Quick trip to The Big Easy
On the road by six to make our appointment, every now and then things go just right and you can’t forget to be thankful. The process worked, and I should have my new passport . . . tomorrow! It is such good news I can hardly believe that things could go so smoothly.
And we have time for a really fun stroll through the nearby French Quarter, a drive through the Garden District and lunch at the Abyssinian Cafe; New Orleans has the nearest Ethiopian food to Pensacola.
One Cable Place, where the Westin Hotel shares space with offices in the tower, including the Passport Agency 🙂
One of the Bevolo custom gaslight making workshops:
I was tempted, but where would I wear it?
The Cafe Abyssinia at 3511 Magazine, tucked back behind a shoe repair shop. It has a parking lot for outdoor parking, and outdoor seating for this most comfortable time of the year . . .
We would drive to New Orleans just to eat this feast – Doro Wat, a Vegetarian assortment, Lamb Tibs and a basked of freshly made injera. Heaven on earth.
And back in Pensacola in time to make my late afternoon meeting! Life is sweet!
“Come Back Soon; I Have So Many Questions!”
We wanted our house guests to experience a truly Southern experience, so we took them to Sonny’s BBQ. It doesn’t get much more down-home than Sonny’s. We saw one of my friends from water aerobics, we saw another friend from church and our son’s boss, all sitting nearby.
We all ordered barbecued smoked chicken, and the 10 year old ordered french fries and french fries for his two “sides.” He got frustrated with the knife and fork – it does slow down eating chicken – so he pretty much stuck to the french fries. As my friend from water aerobics left, she came over and hugged AdventureMan, and kept her hand on his shoulder as she met our guests.
To make it all even more bizarre (I am trying to imagine this from the Saudi point of view), we have the car seats for our grandchildren in AdventureMan’s car, so we used my car to drive to the restaurant. I drove.
It was a lot for them to absorb.
As we were leaving, our favorite waitress caught my arm and said “Come back soon! I have so many questions!”
Marina Beach Park
Marina Beach Park has a wonderful rocky beach, tidewater flats and a few sandy places. There is a great playground with equipment for children (in addition to all the huge logs and driftwood and adventures you can have on the beach, upturning rocks and seeing what is crawling there!) There are walking paths, paved, so you can push a wheelchair. There are benches where you can sit and watch the ferries, or have a little lunch. There are picnic tables and a large grassy area for running and playing.
We finish our walk, and there is a wonderful kite flyer, using two controls, and he has a kite that spins and twirls and reminds us of The Kite Runner. A man in a nearby car tells us he wins kite competitions with his maneuvers:
School groups are on field trips, examining the beach and its aquatic inhabitants, having a wonderful time. Lunch on the beach is a special treat.
Can you see all the loops the kite tail has made?
There is a separate enclosure for dogs, where they can be unleashed and let to run free.
Edmonds is very strict about dogs being on leashes. Who wants to be walking on a beach and step in dog poop? Not me! But what I love about Edmonds is that they have created a very large space just for the dogs, and the dogs can play together, run together and have a great time. Everyone is happy.
The Edmonds Bakery
There is more than one Edmonds, in fact there are several layers of Edmonds experience, but the biggest distinction is between the day-trippers and the locals.
There is a great Starbucks, and it is usually packed. There is another cafe, on Walnut, and it has wonderful pastries and a loyal clientele. And then, there is the Edmonds Bakery, where the locals go.
We go the first time because we are killing time before my Mom’s hair appointment is over and we can take her to lunch. We are also two hours past our normal lunch time, so we tell ourselves we can have some tea and a cookie just to tide us over until lunch.
The Edmonds Bakery has the best pies, wonderful pies with a home-made taste, especially when berry season comes in. They also have maple bars, which we stop and buy for my Mom the next day, as she has always loved maple bars.
The Edmonds bakery also has a notable collection of cookie jars. Everywhere you look, a different cookie jar. I imagine a few of them are probably very valuable on the collectables market, but most of them are just so much fun.
