Grand Canyon: Early East Rim, Breakfast at El Tovar and Shuttle along the West Rim
When your day starts at five in the morning, you have a lot of hours in your day!
We were back at the lodge by seven, where there is already a crowd lining up for breakfast. We had such a great dinner the night before, we decide to have breakfast and then take the shuttles along the western rim of the canyon.
The El Tovar Dining room is as beautiful by day as it is by night:
We are on the south west side of the dining room, near a large fireplace and far away from the view, but it hardly matters – the view is there, 24/7, for anyone who wants to visit. We see fabulous plates arriving at all the tables, and we watch a new wait-person being trained in the El Tovar way of doing things. It was great entertainment. Our breakfasts were divine.
AdventureMan’s breakfast:
I had Eggs Benedict, with smoked salmon instead of the traditional Canadian bacon:
We run upstairs to brush our teeth, and then head out to explore the western rim before the train arrives, at 1100, bringing in many more people, even in these early spring months.
The shuttle system is a marvel. Different colored lines have different routes, and there are maps that show what color the bus is that goes where you want to go. We walked to the red bus stops, hopped on, hopped off, hopped on, hopped off, hiked a little, hopped back on, hopped off, hiked a little more, met some great people and had a lot of fun taking photos.
The sun has burned off the clouds, it is still a little hazy but a great, sunny day.
We hit Hermit’s Rest, at the end of the shuttle line, around 11:30, and head back to Grand Canyon village.
La Posada Hotel: A Restored Gem and a Great Retreat in Winslow, AZ
AdventureMan was stunned. “Tell me again how you found this place?” he asked, incredulously. I’m embarrassed at how easy it was. When I was looking at places we wanted to go, AdventureMan had mentioned the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest, so I had Googled “really cool hotel near Petrified Forest” and LaPosada popped up in a TripAdvisor reference. I’m embarrassed at how easy it is to get information these days. 🙂
Do you see the camel at the entry? How could we not love this place?
Since we often wander, and don’t really know where we will be until a night or so in advance, I print out information and carry it in an old fashioned paper folder that has envelopes on both sides, so I can stick things in and they won’t fall out. In Albuquerque, I showed AdventureMan some photos from the La Posada website, and he was sold. We called, reserved a room for the next night, so we knew we could spend all the time we wanted in the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest and that a room would be waiting for us.
Every room in our wing has a name, named after famous people who have visited La Posada in its rich and famous past, and we are in the Turrell Room:
We had no idea how lovely that room would be. I am a total sucker for shiny wooden floors, and for textiles, and for space to breathe, and our room had all this – and more. It had a painted ceramic sink in the washroom area, and a glorious tiled wall in the whirlpool bath room. The whirlpool bath worked flawlessly.
Although we were tired, we were eager to explore this fascinating hotel. We couldn’t stay in the room, it was too exciting, too much to see! We went down a hallway to the gift shop, which also serves as reception:
The spaces are fabulous, each one defined and delineated from one another by changes in surface textures, lighting fixtures, beamed ceilings, windows . . . there are endless possibilities for discoveries. We watched a film about the history of the hotel – it was actually a very long film, but fascinating – about the architect, Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, and the building of the hotel in an amazingly short time for the amount of materials and techniques necessary. The hotel was built in 1929 by the Santa Fe Railway for the Fred Harvey Company. Mary Coulter seems to have had carte blanche in putting in just about anything her imagination could cook up.
Although the hotel went out of business and was remodeled in the sixties for the railroad company (a total desecration of the beautiful spaces), it has been lovingly and passionately restored, with near fanatic attention to detail. There are many spaces where people can gather to read books, play games, share a drink or a cup of coffee, big spaces and little spaces, and every space is beautiful.
Built before air conditioning, the original hotel incorporated a wind tower, something we saw often in old houses in Qatar and Kuwait, where any little breeze was captured, brought into the interior and circulated – La Posada had the same technology.
Now, for some of the public spaces, gathering spaces and places of peace and serenity.
La Posada was a destination hotel, with a train station just paces from the hotel lobby and reception. This is the arcade arriving guests would walk through to reach the hotel:
The hotel lobby, outside the Turquoise Room restaurant:
A beautiful, small, intimate space where we watched the film about the restoration of La Posada:
The upstairs gathering room, full of books, games, chess and checkers sets, tables, chairs, couches, all to make guests comfortable and give them a place to relax and get to know other guests:
That night, I had one of the best dinners of the entire trip, a vegetarian plate that knocked my socks off in the La Posada restaurant, the Turquoise Room:
We also had a Grand Marniere Chocolate Mousse, oh, to die for.
