And on to Taos, New Mexico
We took this route specifically to visit Chaco Canyon. At the entrance, we saw a tire vendor, with a huge selection of tires, just out by the road. As we went on, the roads got rougher and rougher, and we decided not to risk getting stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire.
We took a turn off overlooking a huge reservoir, beautiful blue-green in a dry country. Sitting on a bench was a couple, older, about our age, just sitting quietly. We greeted them and spoke of the beauty of the site, and the woman said, “yes, we have never seen the reservoir this high, and we came just to look at it. It is a miracle.” It was a beautiful moment.
We found our hotel, The Taos Inn, easily, right in the middle of town, with its own parking! We loved our room.
Lake Powell to Farmington
So now I am flying by the seat of my pants. I got to the end of the Lake Powel notes and . . . there is nothing more. How did I stop taking notes?
I do have photos, and I can figure some of it out. The drive from Lake Powel looked very different – different weather, no storm, all sun and blue skies, and it makes the landscape appear very different, too. You see things you didn’t see, even though you are on the same road (we will go right past where we turned onto Route 160 from Cortez as we drive past to Farmington, NM.
And we arrive in Farmington at our B&B The Casa Blanca:
We loved the Casa Blanca – neat, clean, and a lovely breakfast. The manager also gave us a recommendation for lunch, The Three Rivers, which was a great place to eat in Farmington.
We called it a night early in Farmington, and got a good start early the next morning.
Cortez to Lake Powell
“Why Lake Powell?” asks AdventureMan. “The North Rim of the Grand Canyon isn’t open, and we haven’t seen Lake Powell,” I respond. “Have you looked at Lake Powell on the map? It’s man-made, and it goes on for miles. We might want to see it before it all dries up.”
Last year, on the Colorado River in May, the river levels were already desperately low.
“And it’s also a road we like, not interstate, gorgeous formations, and featured in Dark Winds and Outer Range,” I add.
Our last breakfast is the organic eggs and the last of AMs chicken mole, a delicious combination, as we pack our gear, strip our beds, wash the dishes, and load up the car. We say goodbye to Cecilia as we are leaving and head out back down the highway toward Kayenta, heading for Lake Powell.
Once again the scenery changes dramatically. We leave behind the high mountains and head down into red cliffs and huge dramatically sculpted free-standing flat-topped monuments in the desert. The clouds are dark and equally dramatic, making for some great contrasts.
We stop at Basha’s in Keyenta, a grocery store we love, and discover it has seriously modernized in the years since we last visited. The first thing we see when we enter is a Starbucks, just in time for me to get a mid-morning caffeine fix. All the different sectors of the grocery have signs in two languages, English and Navaho for produce, meat, bakery, delicatessen, etc.
While waiting for my coffee, a toddler came running in, wearing a dress and glasses almost as big as her face. She was so cute! The lady next to me showed us a photo of her granddaughter, equally cute. We, grandmothers, are all the same, so proud of our grandchildren.
We stopped at an overlook where I thought I saw a coyote, but AM said it was just a dog, and then there were two. I hope they hadn’t been abandoned there, I hope there was an unseen residence nearby where they lived.
Coming into Lake Powell was another dramatic shift in scenery, bleak and deserted, but contrasted with the bright blue waters of Lake Powell. We stopped at Big John’s Texas BBQ and ate at long picnic tables surrounded by tourists from many nations.
We then headed on to the Lake Powell resort, where we have reservations, and fortunately they have our room ready. It is a pretty standard kind of hotel room, except that it has a panoramic view of Lake Powell, and that makes all the difference.
When we go to confirm our boat ride for tomorrow, the concession clerk tells us we are lucky to be on tomorrow morning as the one for this afternoon was canceled because the boat had a problem. Evidently, it wasn’t pretty. She had all these people seriously disappointed they weren’t going to get their boat ride, they were only here today, their bus would be leaving and she had had quite a time trying to unruffle all those feathers. We gave her our utmost sympathy.
