The MidPoint Cafe on Route 66
It’s one of those long lonely Texas roads, one with few stops along the way and it is time to eat. It is also Easter, and who knows what will be open and if there is any room at the inn, so to speak.
I spot a large CAFE sign near a gas station in an otherwise unpromising tiny strip of town. It is surrounded by cars, so we exit and head over to where the signs are.
Great choice.
There was a large chain-foods-with-greasy-selections at one of the gas stations, but the cafe was one of those home-cookin’ kinds of places, and full of tables of folk just out of church and looking to have an Easter meal out.
The Mid Point Cafe is exactly halfway from the beginning of Route 66 to its end.
After two large groups (the Baptists and the Methodists, I think) departed, the owner, Dennis Purschwitz, had some time to talk with us. He had recently bought the MidPoint, talked officials into helping update the MidPoint signs, got all kinds of people to donate labor and supplies to make an interest point happen.
And he wasn’t even from around there. Now, he has retired (mostly) from engineering and is living his dream, running the MidPoint Cafe. He brought life back to a town with no dining out places, and gave people a place to gather. He is busy helping a community remain viable.
The food was excellent; the home made pies even better. A couple were already sold out, so AdventureMan reserved a piece of Coconut Creme before we even ordered lunch. This was one of those great stops that happen on a road trip; we didn’t know it was there and now, we are so glad it is.
Santa Fe Hotel and Hacienda, Santa Fe
Twice in one trip I was able to totally WOW AdventureMan with a hotel. Seeing his face as we drove into the Santa Fe Hotel and Hacienda made my heart dance. Seeing his face as we checked in, surrounded by the smells of a wood-burning fireplace and the sounds of a solitary Indian flute playing and works of art everywhere put me over the top.
There are a lot of nice hotels in the arts-friendly city of Santa Fe. It was hard narrowing it down, but this hotel is majority owned and operated by Native Americans, and filled with Native American art, and I liked the looks of the rooms I could see online.
Just driving in to Santa Fe is a thrill. We love the desert-friendly adobe, we love walking friendly towns. We take one look at Santa Fe and we know this will be number one in the places to which we want to return, maybe with family and grandkids. This place is purely awesome.
Of course, it is Spring, and still chilly in Santa Fe. The big heat is coming 🙂
This is the exterior of the Santa Fe/Hacienda Hotel:
Sculpture at entry:
This is one of the landings where they serve coffee in the morning:
Another landing, each different, each beautifully done:
We spent the afternoon at the pool; we had it all to ourselves. It was pristinely clean. We also soaked in the hot tub in the glorious sun, but the breeze was cool so we were thankful for the nice bathrobes:
Sculpture by the pool:
The dining room at the Hotel Santa Fe’s Amayo restaurant. This was one of the best meals of our trip:
You can reserve the outdoor teepee for an evening of dining out Native American style:
AdventureMan loved his dinner, duck breast:
And anytime they serve grilled salmon on garlic spinach, I am delighted:
In the breakfast room the next morning, they had impressive buttery croissants as well as the normal choices:
Lots of seating areas; the lounge is also used for presentations on local history and culture for guests:
You get to Santa Fe, you park. You leave your car in the hotel and the Purple Bus takes you on a loop where you can get off anywhere you want, and it will come back and pick you up when you call:
We can’t wait to get back to Santa Fe.
Trinidad, On the Way to Santa Fe
Leaving Denver, and Little Diamond, we have another gorgeous day:
After a couple hours driving, we needed gas and we needed lunch, and Trinidad is the only likely city showing on our map. Anything will do. We decide to give Trinidad a try.
As it turns out, Trinidad is a WOW, an unexpected surprise, full of beautiful architecture and dwellings.
We find a sign for a restaurant we might like to try, only to discover it is closed.
Next door to it, however, is a deli/restaurant, Nono and Nana’s, which is delightful:
We have a wonderful pasta meal and are on our way to Santa Fe, but Trinidad is now on our list to come back and explore more fully.
Exciting Drive to Denver
I thought this drive would be routine, and I felt really stupid when I discovered it would not be. How could I have failed to notice there were mountains between Glenwood Springs, CO, and Denver?
It was a glorious day leaving Glenwood Springs, and I assumed a very easy drive.
I didn’t expect snow, snowy roads and 19 degree temperatures. Remember, I’ve been living in Florida. It’s Spring! We’ve had little but sunshine every day of our trip, with the one exceptional day between San Antonio and El Paso.
It just kept getting colder and colder. The trucks are all bunched up in the slowest lane, as we drive on slick roads with lots of warning signs. We don’t have chains. We don’t even have snow tires, although before leaving AdventureMan actually checked with our dealership and was told our tires would be adequate for all but a raging snowstorm. We felt a little tense.
