WINTER ROAD TRIP 2023

ROAD TRIP 2023

(FOUR) LONG DAYS' JOURNEY INTO

A DESERT RETREAT

(A reminder: a double click on any photo brings it to full page.)

It's morning on the first day of the new year, the first full day in our desert home for the next two months. We arrived yesterday afternoon. Twenty hours ago we sat on the patio of the home of our new friends, Adam and Jim. We sipped chilled white wine and surveyed the stupendous view that would be ours far from the hardest part of Minnesota winter.

 

The view from our patio - stately saguaro, Tucson and the Catalinas in the distance.

 

After a tour of the house and a review of our house care duties, Adam and Jim treated us to a delicious meal of homemade turkey vegetable soup (Adam) and homemade sourdough bread (Jim).  Then, a walk through the neighborhood with Barkly and a short rest before we headed off to a New Year's Eve party at the home of Sheila's good friends, Penny and Sylvie. Nice party, interesting people. We lasted for about two glasses of champagne until our long day caught up with us and we headed home to bed.

Walking the dog in the desert dusk.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The New Year's Eve party was the culmination of a day that had begun in Albuquerque, a 500-mile drive away. (Google had promised us only 460.) Albuquerque itself was at the end of three days of driving from Minneapolis. 

What We Left Behind - My Front Yard Flamingo.

Day #1 began with a pre-dawn stop at Starbucks before driving 650 miles in a straight line more or less on I-35 to Wichita. In the first hour of driving in the dark we passed a dozen or more cars, trucks and semis in the ditch, a silent warning to drive with care. The most dramatic case was when we got to watch a semi-tractor trailer plunge off the northbound lanes directly toward us and into the median, plowing up a huge plume of snow before coming to rest.

 

That was the only excitement of Day #1, our longest day of driving. Well, not the only excitement. At our first gas fill-up and dog-walking break we were able to shed our winter coats (and never put them on again).

 

We talked a lot in the darkness - about our trip to Maine this summer, our plans to visit Sicily in the fall with our friends Jay and Claire, who introduced Sheila and me. We talked about our relationship, still new, challenging (as it should be) and thrilling (as it should be). As we talked, faint streaks of light in the eastern sky offered gentle hints of daybreak. 

 

We spotted an Arizona license plate. Near Des Moines, Clanton Creek snaked beneath the highway, a crooked line painted white with snow. We were a hundred sixty miles from Kansas City. A billboard proclaimed, Attention Hunters! 30% Off Retail! We crossed Squaw Creek, leaving behind for a while the prairie for a stretch of hills and forest. First, acres of baby firs; then miles of adolescents.

We entered Kansas and crossed Cowskin Creek. Kansas has a western feel, like Colorado, a bit wild. Then, Wichita! Wichita: home base for Cessna and Beechcraft, a clean hotel, a pretty good Italian meal with a couple glasses of pinot grigio just down the road and...

 

...a morning visit to the Wichita Museum of Art! With a short drive to Amarillo ahead of us, we treated ourselves to a culture break.  A fine museum, not to be missed if you're in the neighborhood. 

 

The museum's current theme is story. "We all have a story. Our stories describe who we are and how our identity took shape. They connect our past to our present and the personal to the universal. If, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, then art is the most direct story teller. Every work of art has a story."

 

Thomas Eakins, N.C. Wyeth, Diego Rivera, Jean Marin, Edward Hopper, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keefe, Dale Chihuly. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll let some of the collection do the talking. You can imagine for yourselves the stories they tell.

 

 

 

Leaving Kansas, it looked like the Kansas I've always imagined - rolling prairie. We passed through Suppesville, KS, home of the House of Terrors. (We didn't investigate.) Then, Sawyer, KS, pop. 124, where signs proclaimed (loudly, I think) WE ARE PISSED! And, TRUMPSVILLE!

 

 Down the road, the town of Medicine Lodge seemed a happier place, with signs that the locals honor the history and culture of the local indigenous people.

 

Finally, Texas, where the highway seemed pulled tight by invisible hands into an unbending and unending straight line. The wild sunset entertained us for the longest time until we reached Amarillo.  In Amarillo, we had steak, because it seemed like what to do in Texas.

Highway to the Horizon

 

 

 

The highway that was so entertaining at sunset became mind-numbing as we left Amarillo. Traveling at 80 mph, we felt as if we were standing still. After a few hours, we actually cheered at the sight of the sign proclaiming, Welcome to New Mexico, Land of Enchantment. Hills sprouted up, the road curled. A billboard (the first of many) advertised Pistachio Land, Home of the World's Largest Pistachio. (Believe it or not, we skipped Pistachio Land.)

Barkly, as I had expected, lay down and slept most of the time, lulled by the hum of the tires on pavement; but occasionally I saw him in the rear view mirror sitting up and staring out the back window, as if taking in the sights of a strange land. What was his doggy mind thinking?

In Albuquerque, we checked into our La Quinta and headed for the home of Sheila's longtime friends, Mark and Marla. Mark and Marla have a charming desert home which they share with three happy dogs. The yard is populated by chickens. Mark and Marla are excellent,welcoming hosts. As Mark prepared a delicious dinner and as we sat down to eat, we enjoyed far-ranging conversation on topics great and small. A great evening. When we left, I felt as if I had known them for a long time, and hoped it would not be a long time before I saw them again.

 

 The directions from Albuquerque to Tucson are straightforward, literally and figuratively. Get on I-25 south. Drive for a looonnng time to Las Cruces. Turn right onto I-10 west. Drive for an even longer time to Tucson.

 

Not too far down the road from our Starbucks stop, sun and sky created a scene worthy of its own place on the wall of the Wichita Art Museum. A roadside rest stop appeared. I pulled in and got out my camera. The photo tells the story.

Early Morning on the Road to Tucson

Other than the length of our last day's drive, the trip to Tucson was unremarkable. Except, perhaps, for the road signs every twenty miles or so advising travelers of what to do in the event of dust storms, the southwestern version of blizzards.

 

After the hours traversing the flat expanse of desert, we entered the mountains and soon were surrounded on both sides by Tucson's sprawl. The sight of Tucson's modest downtown cheered us. As soon as we left the interstate, we recognized street names and understood that we were a few minutes' drive from our winter retreat! We had completed our journey from snow-covered sidewalks and sub-freezing temperatures to saguaro-speckled desert and endless hiking trails.