I had a good swim for about half an hour at the pool, it felt so good, and then a few drops of rain – well I can handle that.
And then lightning and thunder, and that is a good time to get out of the pool. We head back to the room and I catch up on documenting our journey. Soon we need to get ready for dinner; the restaurant here has a famous Cioppino which we intend to share with a couple salads.
The Cioppino was delicious, as was the Caesar salad I had preceding it.
We were lucky to have reservations, people were being turned away, and all around us were tables of tour groups, eating their meals. We could see they had choices, an appetizer, soup or salad, and an entree. They all got dessert. They were having a great time, and getting them in and out is clearly the hotel’s bread and butter. Lake Powell is a great stop between places like Zion and Bryce Canyon and Mesa Verde, or Canyon de Chilly or Santa Fe, and what we saw now, in late mid-May is just the beginning.
What puzzles me is that the restaurant is at full capacity, and people are being turned away, what will they do when the high season hits? Our waiter tells us there is a real problem finding enough people to work there, and the resort is several miles from Pace, the nearest city, so there is nowhere else for the people on bus tours to eat.
Kelly’s Ancient Echoes in Cortez
Every now and then you just get really lucky, and that is how we feel about finding Kelly’s Ancient Echoes, in Cortez. We had a lot of hiking and exploring we wanted to do, and we wanted a stable location, comfortable, where we could eat our own breakfasts and do our own cooking and where we had privacy and a view. You don’t always get what you want, as the Rolling Stones say, but this time we got what we need – and what we want.
From Silverton to Cortez was beautiful, full of hot springs and mountains, and zipping past Mesa Verde because we wanted to pick up some groceries and get to our hotel in Cortez before nightfall. We are at Ancient Echoes at Kelly’s, a boutique hotel backing right up to the Canyon of the Ancients national park, and having two ancient sites right on the property.
Our rental is beautiful and spacious, and the owners greet us warmly, providing us with all sorts of information to enhance our five-day stay. We have an outdoor dining area that overlooks Sleeping Ute Mountain. There are two dogs, and at least one cat on the grounds, and trails leading back into the canyons beyond.
It is very private, very quiet, except for the calling birds as the sun goes down, and the distant lowing of the cows next door as they are led to their barn. We feel very welcome, and very very happy to be staying here. In our refrigerator are a large jar of delicious-smelling coffee beans, another jar labeled organic local cream, and a carton of local organic eggs. The cupboard is full of spices, extra virgin olive oil, vinegar, and tamari. There are dishes, pots and pans, and wine glasses for our use. It makes us so happy we found this place.
We had picked up BBQ sandwiches at the Handlebar, which we had for dinner, and they were so big, we couldn’t eat them all and had plenty for another meal.
We love this place. It is SO quiet, so private, so beautiful. And tomorrow we get to explore!
The Old School Lodge
Our first goal when we get to Montrose is to find where we are staying, not that hard because I use Google Maps. Just about when we get there, we get a text with the combination that will let us in the front door and the combination to our room. Nothing about this is odd; we have done this before.
The place is beautiful. It was an old schoolhouse, and the former auditorium is a grand room with tables, while the guest rooms are off in hallways and up stairs.
This was the only welcome we got.
Everything was immaculate, comfortable and beautifully kept. There must be eight to ten guest rooms. We were the only ones there. We never received any kind of greeting, other than the combination. There were no other guests. As beautiful as the place was, it felt creepy, and we will never stay there again.
Barcelona to Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi to Pensacola
Ashok brings breakfast to our room just as we finish dressing and we are able to say our last goodbyes.
The new Abu Dhabi Louvre, which will feature the painting bought by Prince Badr bin Abdullah Al Saud, attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci for $450.3 million at auction.
We are excited. We have a lot planned for Abu Dhabi, and we are eager to begin our journey home. We can hear the baggage being unloaded, ready to be claimed by disembarking passengers.