Breakfast the next morning was oatmeal, in the same restaurant, but oh, what exquisite oatmeal, and I don’t really even like oatmeal. I guess I like oatmeal at La Posada 🙂
Last – and least, but I can’t help it, I am a sucker for light fixtures, really lovely light fixtures, and I loved these, probably because they take me back to our times in the Middle East:
La Posada is close to the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert, Canyon de Chelly, many more amazing sights of north western Arizona. You can get out and explore, and spend your nights in luxury and ease in a beautiful surrounding.
The Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest – Crossing into Arizona
Leaving Albuquerque, we are delighted to be taking I-40 going West; it’s like everyone else is on I-40 coming East. The drive is smooth, a little road work here and there, but nothing that holds us up in any major way. We cross the continental divide (where all the rivers on the east side flow to the Gulf of Mexico, and those on the West side flow into the Pacific) and we wonder what the divide is called, if anything, that divides rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from rivers flowing into the Atlantic?
We are driving along the old Highway 66, too, which is fun, seeing the nostalgic old signs and relics from the 40’s and 50’s, when Route 66 was in its heyday and there weren’t big interstates fully functioning.
From Carlsbad, where we saw temperatures up to 99° F, we have dropped considerably, and hit the road with a temperature around 45°, which rises as we drive toward the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. When we arrive, it is in the 80’s (F) and a bright, partly cloudy day. The colors and the scenery are unimaginable.
I included this one because it made me laugh. These signs are necessary; Americans are inclined to wander off the trail, it’s in our nature, and we need these signs to make us more careful where we are stepping 🙂
As we leave the Painted Desert trail and head into the Petrified Forest area, the weather starts getting seriously complicated and the temperatures start dropping:
I’ve never seen a toilet like this before. It’s amazing:
At the risk of giving you too much information, whatever goes into the toilet evaporates due to the constant wind action. Whoever sits on the toilet has the unusual experience of having a wind-dried bottom:
We start moving a little faster, not lingering as the weather changes:
Can you see how the light has changed? Just after taking this, huge raindrops started falling and we continued on to the end of the Petrified Forest. The temperature dropped to 45° (F)
The Carlsbad Cavern Desert Trail
Here’s the thing . . . I’ve kind of lived a life a little on the edge. We’ve taken chances. We were young, we took risks we didn’t even know we were taking.
The result is that while I am still determined to live my life to the fullest, there are things I won’t do. Jump out of a perfectly good airplane, even with a parachute. Walk out on clear platforms over the Grand Canyon. Go in bat caves. Go into just about any confined space – I just don’t do it. There are things I don’t like doing but I do them, but there are things I just won’t do, and I’ve stopped doing caverns and walking close to the edge in very high places.
So we went to Carlsbad Caverns, visited the visitor center, then took the Desert Drive.
We are here at an awesome time of the year. Things are blooming, and we are awed at the persistence of life. The temperature has hit ninety something (fahrenheit) by 10 in the morning, but these plants are thriving. So thriving that one plant burrowed through two layers of cloth and into AdventureMan’s flesh!
These are old familiar plants, the Prickly Pear. I first saw them when we lived in Tunisia, and they were used as boundary borders, and a formidable boundary marker they are – tall and tough and very prickly. The Tunisians used the prickly pear to make jelly, but they also used the leaves, trimming off all the prickles, peeling off the tough outer skin, pounding the fibrous center into submission and then, I think, breading them and frying them. I love it that something so tough and which grows so persistently can also provide nutrition to hungry people.
I’m just throwing this one in because it cracked me up; the stick looking a little like a snake by the sign:
Riding Across the Wild West
We just figured this was going to be a rough boring stretch, driving I-10 across West Texas to New Mexico, but, as so often does, magic happened and the day changed totally.
AdventureMan had a little allergy, so I did the driving across the wilds of west Texas. It wasn’t anything like I had expected. I’ve read lots of books set in Texas, and seen movies. I expected No Country For Old Men. What I got was a long empty highway with hardly any fellow travelers, some spectacular scenery, hardly any speed limit at all, and lots of time to think and enjoy the ride. Wooo HOOOO on West Texas!
Turning north at Ft. Stockton, we entered Hackberry Holland country (James Lee Burke) with those long empty landscapes punctuated with endlessly pecking derricks, whirling dust, endless pick-ups and tankers, and not much else. The scenery went from those plateaus and arroyos to Qatar flat and white desert, from Texas wildflowers to succulents. Then, just around Pecos, Texas, as we are in the end stretch toward New Mexico, it turns more golden, like Kuwait, with some elevations. Across the border, I asked AdventureMan (now awake and feeling good again) “where is the red tint we see in all the ‘Visit New Mexico’ brochures?” Within half an hour, the iron-oxide tint shows up and we see the red glow start to appear.