Lots of great spring skiing:
This was a constant annoyance. In Germany, there was a law that you had to sweep the snow off your car, so as you were driving it would not fly off and hit the driver behind you. We assumed this was probably true in the USA, too, but we must have assumed wrongly. We were assailed by flying snow frequently.
Here is the payoff. Denver is beautiful, and no snow is flying. We get to meet these wonderful babies, Little Diamond’s twins, born around a year ago today. They are sweet, playful babies, full of laughs. Of course we brought presents, and one of the happiest moments of all is when they discovered how much fun tissue paper is – how it makes a wonderful noise when you shake it! We all shook tissue paper and laughed that it’s always the wrapping and the boxes that is the biggest hit with babies 🙂
Little Diamond has become a wonderful adult, with a life full of babies and students and the wackiness of the unexpected every day with both. It is a great joy to see all our young in the next generation are loving and kind parents, compassionate to their children, and succeeding in their daily lives. Thanks be to God.
Hot Springs in Glenwood Springs, CO
Today is a short day, and AdventureMan gets to sleep in. We’ve hit the road hard for two days, and today we have a rainbow at the end of the day, we get to hit the hot springs and we have massages scheduled, just the ticket for a man with a bad cold. Coughing makes his back ache, and he loves a good massage.
There is also no point starting too early because . . . it’s still snowing.
We hit the road around nine-thirty, following our GoogleMap instructions. Neither of us say anything when we end up in a mountainous area, very snowy, and the temperature keeps dropping. It is snowy. And icy.
Fortunately, we aren’t in the mountain pass more than half an hour, although it seems like forever, and then we are once again on flatlands, heading for I-70. We land in Colorado Junction for a quick lunch – which, due to extremely slow service, turned out to be a much longer lunch than we had intended – and then on to Glenwood Springs, a sweet resort town with a natural hot spring, very sulphuric, lots of mountains, lots of restaurants, and, as it turns out, lots of tourists.
We checked in, and headed to Splendor Mountain for a couple’s massage (wonderful) and then to the springs. The Glenwood Springs has several pools, and it is $20 per person entry during the day, less if you go at night. The $20 gives you all day coming and going, but we found that half an hour was enough for us – there were too many people! There is a ledge around the largest pool where people sit, and most of the seats were taken. People walked up and down the length of the pool. Too many people!
The sulphuric water comes into this pool and is mixed with more water for the pools – this water, pure from the springs, also has a very strong smell that many people can’t stomach, although it is supposed to be very good for your health.
We found a wonderful restaurant for dinner, the Italian Underground, thanks to our masseuses who told us how good the food was:
Our beds at the Best Western Antler Lodge were lodge-y, I love a lodge look:
This hotel is within walking distance of the Splendor Mountain Spa, the Glenwood Springs pools and surrounded by many restaurants. This is the breakfast room:
Sparks, NV to Provo, UT, The Worst Day of our Trip (and it wasn’t bad)
AdventureMan is still feeling really bad, so I am going to drive most of the day, until it is time to navigate our way into Provo, UT and he is going to sleep.
About an hour out of Sparks, I feel uneasy, and I ask AdventureMan, who has briefly awakened, to check behind me to see if my purse is there. It isn’t.
I stop, call the hotel, and by the grace of God, the purse was turned in by the breakfast room lady, who found it where I left it.
So on one of the longest driving days, I add two hours driving by forgetting my bag.
It could have been so much worse. The bag could have been not turned in.
I am busy beating myself up and AdventureMan consoles me. I am wondering if this is the beginning of Alzheimer’s, and he laughs and says I had a lot on my plate. He is so kind, just when I need it.
As it turned out, AdventureMan sleeps most of the day, and the drive is quiet, uneventful – and beautiful. There are a lot of hills, and the car eats gas because of all the uphill stretches, and some of those uphills go on for a long time. I think I am doing fine on gas, more than 3/4 of a tank, when we pass Elko, NV, one of the last places to buy gas. It matters because when we get to the salt pans, we are down to 1/2 a tank, and the salt pans go on forever, and there is no gas station. Even past the salt pans, it is a long way to the next gas station, and we are breathing a sigh of relief, even paying outrageous gas prices, when we find the next gas station.
We’re about an hour away from our hotel when AdventureMan takes over the driving, through Salt Lake City, which goes on forever, to Provo and our hotel. As he is driving, we laugh. I have had a gorgeous day for driving, but suddenly, in the midst of the thick traffic, it appears to be starting to snow. Oh aaarrgh!
All AdventureMan wants for dinner is a can of soup from the MarketPlace, and there is an Arby’s next door, so I walk there. It is empty when I enter, and I order, and then, behind me, comes a group of 11 very happy looking people, from teen agers to grandparents.
“We each have $3.49 to spend!” one says breathlessly, “What can we get for $3.49?”