Buses are waiting to take other passengers on tours, or to hotels.
Compared to other disembarkations, when we had to leave at 3:00 a.m. to catch flights back to the US, this is very civilized; breakfast at 6:30, and departure scheduled for 8:00. As it turns out because we have made independent arrangements, we can depart before the groups, and we do.
Our driver is not there, but there is an Azamara ship parked just next to ours so AdventureMan leaves me with the bags and walks over to the next parking lot to find our driver, waiting with a sign with our name on it. He directs him to our ship, we say goodbye to our Belgian friends, who are also expecting a driver, and we load up. He takes us to the Marriott, where we are given a beautiful room on the 21st floor and we look out in awe and the sheer awesomeness of Abu Dhabi architecture.
It is already really hot outside, even at 8 in the morning. We shower. We settle in.
I can’t believe it. There’s a mall, and a LuLu within walking distance. AdventureMan promises to take me there at nightfall. The LuLu was one of my favorite stores in Doha – we did a lot of our grocery shopping there. It had a lot of prepared foods, mostly Indian, and a lot of foods we had never seen before. One time the LuLu had a Mango-Fest. Who knew there were so many kinds of mango, like more than 80 kinds?
This is a qibla. We haven’t seen a qibla in a long time. It is the mark on the ceiling that tells us in which direction, in which we would find Mecca.
We have the same driver at 10:00, and he takes us to Abu Dhabi’s Heritage Village, which we love. Abu Dhabi has gathered craftspeople from all over the Middle East to demonstrate dying crafts – boatbuilding, wool-spinning, weaving, making thobes trimmed in real silver and gold threads, made of the finest camel wool, beating copper into pots and bowls, making silver-trimmed daggers (khanjars), weaving tent bands. It was lovely, stimulating – and also very hot.
We take a photo of our driver’s car so we can find him when we are through at the Heritage Park.
The boatbuilder
The man who made elegant traditional winter robes, bisht, for men and women
The weaver of wool, and of pictures
The maker of Khanjar, the curved daggars worn at the waist, and also maker of the sheaths which protect them.
Next stop was the Abu Dhabi “souks” – more stores selling souvenirs and handicrafts, but a level up from the tourist-oriented markets.
AdventureMan spotted the shop I had been looking for, a shop selling fresh saffron, but it had so much more! Camel milk soap in natural and in black, with varied scents, loofahs and treats for bathing, and thousands of spices, some of which we had no idea how to use. I invested in saffron, for us, for our foodie friends, and loved knowing we had found just the right shop, Wadi al Zafran.
We were hungry, and the concierge at the hotel had given us the name of a good family restaurant, Zahrat Lubnan on Defense Street, where we could get good food at local prices. We found it, and I laughed, it was just what we had asked for, full of families, and it was noisy! But one look at the menu and we knew we were in the right place, the food is the food we have learned to love with all our years in the Middle East, all our favorites. The noisiest of the families leave, and we enjoy our lunch thoroughly, including more very fresh pomegranate juice and strawberry juice.
This gave me a giggle; I had forgotten how traditional restaurants used tissue for napkins.
Muhammara! My favorite! To my delight, it tastes a lot like mine, made with a recipe given to me by a generous Kuwait blogger many years ago, thank you, Yousef!
The stuffed vegetables and lamb special – if only we had been six people we might have been able to eat it all. It was delicious.
Back at the hotel, in the heat of the afternoon, we nap, knowing we have a long night ahead of us. We are so thankful for a nice room, a good shower, and a breathtaking view.
At 11:00 pm our driver takes us to the airport, we get checked in, ticketed, and we go to the lounge to pass the hours before our flight would begin loading.
Processing our shipboard experience is ongoing. At the very beginning of the trip, we met Ed and Alan. I saw them at breakfast in Barcelona and liked them. We became acquainted on the bus to the ship and kept running into one another and having good conversations the entire trip. In the end, AdventureMan saw them as he was retrieving his passport and said our goodbyes. We really enjoyed knowing them.