Of course, I wouldn’t want to be the one to dust them all!
The Edmonds Bakery has a limited number of booths and tables where you can sit and enjoy your pastry 🙂 This is where the locals gather, and find out what’s going on in Edmonds.
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:
Sedona, the Beautiful
We are up before sunrise (having our bodies still on Central Time has its advantages) and head for Red Rock Upper Drive, where we wait for the first rays of the sun in utter privacy, except for a family of hikers, with their hiking sticks, who shout ‘good morning!’ as they hike past our viewpoint and head on up the hill.
And here it is! Our first Sedona sunrise! (We didn’t get up for any of the others, LOL)
The early light hits the red stone opposite:
And every morning, there were balloons over Sedona while it was still cool in the mornings.
It is still chilly in the early morning, but Spring has begun. By noon, it will be in the 70’s (F).
This was one of my favorite formations, in Boynton Canyon, near the hiking trails. It reminds me of Petra, and our camel treks into the lands of Lawrence of Arabia.
Lots of hiking trails here:
This totally cracked us up. We know primitive roads. We went over a road in Tunisia that Montgomery used when he flanked Rommel’s forces. THAT was primitive. I was outside the car, guiding AdventureMan over ruts as deep as our Volkswagon Bus. These roads are not paved, but they are passable. Primitive is in the eye of the beholder.
This is the only purple cactus I ever saw. Clearly it is related to the prickly pear, if it is not a prickly pear. I wonder if it is like hydrangeas; that you can change the color of the prickly pear by adding iron or something else to the soil? This was at an entrance to a new housing development that is just beginning; the houses will have pretty spectacular views.
Sedona is beautiful. Everywhere you look, there is something beautiful to see. Of all the beautiful places, Crystal Creek park was my favorite. It had all the elements – red rock formations, a rippling creek, and a hungry heron. It also reaches a powerful vortex, at the base of Cathedral Rock, and we hiked the trail, took photos, enjoyed a lot of positive energy, but I don’t think we were sensitive to the vortex.
Red Rock State Park is another of those wonderful parks created and maintained with public funding, and manned by happy volunteers. We met several here, this wonderful guide, who gave us a first rate explanation of all the geological formations, and volunteers who ran the gift shop and museum/gallery.
Sedona has stolen our hearts 🙂
Sedona Airport Vortex, Watching the Sun Go Down
I do not want to be insensitive, or to offend anyone who understands vortex energy and has experienced it in Sedona, and finds him/herself consequently “on the path.”
In fact, I do not consider myself an insensitive person, so although I am by nature a little skeptical, I was willing to give vortex energy a chance.
I never experienced it.
In fact, every time someone started talking about vortex energy, I had a hard time keeping my face straight.
I DO believe in positive energy, and in energy, and how we interact with one another.
It may be a language misunderstanding; I do believe in holy places, and I have experienced the feeling of knowing I stood on holy ground.
Sedona is reputed to have special energies, and special sites for this energy. I only know this much because I went to a blog called LovesSedona.com where they explain the energy sources and where to find them and how anyone who comes within a quarter of a mile and has any sensitivity at all will feel the energy of the vortex.
We were near every one of the four vortexes; right at one. I felt awe at the beauty of Sedona, unending awe at this beautiful place. We met some wonderful people. But a special energy? I guess I am just not sensitive enough, but I allow that YOU might be, so I refer you to LovesSedona.com, from which I share the following information about Sedona Vortexes and their energy:
What is a Vortex?
A vortex is the funnel shape created by a whirling fluid or by the motion of spiraling energy. Familiar examples of vortex shapes are whirlwinds, tornadoes, and water going down a drain. A vortex can be made up of anything that flows, such as wind, water, or electricity.
The vortexes in Sedona are swirling centers of subtle energy coming out from the surface of the earth. The vortex energy is not exactly electricity or magnetism, although it does leave a slight measurable residual magnetism in the places where it is strongest.
