Trip 13 Going to New Mexico

Superstition Mountains as seen from north of Fountain Hills, Arizona

It’s not even been 72 hours since we returned from our 4th of July jaunt to Utah, and we are already bouncing right back out, this time to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Right now, it’s only 8:00 in the morning, and I pulled into the coffee shop to race through prepping a few more photos from last weekend and jot down the beginning of another departure. At the moment, I don’t have a firm idea of what time we’ll be leaving Phoenix as Caroline has to finish her work day, but I’d guess that we’ll hit the road somewhere between 3:00 and 5:00. Our plan has us driving to Gallup, New Mexico, this afternoon, but if we can go further, that’d be terrific. So, with this first note of the day in the bag, it’s time to turn my attention to completing a few more photos before making my way home to pack.

Al & Diane's Red Onion Lounge in Heber-Overgaard, Arizona

Caroline was ready at 3:00 p.m., but this time, I was running behind because I had the bright idea at 2:15 to take advantage of a sale that Verizon had just sent to me. I had less than 72 hours to respond to an $800 discount on a new Samsung S22 Ultra phone upgrade. Normally, I’d be getting $35 in trade for my old S9+ (I know this because I checked a month ago), so I went through the motions, and the new phone should be in Monday’s mail.

With that business out of the way, I picked up the wife, and at 3:30, we made our way to Starbucks in Fountain Hills and then turned on the BeeLine highway towards Payson. Deja vu was in effect as we were on the exact same route, only in reverse, that we just drove on Monday. It was already 6:00 p.m. when I flipped the blinker to turn north on Highway 277, in the direction of Holbrook, when I blurted out that we should pull a quick U-turn and have dinner at this place we’ve often passed but never had stopped. With low expectations, we did just that.

Caroline Wise at Al & Diane's Red Onion Lounge in Heber-Overgaard, Arizona

Al & Diane’s Red Onion Lounge in Heber-Overgaard was our dinner stop. This iconic and “Famous” roadside joint has been here forever and was exactly what we expected: a slightly different version of our favorite old haunt in Phoenix that was once known as Wagon Yard. With the evening’s vittles out of the way, we could continue on into the late day.

Highway 277 between Holbrook and Heber, Arizona

I thought we might make it to Grants, New Mexico, tonight, but with 60 miles left, we opted for our original destination of Gallup, New Mexico. We found a cheap room at EconoLodge for the low-low price of only $59; this was likely the best deal we were going to get. We have a 3-hour drive ahead of us in the morning, meaning we’ll be getting up with the rising sun so we can be on the road by 6:00 a.m.

Freedom and Independence on the 4th of July

Independence Day out in a space that allows an extraordinary amount of freedom and independence to be had; that’s where we are. Nothing consumed, not a lot desired, and very little purchased is how we travel into this day, which in some way mirrors our lives at home. We comfortably find ourselves in a vast landscape, trying to interpret a horizon without easy markers or signs to guide us into the unfamiliar, and that’s okay.

Is Independence Day still a celebration of our freedom from tyranny or simply the faint recollection of historic events that paved the way for some idealistic notions? Certain declarations and amendments have come to stand in for whatever the thoughts might have been surrounding a collective sense of being free Americans, but are two or three fragments the extent of what independence means? Why do so many find our constitutional declarations ensconced in law to be tenuous at best and in need of constant anxious lament as though at any moment they will be ripped from the clutch of patriots who apparently are the only truly aware Americans? I’m afraid that this nervous energy and a constant refrain that everything America stands for is on the brink of being torn away is a toxic salve bringing infection to a wound exploited by hyperbolic political shysters, modern-day media snake oil salesmen, and pundit quacks who are not expert in anything other than terror.

People stuck in paradigms of the past appear most susceptible to fear and deception that exploits their unenlightened minds. Maybe they are broken and undereducated due to an indoctrination that made them slaves to a jingoistic and overzealous dogma from which they are now unable to break free. How, then, are those people free or independent? They are not; they are like this broken-down, rusting jalopy that is not going anywhere. Put a TV in front of this car, and you are effectively seeing many of my fellow citizens: frozen by gravity, useless, a relic from a past that failed to maintain any kind of momentum that might have allowed them to glide into the present and hopefully the future too.

I should offer up some details regarding this day that actually pertains to our trip from Utah that will take us home to Phoenix, Arizona, today. We woke in Blanding, a small town with a population of just under 3,600 people, and headed south. The sandstone bluff in the second photo is at the edge of the town of Bluff that we visited at the end of May; the car at the Cow Canyon Trading Post is also in Bluff. This wall fragment was at one time either part of a dwelling or maybe a storage area. I spotted it from the road, and it begged us to pay a visit. From here, we traveled toward Montezuma Creek and Aneth on our way to a special crossroads in the middle of nowhere.