We met a Belgian couple; he was 59 and had had a stroke that left him immobile and unable to talk, but he was still alive and lively in his head and his desire to participate. His wife is 50 and very committed to living as normally as possible, wheeling him everywhere in his chair, taking him on excursions where possible, and giving him every experience they are able to arrange. I liked them both and admired their courage and resilience, and persistence in the face of daunting circumstances.
We felt very fortunate to have next-door neighbors we also really liked, Miguel and Margarita, so sweet and so kind to one another, and with such an interesting history.
I admire the staff. For passengers, we get on and it’s like the party begins. For the staff, with endless cycles of passengers, it’s like the party never ends, and they are the hosts. It is exhausting to be so chipper, so helpful, so willing to facilitate, and to make it look so easy. It is hard work, and we admire their commitment to making every experience good for the passengers, often at great sacrifice in their private lives.
We had a great flight on Etihad en route to Brussels. We slept well and had a nice breakfast. I had yogurt but AdventureMan shared his “Brioche” which was hot and goopy and fancy with a huge burst of flavor from the first bite.
Brussels was easy. We settled in the lounge until our flight was called. Then the flight was delayed waiting for some passengers, and delayed, and the passengers never came. As we sit, waiting to depart, we are now scheduled to land about 25 minutes before the next flight is scheduled to depart. AdventureMan talked to the flight attendants; they say our connecting flight probably won’t be held and we will have to schedule on the next flight. That throws the flight out of Atlanta into question, too. We’ll need to make arrangements for our cats to be covered another day, or two until we can get back to Pensacola.
Afterword:
Montreal was a nightmare. When we arrived and were shuttled through the arrivals, we assumed we would go to transit, but all passengers to the USA were directed into a third line which went into US Customs. We had given ourselves extra time in Atlanta to go through customs. We had never heard a word about the “convenience” of going through US Customs in Montreal. It was confusing, it was cumbersome, and we had our faces scanned for facial recognition software. We were tired. This was new and unexpected. There is also a new system of baggage screening so you wait until your bag shows up as “cleared” on a screen, then you can pick your bag up and head for your next flight.
Do I need to say we missed our flight to Atlanta? We were directed to a customer service man who would direct us to our next flight. There was one man, a very patient and long-suffering clerk in a booth, and 20 agitated people in front of us. The line behind us grew quickly; the line in front of us moved slowly. One woman, who needed to get a flight to Paris, he told to sit and wait while he took care of all the others – and the line is stretching on into oblivion by this point. I went to the Air Canada lounge to see if they could help; they could not.
Finally, we were put on a Delta flight, and we would not make it to Atlanta in time to catch our flight to Pensacola. While AdventureMan gleaned two seats in the Air Canada Lounge, I tried to find a quiet place (the lounge was in an uproar with the customs change and all the people who had missed their ongoing flights) to connect with Delta and arrange for a later flight. After a lengthy conversation, we determined there was no flight for which we had a hope of connection, so she booked us for the next day.
Here is one ray of sunshine. It is Thanksgiving weekend. When Oceania had told us they would only book us out of Atlanta, and that Pensacola to Atlanta and back was on us, the only ticket I could find on Delta were two full-fare first-class tickets. They were the only tickets on the flight. I bit the bullet, way back months ago, and bought the tickets. Good thing, as it turned out, because with a full fare ticket, and calling before we actually missed the flight, we were able to book a flight for the next day with no extra fees charged.
I found AdventureMan and explained the situation to him. The lounge was packed, and getting unruly as more disturbed and tired passengers entered. I suggested we leave, find the gate (which changed twice as we waited), and that I really needed him to find us a room in Atlanta; I was fried and needed his help. My hero, he pulled out his trusty mobile phone, looked at Atlanta, found the nearest hotel to the airport and reserved a room.
