There's no place like...

The Relics and Relatives tour wound up today with a long run home; we had considered staying over in Placerville, but had forgotten the holiday traffic and motel issues, so we pressed on and are now...back on John's back deck, enjoying the relief from triple-digit weather!

Summary:  a great trip, with no real low spots at all. John enjoyed Bisti the best, and staying with Cousin Steve, and Mono Lake tufa.  I had the same high points, but we both had so many high points it's hard to isolate just a few.

We both loved Keough Hot Springs and would love to return and stay longer.  We like Ojo Caliente and having spa robes and dry towels handed to us constantly, but Keough didn't have the clouds of mosquitos.

We both loved the food at Romos in Holbrook, the ribs in Bishop, the lamb stew in Gallup.  John liked the prime rib at the MGM, and I remembered the world-class Reuben in Grants, New Mexico. Worst food:  Navajo tacos in Oatman. Partway through I remembered I was an adult on vacation and didn't HAVE to eat anything I really didn't like!

John knocked quite a few things off his bucket list:  Meteor Crater, Death Valley, Owens Valley, Mono Lake.  I checked off  Bisti Wilderness and Bodie.

We agree the covered wagon was tied with Days Inn Santa Fe for worst hotel. Best hotel?  Hard to say. They all had good points. I think Amargosa would probably be my favorite, and John was happy to see the HoJo in Flagstaff.

This is my new hallway decor at home, courtesy Lillian.

We don't talk about it.

Most useful items were GPS and John's sewing kit!

Most amusing moment was at Ojo Caliente, watching John struggle to button his uncooperative shorts, and pointing out he was actually trying to put on my almost-identical skirt. (I said I wouldn't blog that, but I just can't help myself.)

Kindest thing:  John leaving his hat in the coffee shop in Madrid, and someone hanging it on the door to our room.

Oddest/nicest moment:  the guy in the parking lot in Bodie who said I was a good one and that John was a lucky man.  I was embarrassed enough that I didn't think to say that I'm a lucky woman, too. :) John did ALL the driving, more than his share of the schlepping (even up all those Historic Stairs) and stayed cheerful and patient throughout.

Now it's time to empty the car of pine cones, dirty laundry, Coleman coolers, suitcases, maps, hotel receipts, unused jackets, and the indispensable travel coffee maker. AND time to plan the next trip!

Wagon no?

Okay - so the covered wagon may not have been my BEST choice, but with 21 reservations and only one slight oops, I think I'm batting pretty well. And the wagons weren't awful, because I DID remember to bring insect repellent wipes, and we meant to get up early anyway so it didn't really matter that we were freezing, and who needs a shower before you spend the day in Bodie, anyway? So yeah. And they DID have butterflies- tiger swallowtails and California sisters - and Stellar jays. And John pitched some horseshoes, and I got a HoJo bucket of pine cones, and they filled our water bottles with ice and water for us and we were off to the relic that is Bodie by 8:30 this morning.

We spent from nine to about two-thirty wandering Bodie, peering in windows, taking pictures, taking a tour of the stamp mill. Lots of rusty old shit to photograph (John's a sucker for rusty shit too) and beautiful fally-downy houses and old bottles and broken furniture and rusty bedsprings and busted carriages and copper shingle roofs.  Fun to imagine life in the Bodie mining boom, with the stamp mill running 20 hours a day so loud you could hear it for miles. I ran my camera battery out taking pictures.

We Bodied out at a little after two, with more left to see but no inclination to walk more hills in the heat. Headed back down the hill (three miles of decent dirt road and ten of winding paved road) into Bridgeport, where we are staying at the Bridgeport Inn, which is lovely except I don't think John will ever let me make reservations for a trip again - at least not until I promise I will never book a place called "historic" - (translation:  up a steep flight of stairs, meager AC and wifi, and cabbage rose wallpaper) - in fact, I may only be allowed to book hotels with the words "howard" and "johnson" in their names.

But I love me some historic, and I DID get us our own bathroom, after all. And we won't need insect repellent. So really there is nothing to complain about, is there?

Wagon ho!

Woke up this morning at the marvelous Keogh Hot Springs, and didn't want to leave.  Somehow just sitting there looking at the trees after all those days of desert was just so relaxing. We didn't go get back in the hot water, or we may never have left.

This creek was too hot to put your hand in.