There are four main energy vortexes in Sedona. The subtle energy that exists at these locations interacts with who a person is inside. The energy resonates with and strengthens the Inner Being of each person that comes within about a quarter to a half mile of it. This resonance happens because the vortex energy is very similar to the subtle energy operating in the energy centers inside each person. If you are at all a sensitive person, it is easy to feel the energy at these vortexes.
If you are planning a trip to Sedona, here is a map to help you easily locate the four main energy vortexes. On the map, a diamond indicates the location of a vortex. Although the Sedona area has many hiking trails that only a vigorous hiker can enjoy, the vortexes are all easy to get to, and no strenuous hiking is required to get to any of them.
One of the Sedona traditions is to go up to the airport and watch the sun go down from the airport viewpoint. It is supposed to be a very special Sedona experience. This is what it looks like in low season. There are probably three hundred and fifty people here to watch the sun go down, take selfies with the sun going down, take photos of your friends with the sun going down, etc.
When you go, there are many many many many people, in fact if you have ever been in Key West to catch the green flash of the Key West sunset, you will have a deja vu feeling. This is a very funky kind of gathering, everyone is there, locals, tourists, probably a pickpocket or two.
We got there just in time to park, walk over, and catch the sunset. Sedona is laid back and has a wonderful sense of humor about all this, and individual Sedona residents volunteer to be The Ambassador, who shows up and maintains some order and good will as the people stream to the viewing place and then stream back to the parking lot.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it is going to be chaos once the sun goes down. As everyone else is watching the last gleams of the sun (and it is getting pretty chilly, I might add) we head for our car to head back down the mountain before the teeming hoard. The Ambassador on this night is a very tall woman, dressed as a Sheriff, I think, but a Sheriff in a dress. She is very good at keeping order.
We have made reservations for massages while we are here, and are trying to find where it is. When we get our confirmations, it is at a different location than we thought, so we have to find it again. I am confused because the lady says it is nearer to where we are staying than the original site, and the place where we think we are going is almost next door to the hotel. After a while, I figure out that where we have reservations is NAMTI, and the spa near us is NAMASTE, not the same. NAMTI is only a block away, we find it and we know where we will be going tomorrow.
A totally great day in Sedona, Arizona.
The Red Rock Barbecue in Sedona, AZ
This restaurant was a lot of fun. The sun is low in the west, and our tummies are still on Pensacola time; Arizona is on God’s time, which is the same as Pacific Coast time, as they do not go on daylight-savings time. So we are a little early, but that is fine, we have other plans for later in the evening.
We snag a wonderful table out on the deck, a table with a wonderful view of Sedona’s red rocks, and also of the parking lot and our car, and a mini drama taking place. Someone hit a car and didn’t stop, and the Sedona police had caught the guy who did it and were working out the details with the victims, and getting the insurance (or not) information from the very remorseful hitter. Oh well, none of our business!
What is not to love about this view? We sit with our drinks, just soaking it all in. We are so delighted to be in Sedona, and to be able to spend some time here. This is a place we want to take some time in. We explore now, but we also know we are coming back.
AdventureMan loves to try pulled pork. We had to take pulled pork home!
I tried the rib tips; there was so much, I had to take rib tips home, too.
The management and service here were great, so friendly, happy to tell us about local lore, special things not to miss. We had a great long dinner, very mellow.
The Southwest Inn in Sedona
When you look for a hotel in Sedona, there is a confusing profusion.
“Sedona has been discovered,” my best friend from college tells me. She named her daughter Sedona, and she is one of the reasons Sedona is high on my list of places I want to experience. She had described Sedona in glowing terms, some forty years ago.
It took forever to figure out where we wanted to stay. We don’t like bedbug motels, and neither do we like resorts. We don’t like paying for services we don’t want, and we don’t mind paying for services we do want. We like relatively small, and we like our privacy. We are introverts. We want to experience Sedona.
After a lot of research, we chose the Southwest Inn in Sedona, and it worked for us. We had a lovely spacious room with a balcony, very quiet, in a part of town where we were only about five minutes from any where we wanted to go.