We had one checked bag, which Customs had shown us arrived and was cleared, but it had not been booked on the flight on which we were scheduled. We checked the Apple AirTag Find My Carry-On, and it showed us exactly where our bag was in the airport and some very good Delta agents tracked it down and had it put on the cart for our plane. I will never travel anywhere again without AirTags in my bags.
At this point, something very odd showed up. “Find My” showed my “backpack,” which just before departure from Pensacola had actually turned into a duffle. It was shown to be in Cadiz, Spain, which was very odd, because I had it with me, I was holding it. Only later did I discover the AirTag was not in the “backpack,” it must have disappeared somewhere in Barcelona (I had last checked on it when we were boarding the ship, and it was on the dock) but while the bag was with me, and that is what matters, the AirTag had been liberated and was leading a life all its own.
We were exhausted. We had been traveling for about 20 hours at this point, and had hoped to be home. The flight from Montreal to Atlanta was sheer hell; we were hoping to sleep and there was a (sweet) family behind us with an 18-month-old baby. It is late at night, the baby is fussy and the Mom, God bless her, is tossing the baby up and squealing loudly, to keep him from crying and disturbing other passengers. So we would be nodding off and (SQUEAL!) or (SCREECH!) and then we would be not sleeping.
I have full sympathy for anyone traveling with infants and children. I had to do it for many years myself. The Mom was doing her best. It’s not easy traveling with a very young child.
After what seemed like an eternity, we landed in Atlanta, a very COLD Atlanta, late at night and we are still in our Abu Dhabi hot-weather clothes. Our checked bag shows up on the AirTag finder as having arrived with us (another blessing we don’t take for granted) and we picked it up and got in the line for bus transportation to the terminal where airport hotel buses pick up.
Fortunately, I had a sweater in my duffel, which I pulled out and put on. Buses for hotels came and went, but not ours. Then, it came and it was a large bus, for the Airport Marriott Hotel, and it was just us and the crews from two or three different airlines, chatting about mutual friends and funny things happening on flights.
When we got to the hotel, we loved it. The lobby was full of young people, mostly with computers, some working intently (it was 11 pm by this point), some socializing, all laid-back and having a good time. It was so relaxed, it felt like a college dorm. We were quickly checked in and reached our very simple but quiet room where we were delighted to have hot showers and get to bed. Well done, AdventureMan!
Sunrise in Atlanta
We slept and slept, and woke with plenty of time to dress and get ourselves back to the airport, to check in for our flight, and even to have some breakfast in a familiar bookshop where we have eaten before. We decided having the unexpected overnight in Atlanta was really not such a bad thing.
Our big worry would have been our cats, but our caretaker was able to stay another day and the cats were fine. We got to sleep without unpacking, unconcerned with transitioning back to our normal life, and the short flight to Pensacola was uneventful. We had a great cab ride home, unpacked, went to lunch, and had a very unhurried day as we began to sink back into our Pensacola lives, and prepare for Christmas. 🙂
Barcelona to Abu Dhabi: We Revel in Barcelona
We know we are getting old, no matter how young we feel. We delight in our hotel room, modern, not the kind of hotel I would normally choose, but this was chosen for us, and . . . it has a young vibe, a modern vibe, and Barcelona has that same vibe, so we decide we are going to be just fine. It is ALL done with electronics. Dim the lights, use a remote. Close the curtains, use a touchpad. Call the desk on a mobile phone provided. It’s a little intimidating because it’s not the way we do business.
The artwork was all very abstract, but the next day after we visited Sagrada Familia, the abstract became concrete, as we recognized details of that exquisite, imaginative structure.
This little couch cracked us up. Just about a foot off the ground, very low, we couldn’t imagine it was comfortable or how we would get up once we sat down. Actually, it was both comfortable enough and easy to get up from.