We did roll out around ten and head up the road for Lee Vining and Mono Lake. Neither of us had been there or knew much about it. We stopped at a little museum and got some info, then went to the south end of the lake to see the tufa gardens.

They really are beautiful, marred only by the fact that we shouldn't be seeing them. Tufa form underwater, and the only reason they're available to look at and walk through is that the Mono Lake freshwater tributaries are diverted to water LA lawns. The lake level has dropped a long way, exposing the tufa formations.

We had a car picnic at the lake, walked the tufa gardens, and then headed up the road for Virginia Creek Settlement, where we are staying. In a covered wagon. Yes, in a covered  wagon, with no AC or heat or refrigerator or personal bathroom, and that's how it is.  If you didn't want quirky, you wouldn't be hanging out with me, right?  You don't think I am going to miss the chance to sleep in a covered wagon just because there's a motel five miles away, do you?

There is a creek (Virginia Creek) just at the edge of our campsite, and the Settlement has a decent restaurant where we may have diner, and the turn-off to Bodie (where we're headed tomorrow) is just a mile down the road.  So it's all good. Also, they have very cool pine cones here, and you know I am a sucker for pine cones.  I will fill my Howard Johnson ice bucket with them.

Also, I bought some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups as a compensatory offering for the covered-wagon thing, and there's still one left.  It might get us through the evening, anyway.

And then on to Bodie!

My new favorite place

I think Keough Hot Springs Campground is my new favorite place.  We're staying overnight in a mobile home here. It's shady and we have LOTS of room and a full kitchen and a sitting porch and OUR OWN LAUNDRY ROOM and oh yeah, hot pools!  It's like a funky old family resort with a big warm pool and a snack bar with polish dogs and ice cream drumsticks and lifeguards with pool noodles and EVERYTHING!

A decent afternoon following a long morning. We dragged our asses out of bed around four a.m., planning to get out to Death Valley's Zabriski Point to see the sunrise. Death Valley is impressive, but should probably be seen BEFORE the Bisti Badlands.  We watched the sunrise and took hopeful photos - you know how hard it is to capture a sunrise, or how big a sky is.

Headed out across the valley by six o'clock, watching the temperature rise (John's car gives outside temp on the dash panel.)  Got up to 108, and then we began the climb out the other side of the Valley. I sent my daughter a photo of 106 degrees at 6:30 a.m.!

I had on the itinerary to visit Topaz, where I thought the Japanese American internment camp was, tomorrow - but it turns out to be the wrong Topaz (that one is in Utah.)  However, I DIDN'T know we were driving right by Manzanar Camp, so we went in there and toured it.  Not a happy and fun excursion, but you know, you sort of have to do it - maybe especially now. Racial profiling, suspension of civil  liberties, loyalty oaths...

Then we drove on into Bishop and found the Hot Springs where our reservation is, and we're going to spend the afternoon in the pool* and the evening...I dunno yet. Maybe go into Bishop to get some dinner. Maybe just sit here on the porch and watch the rabbits and the birds.

* We swam and soaked for quite a while - then they cleared the pool because there had been a lightning strike near.  We were going to go back in a half hour, but this porch is so nice and the temperature is perfect...

What does crazy mean, anyway?

Okay. Amargosa Opera House and Hotel.  How to describe this place?

Marta Beckett was a ballet dancer in New York. Not a prima ballerina, she was in the corps de ballet; she was too tall.

She had other talents - she was a painter, and a choreographer, with ideas for staging and writing and costuming and everything else.

Somehow, she ended up with her husband having a tire fixed in Death Valley Junction, and spotting a derelict compound that was built and used by a borax company.  It had rooms, a dormitory, kitchen facilities - and a theater.

Martha and her husband moved into it. She renovated the theater, painted it beautifully, and gave solo and then duo performances of pieces she had written, for years, with or without audience.

The place is beautiful - semi-derelict still, with these surprising bits of trompe l'oeil around every corner. Our room has a headboard painted onto the wall, and cherubs. The plaster has chipped everywhere; there is rusted machinery and peeling paint and disused sections and cracked windows.  It looks like the middle of nowhere in the middle of nowhere, and it is. But here an amazing woman lived a full and fulfilled life, dancing, as she says, on sand.

She just did it.

Tomorrow:  up before dawn (BEFORE FIVE-THIRTY!!) to head out through Death Valley, and hopefully catch sunrise at  Zabriski Point.