As we drove in, we loved it. There were hummingbirds dive-bombing the tree where we parked, and we watched the as we unpacked the car. We had an upper level in a two level building, so we had to haul our goods up stairs, but I had my FitBit and I needed the credit for stairs; we didn’t mind the stairs. We loved the brown adobe finish, and the private balconies with the views of the red rocks.
Breakfast was in this cheery, sunny breakfast room at the top of the entry building. They had home-made breakfast burritos, frozen, and two microwaves in which to heat them up, as well as pastries, cereals, fruits, juices, coffee, tea, water – one step up from continental breakfast, and it is included in your room. Many people take their breakfast back to their room to eat out on the balcony.
The hotel had a hot tub and a nice swimming pool and lounging deck, which we never used our entire time in Sedona. We kept intending to, but there was always too much to see and to do!
Our room was fine, spacious enough, good sized bathroom, but I didn’t take a photo and it wasn’t special enough that I can remember a single detail, other than the lovely balcony and the view, and oh, yes, it had one of those Southwest corner fireplaces, very fun. It was fine; it housed us well, and you can spend a lot more in Sedona and get a lot less. We wanted Sedona style, and we felt this fit the bill; it fit in well with local aesthetics, and it was quiet and modest with little luxuries, but without excessive showiness.
We also liked the management, very laid back, and very thoughtful. The room had nice things in it – bathrobes to wear to the pool, a nice coffee maker, the fireplace for cooler evenings. When I needed more shampoo, the man at the desk gave me a big container and asked if I wanted conditioner, too. They had a large, elegant dispenser of cool lemon water in the lobby, as well as coffee and tea all day long. There was a graciousness to it all that I liked, a generosity of spirit. They were very helpful telling us about things we needed to do (join the crowd at the airport vortex to watch the sun go down, for one) and the roads we needed to take. We followed all their advice, and it paid.
Our hotel was full of European hikers, families and people who, like us, look for a good value for the money.
A New Day, New Mexico, Tombstone and Tucson, AZ
The sky is blue and the air is sparkling clean as day dawns in El Paso, TX, which we made a stop on our journey in honor of a series we are totally addicted to called The Bridge. I understand it has been cancelled, but it’s premise was that there was a lot of horrible crime in Juarez because law enforcement authorities on both sides had given incentives to keep the ugliest crimes on the Mexican side of The Bridge, and US drug enforcement personnel at the highest levels protected drug flow into our country through tunnels and trucking. Fascinating, although in truth, sometimes AdventureMan and I looked at each other and asked “What just happened?”
We have a short driving day today, but a stop at Tombstone, the site of the shoot-out at the OK Corral. Well, not really the OK Corral but the alley next to it. We read Mary Doria Russel’s book Doc, about Doc Holliday, and then Epitaph, her book about Wyatt Earp, and they made it so real, we wanted to visit just to pay tribute to Mary Doria Russel’s research and wonderfully readable books, which take legendary characters and makes them fully human.
Up early, to catch the sunrise reflecting off the windows of El Paso:
We feel so safe, the parking lot is full of Homeland Security personnel vehicles. Although it is a Sunday morning, many are eating breakfast and heading out to guard the border:
It is a totally different day from the rainy mess we drove through all day from San Antonio to El Paso. The sky is so blue and the air is so clear and we are thoroughly enjoying this day:
As we leave Texas, AdventureMan points out that the underside of the overpasses are painted in Southwestern colors, and there are graphic designs on the pillars. The Highways are beautiful! Someone put a little extra thought into making them memorable.
There is a cross gleaming high on a bare mountain, and I am trying to imagine how they got it up there, and how they engineered it so it would be stable and stay there:
Welcome to New Mexico!
As we are paralleling the border, there is another security stop:
We really wanted to buy something at this shop, but the baskets were all made in Pakistan! We have Pakistani baskets! I finally left with just a CD of new-age sort of Indian mystical music, soulful flutes, shaking bones, you know the kind, to put us in the Southwest frame of mind. It’s one of the few things we bought for ourselves on the trip.
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