Once we would have headed straight out to begin our Barcelona adventure. Now, we settled into our hotel and took a brief nap, then headed out around sunset to explore a little of Barcelona. Our hotel, the Hotel Almanac Barcelona, is very modern and wonderfully located near many of Barcelona’s attractions. Tonight, a Saturday, we headed to La Boqueria, a huge market on La Rambla, a major pedestrian street, full of nightlife.
We knew we needed to stop at the Carrefour on La Rambla; Carrefour carried just about anything, and we found what we needed – manicure scissors, a corkscrew, and three bottles of wine. We resisted Barcelona chocolates and other delicacies; our cruise ship is said to cater to foodies. Carrefour was full of local people grocery shopping, so much fun to see what they were buying. The check-out line went almost the full length of the store, but it moved surprisingly fast and we were out, with everything we needed, in no time.
I don’t have a lot of regrets, but I regret not buying a few little boxes of chocolates to sample, and to share with family on our return. The boxes were so interesting and could be used in a lot of ways.
I’m sure there are Spanish supermarkets that will do the job, but we have a comfort level with Carrefour from several other places we have lived and knew we could quickly find what we needed. I got such a grin out of the children’s games on sale – we know these games, AdventureMan has played all of these with our Grandchildren – Connect 4, Battleship and Monopoly. We love strange Monopoly sets, and have them from the WWII Museum, from Pensacola, and from Doha (!)
There were crowds of people in the streets, from the language we could hear, mostly local (it is November, a wonderful time to be here.) It was girls-night-out, guys night out and date night, with families and friends’ gatherings thrown in – Barcelona was one big party.
La Boqueria, a large open market with booth after booth of specialties, was colorful and exciting. There are a few places with chairs and tables, a few with bars, but mostly there is a lot of takeaway food. One was a paper cone of the famous jambon Iberica, a very tasty, thinly sliced ham.
AdventureMan bought a fruit drink with coconut, then I bought a spicy meat empanada, which we shared and decided it was delicious. Then we both bought raspberry-blueberry-(something) drinks, which were also wonderful, blended but full of pieces of fruit and it felt like drinking vitamins, only delicious. Then AdventureMan bought a mixed vegetable empanada, which we both found boring, and I bought a pumpkin empanada, which we both thought was also boring. So much fun, so colorful, noisy, and exciting.
We were amazed at how many delicious foods and drinks we tasted, and how little it cost us. When you travel, you aren’t always so hungry at the appropriate meal times, so we were delighted to be able to sample and snack for our first meal in Barcelona.
We loved the look of these delicately sliced potato snacks, below. Aren’t they beautiful?
We wandered and got a little lost on our way back.
We don’t speak a lot of Spanish, or Catalan, so we would ask “La Rambla?” and throw out our hands with a look of “Where is it?” on our faces and people would point us in the right direction.
Once back at La Rambla, we quickly found our way back to the hotel, and headed up to the roof bar for a drink and to look out over the city.
This was a perfect way to end one very long, exciting day.
Now that we don’t have to pack for the airplanes, we are reorganizing our bags and looking forward to Monday when we will go aboard the Nautica and unpack for the next three weeks.
Somewhere, in the next twenty-four hours, I lost / misplaced / or someone took my little AirTag, tucked in an outside pocket on my duffel bag. I never missed it until we were almost home, and I discovered it is traveling the world without me!
Chasing Petroglyphs: Breckenridge, 2 Perspectives
We love The Lodge at Breckenridge, and we love the beautiful room overlooking the valley where Spring is clearly coming.
We decide to dine at the Lodge restaurant. We have a wedding anniversary coming up in June and we might as well start celebrating now 🙂
We share a charcuterie board to start.
I have the Caesar salad for my main course – and I am delighted when it arrives with a real anchovy on top. I haven’t seen an anchovy on a Caesar salad since Doha.
AdventureMan has the Elk Tenderloin, and generously shares a slice or two with me – it is delicious.