We know we want to visit Carlsbad Caverns, so we spend the night in Carlsbad, and eat at Mi Casita. Here is what the desk clerk told us:
“I can’t eat at Mi Casita because the food is too spicy, but everyone who really loves Mexican food eats there.”
We loved it. I ordered things I don’t usually order, enchiladas and beans and rice, and it was so GOOD.
As we left, we went down to the city park and took pictures of the river, and AdventureMan fed the hissing geese some of his peanut-butter and crackers that we carry along in case we might starve or something ;-).
As soon as I can get these photos transferred from my iPad to my computer, I will put in the photos and this will be a much more interesting entry.
Late Afternoon in DeLuna Park
One of the great joys of living in Pensacola is seeing our grandson often. Yesterday, we were picking him up and keeping him until dinner, so we decided to take him to run in the fountains, only to discover that the fountains stop at 5 on Mondays – Wednesdays, and run until 8 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. No problem – there is always something going on to thrill a two years old’s heart.
Yesterday, it was a tug-boat bringing in a huge dredger, with CRANES! Our two year old is all-boy. He loves car words, and truck words, and words like bulldozer, and pick-up, and CRANES. Watching the tugboat bring in the dredger thrilled his heart.
The crane lowers a cage onto the deck:
The pelicans are enthralled; the churning engines stir up fish and make finding supper easy pickings:
And then, chasing the pigeons! Where do they get the energy? A two-year-old can chase pigeons endlessly!
Florida Ranks #1 in the Nation for Identity Theft and Fraud; Pensacola #10 Beauty-Obsessed City in US
Just yesterday, I gasped when I learned that Time Magazine ranked Pensacola of all the cities in the USA, #10 in “Obsession with Beauty” as measured by internet access to sites for buying make-up and cosmetics at sites like Sephora and Ulta. New York and Miami didn’t make the list.
Then I understood. We don’t have a Sephora in Pensacola. We don’t have an Ulta. To get specialized make-ups like Urban Decay, you go online, to Sephora. Yep. Guilty. But it must take a lot of Pensacolians buying a lot of make-up online to make us #10 of all the beauty-obsessed cities in the USA.
Phthalates Risk Factor for Diabetes
A Swedish study, posted on AOL Everyday Health News, indicates we heighten our risk of diabetes with repeated exposures to phthalates common in items we use every day of our lives . . .
HealthDay News
Common Plastics Chemical Might Boost Diabetes Risk
Phthalates, found in soaps, lotions and food packaging, may disrupt insulin production, researchers say.
By Steven Reinberg, HealthDay News
THURSDAY, April 12, 2012 (HealthDay News) — High blood levels of chemicals called phthalates, which are found in soaps, lotions, plastics and toys, may double the risk for type 2 diabetes among older adults, Swedish researchers say.
“Our study supports the hypothesis that certain environmental chemicals can contribute to the development of diabetes,” said lead researcher Monica Lind, an associate professor of environmental medicine in the section for occupational and environmental medicine at Uppsala University.
“Most people come into daily contact with phthalates as they are used as softening agents in everyday plastics and as carriers of perfumes in cosmetics and self-care products,” she added.
The study’s implications “must be to cut down on plastics and choose self-care products without perfumes,” Lind said.
But the research does not prove cause and effect. To find out whether phthalates (pronounced THAL ates) truly are risk factors for diabetes, further studies are needed that show similar associations, she said.
“Experimental studies are also needed regarding what biological mechanisms might underlie these connections,” Lind stressed.
The report was published online April 12 and in the June print edition of Diabetes Care.
For the study, Lind’s team collected data on more than 1,000 Swedish men and women, age 70, who took part in the Prospective Investigation of the Vasculature in Uppsala Seniors Study.
The researchers measured the participants’ blood sugar, insulin levels and levels of toxins from the breakdown of phthalates.
As expected, they found diabetes was more common among those who were overweight and had high cholesterol.
And they also found an association between blood levels of some phthalates and diabetes. That association remained even after taking into account obesity, cholesterol, smoking and exercise.
For people with high phthalate levels, the risk of developing diabetes was about double compared to those with lower levels, the investigators found.
Some phthalates were also linked to disrupted insulin production, the researchers said. Insulin is a hormone that helps deliver blood sugar into the body’s cells for energy. Without insulin, or with too little of the hormone, too much sugar stays in the blood, setting the stage for diabetes.
“Even at relatively low levels of phthalate in the blood, the risk of getting diabetes begins to rise,” Lind added.
Other studies have linked these chemicals with breast growth in boys and reproductive problems in men, possibly caused by estrogen disruption.
Phthalates are used in hundreds of products, such as toys, vinyl flooring and wall coverings, detergents, lubricating oils, food packaging, pharmaceuticals, blood bags and tubing, according to information from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Personal care products, such as nail polish, hair sprays and shampoos, also contain phthalates.
