel.

They weren’t exaggerating.

I had a pizza named for the house. The Pomo pizza came with sausage, mushrooms, salami, and olives. I had to eat it with a knife and fork. Fantastic.

It’s hard to believe, but there are some people who just don’t care for pizza. Joanna’s one of them. She had a bolognese over spaghetti. 

Wednesday we knew we were in for a treat. When they learned that we planned to take Interstate 10 to California, Richard and Linda told us about a stop near the Arizona state line.

It’s a town called Quartzsite. Just a dot on the map, but wow, what a place.

It’s almost in California, at exit 17. We crested a hill and saw a town of low-roofed houses spreading in the valley in the distance. 

When we got closer, it became evident that these weren’t houses at all, at least not in the conventional sense.

Everywhere, on both sides of the highway, was a sea of trailers, recreational vehicles, and campers.

This is where the nomads come to winter. And there must be thousands of them.

Most of the buildings in town, at least from what we saw, have a temporary feel, too. They are largely prefab manufactured structures, the kind of thing where you might keep your tractor and your combine.

There seems to be an overwhelming demand for rocks, jewelry, and crystals. That’s what most of the stores on Main Street were hawking. 

There were also a number of transient vendors set up in tents and lean-tos. They were selling much the same merchandise.

We stopped at a place called Daniel’s. We had seen billboards on I-10 advertising its “fresh beef jerky.” I don’t know how anything dried and salted could be fresh. But we stopped there.

Joanna bought some the beef. I took some elk. I had some once before, and I may have liked it.

I didn’t see any camel jerky, but it would have been appropriate, because camels are celebrated all over town. There are almost life-size statues of camels, little camels by the sign that welcomes you to town, and there is a camel crowning the town’s most important monument.

Besides the stunning array of mobile shelters, the town has a historic cemetery, anchored by a monument known as Hi Jolly’s tomb. 

Hi Jolly was as close as the American soldiers could get to pronouncing the man’s name, Hadji Ali. He was a Syrian camel driver, who came to the area when the Army set up the U.S. Camel Corps.

That was the brainstorm of no less a figure than Jefferson Davis. Davis was Secretary of War and decided to experiment with camels in the Sonoran Desert.

The Civil War gave Davis a new job, as president of the Confederacy. Leading the Rebels and the U.S. War Department is a clear conflict of interest, so he had to quit his U.S. job.

With the departure of Davis, the Camel Corps fell apart. 

Jolly stayed in the area, and was such a popular fellow, that when he died in 1902 the locals built a pyramid over his grave to celebrate his Middle Eastern heritage. 

The entire cemetery seems exotic. At least, they seem so to this East Coast Anglo. Graves are outlined with frames, often made of stones, for instance, creating a very foreign look. Many of the markers are missing, so the graves have small identifiers giving the plot number and the person’s name.

 

We stopped for the night at a Quality Inn in Blythe, California. We had stopped at a Quality Inn several weeks ago, and found it exceptional, The one in Blythe was a step down for the franchise. I couldn’t even log into e-mail.

We had a quick dinner at a diner called Steaks and Cakes. It was a top-rated spot in town. We won’t go there again.

We left Blythe for Riverside the next morning.

On the way, Interstate 10 passes Joshua Tree National Park.We had to drive more than 30 miles up the park road to see any Joshua trees.

The park is placed to preserve a meeting of two ecosystems.

The south end, where we started, is in the Colorado Desert, which is part of the Great Sonoran Desert. It’s a low-altitude environment, which out here means hot and arid, where the Joshua trees can’t survive.

The north end of the park is in the Mojave Desert, where the weather’s cooler. It is at least 4,000 feet higher than the Colorado. It’s still arid by East Coast standards, but there is generally more moisture than at the low altitudes.

There are quite a few spectacles in the park—mountains that look like heaps of huge gravel and hills made of megaliths.

One of the strangest sights is the Cholla Garden. Maybe they take over when they root. I don’t know.

In any event, the cholla cacti seem to practice social distancing, staying several feet away from each other. And almost nothing grows between them. A weeded garden indeed.

We drove up to the Mojave and got out to walk among the Joshua trees.

