Entering Texas
We needed to stop to gas up and stretch shortly after entering Texas, so while AdventureMan was picking out some CrackerJacks, I took a photo. I have a hard time imagining staying at this motel:
The climb up the volcano was a good thing; even though this is a long driving day, we are feeling good as we get close to Wichita Falls, where we will spend the night. The sun is setting behind us, so I capture it in the rear view mirror:
Colorado Springs to Wichita Falls, TX
AdventureMan and I have looked at the map and figured out that the drive to Pensacola is another 1500 miles, more or less, and so we want to drive about 550 miles per day or more. We leave Colorado Springs early, enjoying the scenery along the way:
For my desert buddies, when you see piles like these (often covered by tarps or sheds) this is also for snowy roads, the dark dirt helps the snow to melt and gives the wheels more traction:
Hitting an elk is about like hitting a camel – it isn’t going to do anyone any good. We saw a lot of dead deer along the road; a dead deer is always sad, and hitting a deer is a bad way to start a day:
Very soon, we are entering New Mexico:
Soon after entering New Mexico, we come to the Capulin Volcano. AdventureMan has been by once before, and we always wanted to climb this volcano – so we did!
You can drive up to an observation post, and then hike to the top of the volcano.
I am fit, and I did fine – like for the first twenty meters, after which I was huffing and puffing in the thin air. The path was a steady incline, straight up the rim of the old volcano – this is the path:
Getting to the top – ahhhhh. That was great:
Hiking to the top put a little pressure on us the rest of the day to hit our mileage goals, but it was worth it, every step. 🙂
So Much Hatred . . .
Today I saw a story about US soldiers in Afghanistan, killing for fun. It follows hard on the heels of the story of Reverend Terry Jones who has ‘prayerfully’ decided to burn a copy of the Quran on the anniversary, today, of 9-11. These stories are like wounds in my heart, and I begin to wonder if there is any hope for ‘peace on earth, good will toward men.’
Sometimes I get discouraged.
9-11 wounded us badly, wounded that fountain of optimism that believes we can all be friends, that we can overcome, that ‘Yes, we can.’
We’ve recovered.
Acts of hate are acts of hate, whether they originate from Americans, from Moslems, from Hindus, from Mongolians, from Krakens . . . We each have it within us to make the right choice, to choose NOT to act in hate against our fellow man. It’s not a one-time choice. It’s a choice we each, individually, make over and over again, every day.
Four Years Old :-) Birthday Cake and Adult Beverages!
Come on by for a celebration and a visit. 🙂 Sit and chat a while.
When I started blogging, in Kuwait, in 2006, I had no idea where it was going to take me. I felt scared, and I felt vulnerable. I felt exposed. Slowly, I developed virtual relationships, some of which even turned into real friendships. I had no idea I would grow to care so much about my readers, some of whom I have never even met.
In the background, I have had meetings, and I have had correspondences. We’ve shared joys and laughter and tears and anguish. There are times now, now that my life is so much less interesting than when I was living in exotic locations, when I think about stopping. Sometimes, even in Kuwait and Qatar, it was a struggle. There are always days when my life just doesn’t seem that interesting.
I don’t want to bore you. On the other hand, I have grown to enjoy our time together. So, here is my blogging pledge – I will keep blogging as long as it keeps working for you as well as for me. If I am boring myself to tears, I will stop. Meanwhile, it helps me to hear from you, and to have great discussions on these pages. There have been some good ones!
Red Hot and Blue in Colorado Springs
No, No, I didn’t take any photos of my shopping trip yesterday; we don’t have a Macy’s in Pensacola, so I spent some time having fun in one of my favorite stores. It was a great day. I also found Ruth’s Stitchery and spent a lot of time looking at new quilting fabrics and patterns. The problem with Ruth’s is that they also have fabulous cross-stitching materials and patterns, and I am SO tempted to buy them, even though I don’t really cross stitch any more; unless you have really really good light, stitching on linen, which is what I like to do, is a lot more difficult than it used to be.
I picked up AdventureMan and as a special treat to me he took me to Red Hot and Blue, my favorite restaurant in Colorado Springs. He said ‘have you noticed how many of your reviews are BBQ restaurants?” LLOOOLLL! Yes! It’s true! We love BBQ. We do go to other restaurants, but most of the Pensacola restaurants we hang out in I have already reviewed at least once! Out of town, we often explore new BBQ. 🙂
We started with hushpuppies, and these were small, but good:
We tested all the sauces – the hot ones were really HOT!
We couldn’t possibly eat all this food, but we tried it all, and enjoyed it so much there was no room left for dessert:
Red Hot and Blue Chili
Their tangy cole slaw
My pulled chicken and potato salad
AdventureMan’s pulled pork and beans
Wyoming to Colorado Springs
We are eager to get going, but oh, we are shivering, and happy we brought a little fleece with us:
It is a glorious morning, bright sunshine, clear air, a day when we are glad to be alive and on the road.
Across South Dakota and Montana, we saw the huge round rolls of hay that we saw in France and Germany, but across Wyoming, most of the bales are the old fashioned square ones. We are thinking square is easier to store, but there must be some advantage, also, to the round ones, as they seem to be the latest invention. Anyone know why?
We find a rest stop so we can change drivers, and there is a set of sculptures there called The Greeting and the Gift, just as you are exiting Wyoming and entering Colorado:
I love this one. It looks noble. The First Nation (Native American) is offering a pipe of water. When I was a kid, I would have thought it was a peace pipe, but the explanation says otherwise. The Greeting statue I don’t like as much for two reasons – his hands seem out-of-scale large to me, and the hair does not look like a mountain man or explorer (to me) but looks sort of Hellenic. What do you think?