I’m pretty sure we shared a dessert, too, but I can’t remember. I had a local port, AdventureMan had a Bordeaux and we floated to our room.
The next morning, we slept in a little – and awoke to five inches of snow. We could hear other doors onto balconies opening and people saying “Snow!”
We got through the mountain pass, and safely into Colorado Springs where we had a wonderful visit with my youngest sister and her husband in their mountain eyrie. We watched episodes of Joe Pickett (we didn’t even know the series, however short-lived, existed) and then they introduced us to Longmire. Her husband played some blues and boogie for us, and we all belted out “The Train They Call the City of New Orleans.” It was a great visit.
Out of Control
It gets worse. The flooring people, after one week, still have not arrived. They are in communication with us, and their crew is on another job where they found some problems that need to be fixed before they can complete the work on that job. It is taking time.
Honestly, sometimes all you can do is laugh. We had to move to the Airbnb because with all our bedrooms being re-floored, we have no place to sleep in the house; our beds are all broken down to store in the family room. Our cats are confined to the living room, which, fortunately, they like well enough, as well as cats like changes of any kind, as you who have cats will know.
We are reasonable people. We know that if it were us whose floors were problematic, we would want the company to fix the problem and finish the job, even if it meant taking longer than planned.
As people who are spending time and money to stay in an Airbnb while NOTHING is getting done, it is frustrating and chaotic, and expensive. We were so careful putting things where we could find them, except we can’t always remember those special places where we put the things.
And, of course, the unexpected struck. A funeral, for a good friend and mentor, at which I will be a reader, and for which any appropriate dress is hidden in the far back of my living room, behind bookcases and mattresses and stacked furniture.
After scrambling through different channels, trying to get to my “dressy clothes I won’t need rack” in the way-back, I discovered that I could make do with something on my accessible rack in the living room.
One last little whine. The temperatures have suddenly risen; the temperatures are tropical and laden with moisture. It is hot. It is humid. Our comfortably cool weather has disappeared, reappeared, and then disappeared again as a cold front moves back and forth over Pensacola, shifting our temperatures from cool and dry to hot and humid.
There is a bright silver lining to this cloud of December mishaps – As part of my job in the church, I co-ordinate with a delightful young woman who did the same exact thing, cleared out four bedrooms to have wooden floors put in, but she and her husband did it with children! They ran into the same problem, staying in an Airbnb, the job was delayed, and they ended up staying in a total of three Airbnb’s because the ones they had booked were booked again and there was no room for extensions due to the flooring company mishaps.
“It’s a drag,” she told me, “but you will be so happy with those beautiful floors.”
She is right. She made me laugh. She was exactly the right person in the right place to help me put perspective on all this and to laugh. Her situation was so much worse, and she survived.
The cats have adjusted well to their lives confined to one room in the house. The beta male, Uhtred, who has not realized that he is now bigger (and smarter) than the alpha male, Ragnar, has found a safe place where Ragnar can’t get him and has also figured out how to open the folding door, even with its slider to prevent being opened. He is smart, and persistent, and loves to open doors. so far, we have him contained.
The right dress will show up for the funeral. It’s not about me, anyway. There is a pin I need to wear, and I know exactly where it is, in a box at the bottom of a heap of boxes I can’t access. The hamster brain keeps running on its hamster wheel, and I have to take a breath and realize that most of what I worry about will resolve itself without my getting wrapped up in anxiety.
Limbo is never a fun place to be. We want this to be over, we want to put all our furniture back, to sleep in our own house, to have our things put away in logical places where we can find them when we need them. We trust this company and want to work with them; we believe they are doing the best that they can in troubled times. We are in a good place; no immediate vacation plans, no children, not a lot on our schedule, and our Airbnb has been very gracious about extensions. I’ve given up thinking I’ll be able to have this all done, everything put away, for Christmas.