Nowhere is where I live my best life, where nothing I own is strewn before or around me. All I can do is look upon the nothingness that embodies everything and has an intrinsic value exceeding the things that might be considered mine. When this wash is running it feeds into the San Juan River, which is the green spot out in the distance of this photo. For countless years, the rains have come and gone and, on occasion, left enough moisture that the streambed carved itself into the landscape. On this particular day, its path is evidenced by the green S curve starting in the foreground. The hand of nature out here has been employing the engineering forces of natural processes to build the most elegant of places that I will ever witness while standing at this particular place on State Route 162 located in San Juan County, Utah. So, now I’ve been everywhere and seen everything where nothing existed until I embued it with all the appreciation and value of someone able to find things meaningful while exploring the freedom of independence to do such things.

We had to stop here in Montezuma Creek, Utah, to admire the artwork of the students at Whitehorse High School who, when not exploring their creativity, are locked in classrooms being indoctrinated into believing that what they are being forced to learn will deliver them from the wretched poverty in which many of their parents exist. The cruel dichotomy here is that these kids are learning just enough to have them either conform or fail and likely relinquish themselves to systems that will exploit their incarceration. Without hope of further real education, they will languish in meager subsistence jobs not far from where they are growing up and never know the freedom of independence that the United States claims is a key part of our cultural DNA. Native Americans, like many minorities that can’t afford participation, are tossed by the wayside of something less than nothing, a place without hope or the ability to interpret what riches they might have if they were seriously knowledgable about truths. These truths are simply the idea that freedom is a state of mind afforded by removing oneself from the struggle of just surviving abject poverty, and this is where real education comes to bear.

I need to make clear here that my focus is not lamenting the situation of the poor, minorities, or other disadvantaged groups; the system is stacked against them, and they do what they can with the little they have. My real complaint is about those who have the means to be free and independent but are simultaneously deeply entrenched in their intellectual stagnation and being the loudest about their fear of what they claim is being stolen from them, which is absolutely nothing.

We cannot contain the ocean, the sun, or the wind, and we are fairly adept at controlling the river, bringing light to darkness, and giving ourselves the ability to move quickly over the surface of the planet, but we are absolute masters of bringing totalitarian enslavement upon the minds of the masses who are terrified to lose their shelter, sustenance, and social standing in a broken community of lonely souls drunk on the desire for out-of-reach riches that never offered real happiness to anyone in the first place. Love is the water that is supposed to flow down the river of life and through our communities, but we’ve created a drought by selling false dreams to people who will likely never know better and must endure the suffering of unfulfilled lives while we who have it all always get more. For us, the river is a deluge that welcomes us to grow more, secret away these precious resources so they may always be there for us; all the while, we pity those who supposedly won’t help themselves as we are oblivious to how systems are stacked against the ill-educated.

Aneth, Utah, is indicative of the disappearance of hope and opportunity, a place where the freedom to survive on ancestral lands is bulldozed by the allure of a fake image of life delivered by TV, the internet, and video games. In the past 20 years, Aneth has seen its population shrink by 139 people, and while that may not sound significant, consider that this means the town went from 598 people down to 459 for a loss of 1 in 4 Anethians. This is obviously a tragic situation for the local Navajo population since a town that is disappearing from the map has to support an elementary school that pays its senior teachers $80,000 a year and is apparently only working to catapult their children to places elsewhere.

With the intrusion of sham dreams of wild success that can be easily had in America’s big cities, the traditions of a community are shattered as fresh transplants crash into the cold reality of life in the uncaring environment of the metropolis. The broken young souls either fall to the wayside or return to the old town, contributing to its decay and their own dissatisfaction. This is not independence or freedom; it is planned disenfranchisement, obsolescence, cultural obliteration, and oppression. Aneth represents just 1 of 110 Navajo communities that are likely in similar predicaments. Now consider that by land area, the Navajo Nation is as large as the Netherlands and Belgium combined, but the GDPs of these two countries add up to almost $1.5 trillion compared to just $12.8 billion of economic activity on the largest Indian reservation in the United States; this is not an accident.

Sure, this is a poor comparison when one thinks that in Belgium and the Netherlands, the combined population is 29 million people strong in contrast to the Navajo Nation’s anemic 173,000 people, but in a country like the United States that has intentionally worked to disadvantage Native Americans, one might think we as a country could do better to honor those who have paid so much by suffering near total annihilation. Stop a moment and think of this: in Texas, 3.3 million people receive state aid, and nearly 2.8 million in Florida do too. Are we really a country of people who love independence and freedom that helps foster healthy communities and citizens, or are we a bunch of gun-loving nutjob individualists afraid of a tyrannical boogeyman created by marginalized megalomaniacs who become wealthy on this dissatisfaction, thus monopolizing another part of people’s vulnerability?