At present, “the FDA does not have compelling evidence that phthalates, as used in cosmetics, pose a safety risk,” according to the FDA website.
In the United States, companies are not required to test the long-term health effects of chemicals before using them in consumer products. Lind said this means the dangers of hazardous chemicals aren’t known until they are already widely used.
Lind said the health effects of chemicals should be tested before they reach the consumer market similar to the way drugs get tested before being approved.
“We are looking at a tip of an iceberg,” she said in terms of a possible health crisis. “We are just scratching the very top of the iceberg.”
The way the system is designed, if phthalates were banned, they would be replaced by other chemicals about which even less is known, Lind said.
According to the Environmental Working Group, a group trying to rid hazardous chemicals from consumer products, there is no practical way to choose phthalate-free products. Sometimes the print on ingredient labels is too small to read, and different names are often used for the same plasticizing chemicals. And some products lack ingredient labels even though they’re required by federal regulations.
That said, some of the names to look for in cosmetics, self-care products, solid air fresheners, and scented candles are: mono-methyl phthalate (MMP), mono-ethyl phthalate (MEP) and mono-isobutyl phthalate (MiBP), which are types of the chemicals dimethylphthalate (DMP), diethyl phthalate (DEP) and di-isobutyl phthalate (DiBP). DMP is also used in ink and as a softening agent in plastics.
Perfect in Pensacola
In spite of the constant pollen levels, and yes, I am still weeping and atch-oo’ing, the weather here couldn’t be much prettier. It’s the kind of weather where you never have to think about a coat, it’s balmy. The humidity is relatively low, low for Pensacola, and the nights have been down in the 50’s, so the A/C doesn’t kick on at all. You wake up refreshed, you can take a cup of coffee out on the back patio and sit and watch the birds come to the feeder, the bees sample the guara and the aloe, and fertilize the blueberries.
Our pomegranates have blossoms! One of the best things we ever did was to put in the pomegranate tree; this year we will add a Meyer’s lemon tree and a Satsuma, two trees which do well in Pensacola. We have a sheltered part of the yard where our yard coach/advisor/ landscaper thinks they will do well over the years. Even with my allergies, I can’t resist a daily walk around the yard to see how things are doing, what AdventureMan is up to now. His Purple Hyacinth is thriving, and we hope to cover a good section of the back wall with it.
(Our purple hyacinth is still just beginning; this is what we want it to look like)
All in all, life is sweet when the temperatures are mild, the humidity low, and the family nearby.
When we were down at the Pensacola Pier, where the children have a special fountain to play in, who should show up but Batman:
Batman doesn’t drive a Batmobile, he drives a big black truck. It’s kind of cute, some grown man pretending to be a superhero, but in the light of the recent Zimmerman / Trayvon Martin shooting, self-appointed super heros are a little scary. Knowing that in Florida, so many people are carrying guns in scary. No, I don’t feel better protected. My friends all say “but all the criminals have guns, we just want to protect ourselves.” Statistics show that you are more likely to be killed by a weapon when you are carrying a weapon.
If you read the newspapers, whether you are in Kuwait, or Kenya, or Florida, or anywhere in between, the criminals seem to shoot themselves in the foot. They take a stupid chance and get caught. Their own arrogance catches them up. They feel unstoppable, and they take risks they think they can get away with. Most criminals get caught, eventually, tripped up by their own pride. So to me, when you go up against a person who is not that rational, you can’t count on a weapon. A weapon can just get you into trouble. You need to use guile; live to fight another day. I trust that a criminal will get caught eventually. I don’t want to die going up against one.
The Winner!
You’d think, now that we are ‘retired’ that we would have a lot of time, but we have plugged in to our community, and we are busy and scheduled! Before I left for Seattle, I was preparing for, and then helping with the Pensacola Quilt Show, held only every two years.
It was a lot of fun. Pensacola has amazing quilters, people who hand-piece and hand quilt, people who are amazingly skilled at machine quilting, and I am honored to know some of them, and delighted when I get a chance to work alongside them.
Whether or not I had won a ribbon, I would be honored just hanging my quilts in the same room with these talented women. Nevertheless, I did win an honorable mention in the theme quilt catagory, which was Snail’s Trail. I am only telling you this because I want to show you the ribbon, which is whimisical, clever and delightful:
I smile every time I look at it.
In addition, I won one of the offerings at the Chinese Auction. I have seen these auctions run different ways, but in this one, you get 25 chances for $5, and I put all my chances in the jar for these fabrics, I wanted them so badly. I took a class from the lady who made them, and I love the work she does. Winning this is like winning a pot of gold for a quilter 🙂
When I look at these fabrics, I am ready to start quilting again!
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