We are not comfortable being out of control. We are experiencing the discomfort of rolling with the unknown. On some level, I believe it to be a reminder that mostly control is an illusion, and that we are often oblivious to the tumult and chaos all around us, disruption can blindside us at any time. I know there is a lesson in humility involved, and I suspect another lesson in letting go and going with the flow. Like Uhtred, I persist in trying to free myself, I keep pulling at that door.
Into the Great Wide Open, Day 13, Bozeman and the Museum of the Rockies
We have space! I am up early, and I can brew a pot of coffee while AdventureMan sleeps in. We are not in a hurry, the Museum of the Rockies won’t even open until 9:00, so we can take our time. We like museums, and we really like the Museum of the Rockies. Last time we were there, they had a visiting exhibit on Genghis Khan; this time they have an exhibit called Vikings Begin, and I love all the new things we are learning about Viking culture and explorations. We have a quick breakfast downstairs, grab what we need and head out.
Usually when we get to a museum we are early and there are few people. This time, there is a bus load of people who look a lot like us. They seem to be Montanan, maybe not from Bozeman, but maybe a church group or an affiliated group of some kind, around our age, all of them. There are also a few families with children. Not a big crowd but a healthy number of people.
We go through the Viking exhibit, which is exquisite, but small. I watch a couple of the videos, blown away by how far the Viking trading ships went, from deep into current day Russia to the coastal areas of North America.
We go through the early western exhibits, then split off, AdventureMan to spend time with the dinosaurs, and me to see a planetarium presentation on the northern skies. I love this show; it focuses on what our early ancestors saw from different countries, they show us the differences between what people see in Bozeman, at 45° latitude, New Orleans, at 30° latitude, and Northern Europe and Alaska, at 60° latitude.
I had a little time after the show to visit the gift shop, which had many empty shelves, which they were busy replenishing. As I checked out, I asked “didn’t you used to stock more of just about everything?” and she told me that they were even pulling stock from old exhibits to display as the containers were not arriving with new stock. This is another recurrent theme, here, in Pensacola and just about anywhere we travel, problems with the supply chain. This COVID has put a huge kink in the old normal, and we are going to have to find new ways of dealing with changes brought about by both COVID and climate change.
Our lunch was hilarious. The Museum of the Rockies is close to down town Bozeman, so we found a parking place and walked around until we found something that looked like it would do. It was called the Main Street Over Easy, and you go through a door and down a hallway to find it. We arrived just at change-over time; the place was packed with breakfast eaters just finishing up, and we were shown to a table and given breakfast menus.
A lady at the next table said “At the risk of being intrusive, they have a lunch menu. Just ask for it.” She was right. We asked for the lunch menu and we got it. The server, who was a delight, said “Here’s the menu but today we don’t have any burgers.”
Not a problem. I ordered a French Dip and a salad, AdventureMan ordered Fried Fish sandwich with salad. I don’t know how long it took to get them; we were engaged in conversation with the lady who was from Whitehall, between Butte and Bozeman. We were as interested in her, and her views, as she was in ours. We both have governors who have forbidden schools to mandate masks. (Upon my return from Montana to Florida, both our son and his son tested positive for COVID and are currently still in quarantine.)
We headed back to our hotel to strip our bags, re-pack, and in my case, iron my little linen dress for the next day. We rested up, then headed out for dinner, again at the Blacksmith Italian.
We had a booth in a side room, more quiet until a large family arrived to celebrate a special occasion, and that was fun, too.
AdventureMan ordered the Caprese Salad and the Charcuterie board has his entree. The Caprese salad was wonderful, the tomatoes had taste and the cheese is house-made. I ordered squid ink noodles with shrimp and crab, very tasty, spicy, just the way I like it. Our last night in Montana, so we split the Tiramisu, which is really enough for four people, loaded with a rich whipped cream on top and a taste of liqueur moistening the ladyfingers. We shouldn’t have, but we enjoyed every bite.
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