The counter-server is momentarily flummoxed, and one of the eleven says “I’m just going to have a cookie, so you guys can share what is left of mine.”
I couldn’t imagine how this was all going to work out, so I grabbed my order and left. As I walked to the hotel, snow flakes were hitting my head.
Crossing California on CA 20
This was going to be one of those days we dreaded; we don’t have any happy destination today, it’s just one of three days driving to get where we want to get next. We’re going to see Little Diamond, and to meet her babies!
But first, we have to leave the California northern coast, where we have had so much fun, and get to Sparks, just past Reno. It’s one of those drives where we could drive an hour more, but an hour more just puts us no-where, on I-80 where there are not a lot of great stops.
GoogleMaps tells us what routes to take, and to our great surprise, we are on CA 20 most of the day, crossing California west to east, and we encounter very little traffic, and some gorgeous views and nice driving.
AdventureMan is feeling awful. He caught some kind of respiratory virus, so he drove the first hour, and then I drove most of the rest of the day to get to Sparks. Our hotel is right off the interstate, a piece of cake.
En route, as AdventureMan wakes up, we realize we had better find a place to eat as we have a long stretch ahead of us with no great prospects, so we decide barbecue, and he says “There is a Mongolian BBQ in Yuba City” and I say “Yes! I LOVE Mongolian BBQ” and he grumps because he is not feeling well and Mongolian BBQ does not count, in his book, as BBQ. But, he loves me, and the Mongolian BBQ is right on the road we are taking, and turns out to be a great stop.
After choosing your ingredients, you hand them to one of two cooks, and the cooks dance around a large barbecue drum, cooking your selections. I’ve never seen Mongolian BBQ done that way before, but it was fun, and the result was delicious.
I had never seen this before, either, but we saw it all along CA-20, different prices listed depending on whether you used cash, credit card or debit card.
I had thought this route would be hot, but it was cool, and we saw snow close up.
We also didn’t know this route would take us over the infamous Donner pass, where a group of pioneers got stopped crossing the mountains and ended up cannibalizing one or two of their party in order to survive.
Welcome to Nevada!
Old mining train
We found a small Mexican place to eat dinner in Sparks, Betos II, and we were the only non-Mexicans eating there. The food was all pictured on the wall, quickly prepared, and delicious:
Cucina Verona In Fort Bragg, California
This was AdventureMan’s pick, and we both agreed it was one of the best meals of our trip.
Fort Bragg is quirky. It’s a real people kind of town, with grocery stores and drug stores and bakeries.
At dinner, at Cucina Verona, there was an aged guitar-player, but it almost seemed like he might have been someone famous at some time. He played very abstractly, with almost identifiable tunes, but just when you would think you were about to figure out what it was, he would drift off into something else.
Cucina Verona was nearly packed. We had made reservations, good thing. The menu was impressive. They have great waitstaff, helpful, chatty but not intrusive. They made us feel welcome, helped us find the right local wines and checked often to see if we needed anything.
(Just in time, I figured out what I had done and switched back to color!)
AdventureMan had a Pacific Coast Bouillabaisse, and he said it was the best, ever.
I had scallops with a seafood risotto; five or six exquisite, rich scallops (I adore scallops, but they are so rich I never can eat a lot of them) and a rich, creamy risotto full of sea-flavor with local crab and shrimp, oh yummmmmm.
The North Cliff Hotel in Fort Bragg, California
When AdventureMan and I saw this hotel on TripAdvisor, we had a feeling it was a good place for us. Space? Yes, lots of it, and a balcony, too. A grand view, 180 degrees, with, yes, crashing waves on rocks! Check! And just for grins, throw in a whirlpool tub with a view of the sunset, oh my, what heaven. AdventureMan really enjoys a good massage, and these long days of driving and hiking leave him eager to try the hot swirling waters in the privacy of our own room.
When I call the North Cliff Hotel, I first ask if they have any rooms available, and then I ask if the military discount is also available for retired military. It often isn’t, so I always ask.
“Of course it is!” she replied, “You served your time, didn’t you? Of course you get the discount!”
Wow. That totally sealed the deal. We wanted to stay there anyway, but having that nice discount made it even nicer.
AdventureMan was so helpful; I said I wanted to take photos before we messed up the room, soaked all the bathtowels and robes, etc. and he was patient with me.
What I didn’t know was that I had somehow set the camera on black and white, so I got all these sepia toned photos, weird because it was an accident, but nice because I like how they look.
There were people who complained about the fog horn. Folks, it’s the coast. If you want the coast, and the crashing waves, you’re going to have to welcome the fog horn. It’s a safety thing . . .
We loved this place, and we loved the quirkiness of Fort Bragg altogether, it felt more like a real-people town than Mendocino.
This is what the sunsets looked like from our room:
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