It was less than 48 hours ago that I finished writing about our Memorial Day trip and here we are at the cusp of leaving for the next trip. As you can read from the title, this is trip number 11, and while we have ten behind us, Caroline and I are both flummoxed as to why we don’t have a clear sense of that magnitude. It’s been quite a long time since last we traveled so intensely which should be imparting the idea of being overwhelmed or something. Instead, it just feels normal. What can explain this?
This is a serious question. I don’t mean to imply that we somehow take these travels for granted; we are well aware that nothing is due us. Back in 2020, when we all had our plans disrupted, Caroline and I were still able to snag 28 days of travel, 21 of those days between the pandemic shutdown and prior to the availability of the vaccine. While we might have had moments that year of feeling trapped, I’m fairly certain we spent more time on vacation than probably 98% of the American people. Now, here we are in 2022, and we are in no way feeling trapped; we have 41 days of travel already behind us, with more than 60 to come before the new year. This should already hold great significance. Don’t get me wrong, we are utterly and profoundly grateful and excited at the start of all of our travels, even to places like Ajo, Arizona.
So, why isn’t this clobbering our senses? The best answer I can come up with this being in some way normalized is that even on the days and weekends we are not out on an adventure, our days at home are lived so large that they must nearly equate to being in an exotic locale exploring the extraordinary. The novelty that arrives with each day propels us into such memorable moments that the greatest majority of our time is as exciting as landing in Bergamo, Italy, for the first time. After a morning walk that often has us visiting with Lucy the Donkey and watching mockingbirds flutter from their perches, and a drive to work listening to Caroline read books to me (our current title is Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s classic 1840 sea journal), followed by everything that comes after these terrific starts to the day, the value of a simple day is exponentiated. Maybe the travel no longer stands so far out because nearly every day has attributes that provide such exceptional quality that we might as well be on a Space-X rocket daily.
Enough of all that for the moment, as we are now only 4 hours away from taking off, and I have things to tend to, such as packing, that need to be done before I pick up Caroline. My 3-hour block of trying to write in between talking while having my first cup of coffee needs to come to an end. Regarding the title of today’s post, our destination is Winslow, Arizona, yep, the same one where people have been known to stand on corners, where tomorrow morning, we’ll be boarding our very first Amtrak train to travel somewhere else. If I share too much right now, I’ll have nothing for tomorrow’s story, and so with that, it’s time for a pause in the first part of this post.
Our drive north follows much of the same route we traveled just a couple of weeks ago on our way to Holbrook. The road diverges at about the halfway point as we reach Payson, so instead of turning right in the middle of town, we’ll go straight and slightly west before cutting northeast to Winslow. As we left the Phoenix area, the temperature was a mind-numbing 113 degrees (45c). On our way up from the desert, there must have been more than 15 cars sidelined off the road that crumbled under the searing heat.
Approaching the Rim Country, as it’s known, we could see that there was a good chance rain was falling. The Mogollon Rim plateau towers at 7,300 feet over lowly Payson sitting in its shadow at 5,000 feet in elevation. It’s this change in elevation that draws so many visitors from the valley where we live to this corner of Arizona, as it’s considerably cooler up this way.
By the time we’ve passed through Strawberry and are reaching the heights of today’s drive, the rain that always remained ahead of us had dropped the temperature over 50 degrees (29c) to a pleasant 61 Fahrenheit or 16 degrees on the Celsius scale.
The pine-tree-covered expanse of the Mogollon Rim gives way to the high plateau of the Little Colorado River valley. Out there, way out there, you’ll run into Hopi Lands, but before you get that far, you’ll pass through the Painted Desert, which is not our destination today.
We are racing the setting sun, hoping to make it to our hotel before dark, but no matter that, there’s always time to stop for a photo of a dramatic sky. Looking west, if we had clear skies, you’d see Mt. Humphreys, which is part of the San Francisco Peaks in the distance, and at the foot of it all lies Flagstaff, Arizona.
In the nick of time, we reach the historic La Posada Hotel with a glimmer of fading sun still illuminating its roof. The last time we were here, and our first time, was in January of 2020, while there was still snow on the ground. Sadly, we’ll be here less than a dozen hours as we’ll be underway at the break of day tomorrow shortly after 5:00 a.m.
I don’t think Caroline nor I ever thought we’d stay a second time in this historic bit of Americana that at one point was destined for the wrecking ball.
As we made our way to our room for the night, we tried to remember which room we stayed in before but couldn’t come up with it. On this visit, we won’t let that go, so I’m noting that this time, we are staying in the Bob Hope room #208 with a small balcony looking to the north. An important note about these rooms, even in summer, they get mighty cold, and the A/C unit is nearly silent, a luxury among many of the places we stay in the desert.
This must be from lessons learned from excited passengers disembarking the train and entering the hotel from this rear entrance, boisterous in their excitement of arriving in Winslow. Whatever the reason, I think this is an elegant message about decorum when entering a place.
Before checking out tomorrow, Caroline will bring up the idea that we should come up here for a relaxed weekend of hanging out, knitting, writing, and eating, as we are only 3 hours away from home while simultaneously a world away. With that idea, it would afford us the time to take a tour of the facility to see the small corners we’ve missed while visiting this impressive design borne from the imagination of architect Mary Jane Colter.
An hour before I took this photo, the dining room was packed. Earlier in the day, I called ahead for a dinner reservation, but everything was spoken for until 7:45, with the kitchen closing at 8:30. We didn’t have long to wait as with all of our stops on the way up, it was well past 6:00 when we finally arrived and all of a sudden 7:45 didn’t seem that late for the last meal of the day. Our server told us of some stuffed squash blossoms; bring ’em was our quick response. This was our first encounter with them, and they made for a perfect appetizer. Maybe it was just us, but tonight’s dinner here at the Turquoise Room seemed a hundred times better than our previous visit.
There’s not a thing to dislike about the La Posada Hotel, not even the gift shop. Hey, I’m a guy who hates shopping, and gift shops can be the worst when they are stuffed with generic stuff that is “supposed” to be representative of the place we are visiting, but this shop at the hotel really does seem to reflect not only the local history and culture but an attention to detail that lends authenticity (a slippery word I know) to our visit.
At some point after we checked in and after listening to more than a few random conversations, we heard from someone that tonight’s Amtrak was running late and thought nothing of it as it had nothing to do with our train tomorrow morning. Is this foreshadowing? It sure is.