A legend says the Joshua, a variety of yucca, got its name from the Mormons, who saw its arms pointing the way, like Joshua leading the Israelites.

On the way north in the park, the road climbs, but I wasn’t aware of how much. On the way back to I-10, a run of more than 30 miles, we coasted for most of the trip.

We came to Riverside sometime around four.

We searched for likely places to eat that were nearby, preferably in walking distance, You can do that in this neighborhood.

The best prospect was the Big Skyy Bistro. The sign outside has one “y”, but the menu and the web site have two,

There are lots of Chinese eateries around here, but this was the only one that wasn’t fast food. 

My chicken chow mein with black bean sauce was terrific. It went down well with a couple of glasses of an OK Chardonnay.

Joanna had roast duck. I had a bite of that and it, too, was very good.

Duck is a telling sign, by the way, for Chinese and French restaurants. If there’s duck on the menu, the place could be good.  No guarantee of that, mind. But the food is less likely to be good if there’s no duck at all.

We’re going to rest a while in Riverside. I haven’t found too much to do here. Maybe we’ll be able to get our booster shots. It’s also a good place to take naps.

Sleep well, all, and keep well.

Love

Harry and Joanna

Dim Sum for the New Year

January 1-3, 2022

Now that we’ve left the party town of Scottsdale and resettled in a gentrifying neighborhood. Things are a lot quieter at night. 

The lady who screams and slams the door at 3 or 4 in the morning is still at Howard Johnson. Traffic is quieter on West Van Buren than on East Indian School.

We had some modest fireworks on the sky around midnight, and heard a few more in the distance.  There was rain during the night, so that may have dampened some of the celebrations. I expect it kept the drunks indoors.

We’ve also had a touch of colder weather—overnight lows in the 30s. According to one TV weathercaster, temperatures some nights were the coldest since 2019, which was an uncommonly cold winter and also the last time we drove out here.

I’m starting to see a pattern here. Joanna and I go to Santa Fe, and it snows and freezes. We go to Phoenix, and there’s rain and uncommon cold. 

It’s not only uncommon cold, though, that follows us. It’s uncommon weather in general. 

One summer, we went to northern Vermont and hoped to escape the heat of a brutal August in New Jersey. Temperatures that week near the Canadian border hit the 90s.

Museums, indeed just about everything except for restaurants and bars, were closed in Phoenix on New Year’s Day. I guess it’s like that in much of the world. 

With nothing much to go out for, we stayed in for most of the day. 

Google came up with the name of an eatery I hadn’t seen before, the Arrogant Butcher, at Jefferson and First Street, about a mile from the hotel. 

I made a reservation online, mainly to confirm that the kitchen was open on the holiday. It’s a good thing that I did. It’s apparently a very popular spot. Most of the tables were filled, but they put us off in a comfortable corner right away.

The Butcher had oysters on the menu, so I knew what I wanted to have for a start. That and a white wine.

Joanna had a bowl of grilled salmon and black rice.

She had seen jambalaya on the menu, but didn’t want to risk ordering it, because it can be very spicy. That always gives her a bad reaction.

So I had the jambalaya. No question it was hot, and it made a terrific meal. That on top of the raw oysters made me feel that I could sing zydeco. The heat in the stew made that cool white wine a perfect match for it.

We had a date Sunday morning for Dim Sum back in Scottsdale. Not in Old Town, but farther north, in a neighborhood I didn’t know. 

Kristin and Patrick told us we had to be at the restaurant, the Mekong Palace, when it opened at 10 or there would be a long wait for a table.

Joanna and I got there about 9:45, putting us first in line. Patrick, Kristin, Natalie, and Peter arrived soon after. By then there were already three or four parties waiting for the Palace to open.

By the time they started seating us, at 10 a.m., there were already enough people to fill most of the tables.

We were a party of eight, including Peter’s girlfriend, JoJo, and her father, Bill.

At dim sum, you order some of this, a little more of that. The food comes in small dishes that are placed on a carousel in the middle of the table. When something you want comes around, you take it from the dish.