Just a little Vegas is perfect

Drove out of Bullhead City this morning without stopping for a morning swim. Thought was to get to Sin City in time to maybe go downtown and tour a chocolate factory or ride a rooftop ferris wheel before finding out hotel and getting ready for Cirque du Soleil and a buffet debauch (are we old if our idea of "Vegas wild" is endless crab legs?)

After a long and slightly featureless drive up the highway, we ducked into Starbucks for a mocha, a morning bun, some internet, and some critically important AC.  Then we headed into town to locate the hotel casino.

Hey, this is a hoot - we have a king suite with two televisions, AC that borders on refrigeration, a pool and spa, a couple restaurants on site - for $36 a night!  That's RIGHT!  Vegas WINN!!!

Except it costs money to sneeze.  (Yup, I cleaned that up a bit.) Printing two show tickets from my e-mail:  $10.  Internet access for our one-night stay: $12. And so on. It's funny. They may charge to use the towels, I don't know.

Anyway, having gotten IN, the whole concept of OUT is feeling less attractive. So we're thinking we'll hang out here (I need to make sure I get my twelve bucks' worth of internet) until later in the afternoon, maybe swim, and then head out for the show.

Arizona Charlie's. Did you look at the

picture? That will be five dollars.

------------------------

And that's what we did. Swam, went and ate pretty good buffet at the MGM Grand - John went for crab legs and prime rib, I found some pretty good green beans and some excellent kale ravioli - and then we went to see Cirque du Soleil's KA. It was just as awe-inspiring and impressive as any Cirque show I've ever seen; their stagecraft and choreography is breathtaking.  It had some of the most beautiful and strangely touching scenes I've seen in a Cirque show, and flashy showmanship and soaring people and storm-tossed ships and flying machines and all the rest of the spectacle that is Cirque du Soleil.  I'm very glad we got to go (John had never seen one of their productions.)

Glad rags, California style.

Sorry Neen - this is as close to a titty bar as we got.

Unless you count Hooters across the street!

The dragon wasn't in the show, but it was

pretty cool.

When we left, almost ten o'clock at night, it was still - well, here's the picture to prove it.

Yup. Down to 106, at nearly ten o'clock at night.

Tomorrow is Death Valley Junction and overnight at the Amargosa Opera House. If you don't know the place, here's a link to a 5 minute video.  It's gonna be an adventure for sure!

https://vimeo.com/150314852

In the Land of Absurd Heat

Hotel lobby in Williams.

102 degrees. That's the current temperature at ten o'clock at night here in Bullhead City.  When we pulled in, about three o'clock, it was 113.  Tomorrow: high of 116.  I don't think the extra three degrees matter a lot.  It's all in the region of TFH, anyway!

Here are some things that happen when it's that hot:  the air conditioner can't be set below 77 in the room or it freezes up (I didn't know that.)  The pool gate expands to where it can't be opened.  The handle to your motel room door can't be touched, you have to use a towel. It's just stuff you get used to, if you live in Bullhead City.

This motel is a little sketch, but it does have the thing that made me choose it in the first place: a beautiful little pool right on the Colorado River.  That's where we spent the afternoon, hanging out in the 80 degree water and then getting out and sitting in the shade in the river's breeze, feeling almost cool, waiting until we overheated again and getting back in the pool. There were ducks and various other waterbirds to watch, and it was a nice way to spend the late afternoon. We went to dinner around nine, when it had cooled to only 103 or so.  It's expected to drop all the way down to 86, by about three in the morning!

Earlier in the day we drove a section of Route 66, back through Seligman which we'd seen on the way out, and up that hellacious road to Oatman to see the burros and kitsch. Shopped around a little (I bought NOTHING, I tell you), petted some burros, had a lunch so lame I didn't even eat it, and headed on down the road to our date with Bullhead City.

This guy was hanging on the steps of the ice cream shop

in the shade.

He was looking hopefully through the window. A moment

later, the proprietess opened the door and handed

him a waffle cone. Obviously not the first time.

This little guy had a post-it note on his forehead

saying "Please don't feed me ANYTHING."

Yeah, drive around us. We LIVE here.

USPS don't take no shit.

It's so hot that all you can do when you go outside is laugh in disbelief, but we are already modifying our plans for Death Valley in two days.  You can maybe laugh at 113 when you have a pool, but I don't think hiking at 120 would be smart OR fun, even for me.

(This was posted this morning at a Starbuck's outside of Las Vegas, because the WiFi was dismal at Bullhead City.)