So, let’s all just look out on the horizon and refuse to see what we don’t want to see anyway. We are, after all, free to do exactly just what we want to do, even at the expense of sustaining a thriving nation. At one time, we were a union, not only that, we were trying to form a perfect union in order to establish our nation of the United States. Today, we are millions of individuals oblivious to our real role as neighbors willing to defend each other, help one another, and stand together. But the blue skies of optimism have been clouded over not exclusively by those in power but by all of us, the “We the people” part of all of us, because we are no longer we. This is a country of us and them. So on this 4th of July, which should be a joyous moment recognizing the accomplishments of a great country, we should bow down in respect of a dream that is dissipating like so many thin clouds on a hot day.

But that is not the America Caroline and I choose to live in. Our America is one of dreams and ideals where we’ve carved out just enough and seized the opportunity to find our way into a dream, though I’m not sure it resembles the idea of the bigger American Dream. You see, we are selfish, greedy, and maybe a bit isolated. We are selfish because we no longer buy into needing things like large homes, expensive cars, a vast wardrobe, or the other trappings of conspicuous consumption. We are greedy as we save money, predominately cook at home, set our thermostat higher, and save from not participating with subscriptions to frivolous services. We are isolated due to being avid readers, not owning a television, not playing golf, or rooting for sports franchises of any sort.

We’ve chosen our own path that recognizes our limitations to earn more and more. We’ve seen that those with more of all and nearly everything are rarely living profound and joyful lives. We understand that a chance encounter with someone less fortunate will likely offer us a more meaningful experience than listening to someone feeding us details about some celebrity, indignation regarding a politician of any persuasion, or their latest acquisition they believe enhances their position in the hierarchy of accomplishments.

We stand mostly alone with our ideals carrying dreams from a bygone era that if you ventured out into your country and into yourself, you might find experiential riches that would define you as a real explorer, a real American, a person living a life well lived. We still adhere to these ideas towering overhead as aspirations that are meant to be embraced. Caroline just recently became an American citizen and did so with tears in her eyes as she knows firsthand what is possible, but sadly, it is only because we had to separate ourselves from the masses defined by a lot of nothing, masses who don’t know the real American Dream and are angry that they are living in dystopian nightmares of their own creation.

Just stop a second and look at this: we are living the adage extolled in the Declaration of Independence regarding Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. We are free under our current system to find just those things; nobody is trying to take anything from us, but we must be willing to give to ourselves and adapt to a changing world. Our founding fathers never envisioned a day when people would travel at 60 mph over land in air-conditioned vehicles, take photos of exquisite detail, and call ahead to a restaurant in the middle of a desert to verify their hours, but that’s what we do, and all that’s required is to continue changing with the times.

These bags of flour will not make themselves into a cake, bagels, or the Navajo frybread it is likely destined to become. Someone else will have to transform it; the flour will be altered by the addition of other ingredients, be they savory or sweet; the point is that these constituent parts will see their chemistry changed but still won’t be done until they find their way into a transitional form of having been cooked. And though the flour and that which was added will become food, it will then need to be consumed to act as nourishment. Maybe a grandmother made a cake, a dad made his kids pancakes on a Sunday morning, or a husband and wife are making frybread next to the road and loading it with roast mutton for passersby, such as my wife and me. This act of change and preparation is what will sustain those who benefit from the efforts of a community. This parable is what a nation, a people, a country of united souls does for one another, but we’ve lost sight of the basic ingredients right in front of us. Instead, we are pissed off when we must deal with the investment of effort to transform things on our own because the 20-layer cake isn’t being spoon-fed to us when we want it.

Do not be a petulant bulwark against your own motion forward, happiness, or accomplishment. Nothing is really standing in your way besides yourself. Your intransigence to see your way around minor obstacles blinds you and steals your vision to find what is just beyond the rock called self. Caroline and I are not perfect examples of growing beyond limitations, but in these moments of exploring our own freedom and independence, we get to take sight of the astonishing vistas of our vast country and consider how fortunate we are to have broken free of the shackles of unattainable lives of perfection sold by those snake oil salesmen, quacks, charlatans, con artists, and cheaters who have sold far too many Americans nothing but anguish by blaming others for what they are missing.

Nothing has been stolen from you aside from what you gave away. If you look into the window of the TV screen and witness the magic of incredible perfection, maybe you are already selling yourself on self-delusion. The horizon is not painted in gold, but it is embued with riches of wonder if you know how to see what you were never told was valuable. America is the dream; our freedom to venture into ourselves has never been denied, but the fortitude of the pioneer requires us to surmount obstacles, and in a modern age, that means we must clamber over our own ignorance and fear of failure.

Initially, the road may not be paved, and we might struggle to determine the direction we need to take if there is no one to guide us; such is the task of the relentless fighter intent on carving a way forward. When the destination is not obvious, we are presented with our own wherewithal to make decisions and choices that might harm us as well as deliver us.