We had gai lan (also called Chinese broccoli) and various dumplings, some with whole shrimp inside, others with pork, some with beef. There were stir-fried rice and a bowl of terrific stir-fried noodles. There was also lo bak go, turnip cake almost as good as the one that Joanna and Natalie made the other day.

This version was precooked and then grilled before it was served. Either I have developed a taste for lo bak go in general or, more likely, this was one of the best turnip cakes I’ve tasted. 

I’ve had it a few times, but only enjoyed it twice, both times in the same week.

Jojo and Peter took off after the meal to go to a climbing gym. They are both freshman at Northern Arizona University. Early in his first semester, Peter organized a climbing team, which practices at gyms and on mountains.

Bill had things to do at home. The rest of us went grocery shopping.

The restaurant is inside a shopping mall called Mekong Plaza, which has the flavor of an upscale mall in Hong Kong, right down to a shop selling furniture, urns, vases, Buddhas, and Kuan Yins. 

At the far end of the mall is an Asian supermarket. To get there we first had to pick our way through the crowd waiting for tables at the dim sum restaurant.

We were looking for ingredients that Joanna was planning to use for dinner on Monday. She was going to make mun gai: chicken parts (including the feet), gingko nuts, gai lan, and Chinese sausage.

There were also a couple of pomelos, which are favorites of Natalie’s.

Patrick and I took the groceries back to the house, while Kristin and Joanna went with Natalie who was shopping for a new pair of boots.

Monday Patrick and Kristin were working from home, but managed to work in time for a hike on Piestewa Peak. Not all the way to the top, but they were going farther than my knees can take me these days.

I walked with the crew through the streets. It was warm and the climb was uphill even before we reached the trail, although not impossible for me. I had a strong knee brace on and had a cane, so I was able to follow everyone into the easement that makes a shortcut to the park. 

The shortcut takes you up a neighbor’s driveway and onto a path beside the house to the main trail. I got to the main trail and decided to hike back to Patrick and Kristin’s house.

I had sipped a little water on the way, and when I got back, I really needed more.

Later, when everyone came back, Joanna took a rest and then worked most of the afternoon in the kitchen.

The dinner she made is one of my favorites. Mun gai uses one of the tastiest forms of tofu, the soybean thread. That’s in addition to the mushrooms, sausages, gingko nuts, ginger, cilantro, and (I think) oyster sauce. It’s fantastic.

She also made fun see, a clear vermicelli-thin noodle made from mung beans, which is usually cooked with a vegetable. This time with squash.

Gai lan was the leafy green for the day.

It looked like a lot of food, but most of it disappeared.

I guess the take-away from all this is that, if you’re craving dim sum in Phoenix, you can head to Mekong Palace with confidence.

But get there early.

Love and best wishes.

Harry and Joanna

New Part of Town

December 29-31, 2021

Joanna went for a walk and I stayed in most of Wednesday the 29th.

I was catching up on the log for much of the day. In the process, I forgot to put in one detail that I found pretty remarkable. 

We went back to Walgreen’s Tuesday morning to see if there was any glitch in renewing Joanna’s prescription. Remember, I had my fingers crossed.

Not only was there no glitch, hitch, or hiccup to report, but the order was in the bag waiting for her when we arrived. So far, so good. 

I didn’t go out Wednesday till dinner time, when we strolled over to Barrio Queen.

There was a line outside the door, so we went in to add our names to the list. To our surprise, they seated us right away.

But there are people waiting outside. We’re not going to get hit over the head for jumping the line, are we?

No, they’re all waiting for outside tables.

I’m crazy about the mole at Barrio Queen, but I had that two weeks ago. I opted for something I’ve tasted only once or twice before, chile verde. It’s called green because the sauce has no tomato. Instead it is made with poblano pepper and tomatillos. 

They serve it with rice and beans, a few small tortillas, red onion garnish. It’s like a bit of heaven.

Joanna has to stay away from hot chiles and limit black pepper. She ordered  roasted sea bass, which is her staple at Barrio Queen.

That end of Old Town is dressed up with lights on the palms and on just about everything else. 

The area has a street dedicated to the architect Paolo Soleri. It also has a spectacular bridge that he designed.