At the end of a very short drive is a city I love, Colorado Springs. I love it because (most of the time) the air seems clear and clean to me. I love it in the winter, when it is cold, and in the summer, when it is hot, it is dry heat, like Kuwait, but not so hot, so it doesn’t bother me. There are a million quilt shops here, all of which I intend to hit today while AdventureMan does some consulting and I drive the gypsy-mobile. There are also Macy’s department stores, which Pensacola doesn’t have, and Sephora, which Pensacola may be getting soon but did not have when I left.
We went to see George Clooney’s new film, The American, which gave us hours of conversation, and on our way to our Marriott home picked up a feast from Whole Foods – all vegetable! Balsamic grilled brussel sprouts, marinated grilled beets, a vegetarian meatloaf that really tasted like meat (!), guacomole, a pico de gallo with some bite, pita bread, sauteed garlic spinach, and some wonderfully tasty olives. AdventureMan picked up a really good bottle of Colorado merlot (yes, it exists, and is called Two Rivers: Chateau Deux Fleuves Vineyards.
Crowning our day was a sunset over Pike’s Peak. I don’t like a lot of drama in my life, but I love a lot of drama in a sunset. I loved this one so much that I am going to show you three different shots, because I can’t choose the one I like the best.
Sights Along the Road from Boise to Utah to Wyoming
We drive. We trade off driving. During these long days, we do see some dramatic scenery, but we are driving for hours, and the best part of our day tends to be finding our hotel and settling in. We were lucky to find another Marriott Residence Inn in Boise, with a wonderful pool, a warm welcome, popcorn in the room to be popped in the microwave in our little kitchen. After lunch at Mazatlan, even though it was very salad-y, we were really sort of restauranted out, so we popped by a grocery store, bought sandwiches and salads, and took them back to eat at our own breakfast bar. After having a swim, of course.
The beds at the Marriott Residence are SO good. We sleep hard, and get up ready to start another day, the hot breakfast even includes oatmeal. I choke it down, thinking of how my sister Sparkle calls it ‘spackle’. Can you believe there are people living on this earth who LIKE eating oatmeal??
By seven ten we are on the road, by seven twenty we are back at the hotel. I was going to take a photo of the sunrise and discovered I had forgotten my camera at the hotel. I am thinking (glass half full) how very lucky I was to find out right away, and we were back on the road by seven thirty.
Here are some of the sights we saw – and only in Oregon and Idaho have I seen so many dogs in the back of trucks:
And never have I seen so many trucks. I though trucks were a very Southern thing, but they are also a very Western thing. Here are some sights from our long day:
We saw so many wonderful crops growing in Southern Washington, cherries, peaches, apricots, apples, beans – and in Idaho, we saw a lot of cattle, and sheep, and . . . we think these are potatos:
This was an unspeakable toilet I encountered in Southern Idaho, exceptionally bad.
Traffic was light through Wyoming, but heavy coming in the other direction:
We had a good thing and a bad thing happen at the end of the day, but that’s the next blog entry. 🙂
Edmonds Market Day
It’s all rush rush rush but we make time on Saturday morning to go to the Edmonds Market, my very favorite thing to do. First, I wanted to show you how my little home town decorates the street lights with hanging baskets:
Street pots:
And one of my favorite vendors, the Cedar Creek Soap lady. 🙂
(My favorite soaps are Clove, Cinnamon Orange and Safari)
Edmonds, Washington Street Gardens
In a time where states and counties and cities and towns are cutting back, I am infinitely grateful to my little home town that they find the resources to maintain the street gardens. In the town, you find huge baskets of flowers hanging from poles along the main streets (one of which is called Main Street, in true small town fashion). These are from the street level gardens; they are so beautiful.
Nearby, two of our favorite stores are side by side:
Woo HOOO, Half Price Books is having their annual Labor Day Sale, 20% off everything in the store. Like we need more books. 😉
“Why Are Barns Painted Red?”
This is what I love about long road trips with AdventureMan. We have hours together in the car, and you just never know where the conversations will go.
We saw a lot of barns. Most of them are red.
“Why are barns red?” AdventureMan asked. “Like we just accept that barns are red, when we are kids and we are told to draw a barn, we reach for the red crayon, why is that? Why red?”
So we looked it up at the next wireless stop and found the answer on Wiki answers:
Centuries ago, European farmers would seal the wood on their barns with an oil, often linseed oil — a tawny-colored oil derived from the seed of the flax plant. They would paint their barns with a linseed-oil mixture, often consisting of additions such as milk and lime. The combination produced a long-lasting paint that dried and hardened quickly. (Today, linseed oil is sold in most home-improvement stores as a wood sealant).
Now, where does the red come from?
In historically accurate terms, “barn red” is not the bright, fire-engine red that we often see today, but more of a burnt-orange red.
Farmers added ferrous oxide, otherwise known as rust, to the oil mixture. Rust was plentiful on farms and is a poison to many fungi, including mold and moss, which were known to grown on barns. These fungi would trap moisture in the wood, increasing decay.
Regardless of how the farmer tinted his paint, having a red barn became a fashionable thing. They were a sharp contrast to the traditional white farmhouse.
As European settlers crossed over to America, they brought with them the tradition of red barns. In the mid to late 1800s, as paints began to be produced with chemical pigments, red paint was the most inexpensive to buy. Red was the color of favor until whitewash became cheaper, at which point white barns began to spring up.
Today, the color of barns can vary, often depending on how the barns are used.
My dad and grandpa have been farmers their entire lives and they used to tease us kids that the barn was red because it was the most noticeable when the snow was falling sideways and you could barely see because of the sleet and hail.
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