From what I’ve read about him, Soleri was an unconventional thinker who worked on sustainable ways of living. Maybe a spiritual brother to Buckminster Fuller.

Soleri is the originator of an experimental community called Arcosanti, somewhere north of Phoenix.

We walked around a bit, past the tiki bar called the Drunk Munk, for instance. We passed stores whose target demographic seemed to be the rhinestone cowgirl.

We didn’t do much during the day on Thursday the 30th. I took care of a little bookkeeping and played on the computer.

We had a dinner date in northern Scottsdale with Patrick, Kristin, Peter and Natalie at a restaurant called the Village Tavern.

We started with a couple of appetizers. We split a caprese salad, which is always good. The freshly fried potato chips were a real treat, especially dipped in ranch dressing. 

The only other time I had eaten something like them was during a business lunch at a French bistro in Queens maybe 40 years ago. 

I followed that with something else I haven’t had for a while (not 40 years, mind, but at least one or two). That was shrimp and grits. 

They were made with bacon, mushroom, onion, and Gruyere. There was a touch of heat in there too. Terrific.

Joanna had grilled meatloaf. Joanna surmised that the meat was grilled because it was treated the same way dim sum restaurants handle lo bak go. They make it up in advance then heat it on a grill when they serve it. 

I had the meatloaf at the Citizen Public House in Scottsdale shortly after we arrived. I tasted a sample from Joanna’s plate at the Village Tavern. It seems this part of the country has exceptionally good meatloaf.

Maybe it’s related to the cowboy heritage.

Last day of the year was moving day for us.

When I tried to extend our stay last week, the place was already sold out for New Year’s weekend, so I found a Holiday Inn Express, a very reliable brand, in downtown Phoenix.

We had time to kill between check-out at Scottsdale and check-in at Phoenix, so we went to the grocery store, the Whole Foods on Ash Avenue in Tempe, where we had gone before. 

We needed breakfast supplies—fruit, almond milk and muesli—and some of Joanna’s mineral supplements were running low.

We had directions for the new hotel from our old hotel. But why go back to square one? I had rudimentary knowledge of the Phoenix street grid. I set off west on University Drive. I could turn right and go north up any numbered street and intersect with our written directions.

I do this kind of improvising all the time on road trips. And why not? If you don’t get lost, you’re not traveling hard enough.

I half expected to get good and lost this time, but I was disappointed. That grid system worked too damned well.

We were coming north and came to an intersection with Van Buren Street, that’s our street.

We were somewhere around 75th Street and worked our way west to Central Avenue, where the numbered avenues picked up. As advertised the hotel was number 950, at the corner of 10th Avenue and Van Buren.

After we settled in, we went for a stroll in University Park across from the hotel. There’s a pool, playground, ball field, and picnic tables. 

There isn’t much going on in the immediate vicinity, which is largely residential. There are some modest, well-kept houses and several apartment complexes.

There’s also a Rescue Mission a few blocks away, so we saw a number of people hanging around the parks and intersections. They had large plastic bags and nowhere to go.

We came to a corner with a sign: “Birrieria Caneros, El Home Run del Sabor.”

I was talking to Joanna about it. A man waiting on his motorcycle at the stop sign asked if we were speaking to him.

No, we’re just trying to decipher the sign.

I was wondering if “birriera”—like “home run”—was Spanglish, perhaps related to “beer.”

I looked the word up later and found that, on the contrary, birria is a dish from Jalisco. So it’s a stew that hits the home run. 

The place looked closed and then we saw that the hours are 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

I asked Google’s help in finding a restaurant. It didn’t turn up anything nearby that wasn’t a fast food franchise. So we settled for a safe bet. We went to a Longhorn Steakhouse almost 10 miles away.

They have some good red wines. We shared a couple of pinots, Trinity Oaks and La Crema. I’ve had some of the cabs at other Longhorns, and they can be good too. As with most of the chain steakhouses, the beer selection is like making love in a canoe.

I got lost for a short bit on the way home, but just drove north till I came to Van Buren. Then all was golden. 

Here’s wishing golden times to everyone. Good food and the joy of getting lost, too.

Be well.

Harry and Joanna