It’s bumpy out here, and what if you can’t easily find what sustains you? You keep going forward and shut up, as being a stoic is at the heart of being American. If you believe you deserve to be called a citizen of the United States, a real American, you push forward against the odds that will feel stacked against you, but in this age, it is no longer the brute force of strength that will propel you, it is what you’ve fed your mind, your education, and the opportunity you must work hard at to empower you. The easy way is for losers, they stay behind and wait for others to pave a trail instead of making the arduous journey themselves. We do not choose to stay at home watching the game, firing up the barbecue, or tossing back a beer today; we venture out to explore unknown spaces and risk learning about something that may not be initially obvious as to what value it gave us. Still, we seize the moment and embrace our radical freedom to be everywhere, anywhere, and nowhere.

Ah, the proverbial cake is served in the form of a roast mutton sandwich on frybread. We have pulled into Chinle, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, and it is here at an anonymous dirt lot where it might not be apparent to those driving by that a loose grouping of trucks and a few trailers is actually a small flea market. Hoping I’d get lucky to find what my deepest desires want right now, I creep over the bumpy lot, slowly driving past tables and vehicles until my eye caught a truck and trailer looking like they were offering hot food. While Caroline grabs the last dish of roast mutton deluxe with corn on the cob, potato, and green chili (which I’ll help myself to), I opt for the roast mutton sans frybread (it’s a diabetes thing) and am now being delivered to a state of sheepy nirvana.

What wasn’t at the market but was found in the parking lot of a gas station was a husband and wife selling pickle dillies, which we’ve also seen offered as picadillies. Salty, sour, and sweet isn’t everyone’s cup of yummy, but my wife isn’t everyone, so the idea of having a snowcone of tiger’s blood, banana, and black cherry syrup with layers of pickles is the perfect summer treat for her. As for me, yeah, that diabetes thing again. I’ll hold out for the possibility I might find more roast mutton further down the road. If you don’t try what you don’t know, you’ll never know what you didn’t know, and you’ll only have yourself to blame for a life not lived well.

Freedom and independence are choices in a land where they are guaranteed, but you’ll have to muster some resolve to risk your sense of certainty and put away your biases. Are your mind and imagination open like the sky on a summer day, or are you locked in the dungeon of hate and resentment that others are living the life you believe you deserve yet are unable to budge from your obstinacy to grab? I’d like to reiterate that Caroline and I are not special; we are simply willing to go out, look, savor, and participate in things that are not a normal part of our routine. We give ourselves permission to step out of our comfort zone, and yet we keep finding great comfort in discovering something new and exciting where others might find nothing.

I need to stop a moment and consider things I don’t know, such as the thoughts that might arise here at the Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site. This building is here because 158 years ago, the people of the Navajo Nation were force-marched over 300 miles from their native lands to a small reservation in eastern New Mexico. This act of human cruelty left deep scars on the Diné (Navajo), and why wouldn’t it? Forces representing the United States, along with disease and famine, killed more than a quarter of their population. So I can’t tell you how I might see the world and my opportunity in it if I came from an oppressed people. Regarding this trading post, it’s here because after the Long Walk, as the forced march is known, and the people returned to this land, trading posts were opened across the Navajo Nation as the U.S. government tried to support the Navajo in getting back on their feet.

This idea of trauma hindering the ability to move lives forward is obviously a touchy one that various ethnic and religious groups have had to contend with throughout time, but I can’t help but take inspiration from Jewish people, especially those who survived World War II. Roughly 33% of the global population of Jews died between 1933 and 1945 at the hands of the Nazis while their history of persecution for centuries prior is well known, and so their resilience to bounce back following the 2nd world war is nothing short of admirable. Tenacity to get past adversity seems to pay dividends, and while not all people are alike, there’s a lesson to be learned from not only people of the Jewish faith but maybe the Mormons, too. But I’m not here to dissect the minutiae of persecuted and oppressed people or to bring into context the barbarity of various societies over the course of history; I’m more interested in the valuable lessons learned. The most important of those lessons seems to me to be that bad, horrible, atrocious acts of cruelty are perpetrated on people from all walks of life, but the ability to stop the victimization thinking and lingering in despair is key to moving forward.

This positive way ahead applies to all of us as it seems that some relative majority of humans have suffered at the hands of neglect, abuse, lack of opportunity, bullying, condemnation, or some other bias that has negatively impacted lives. You see these Navajo woven baskets hanging upside-down here at the Hubbell Trading Post? This is considered bad in Navajo lore as baskets are used to hold important things such as food, and hanging them up in this way means they cannot serve their purpose and act in the capacity for which they were created It doesn’t always have to be this way and maybe someday they’ll be removed from the ceiling and restored to a position where, even if they never act as working baskets again, they’ll be on display and respected as what they were intended to be. People have to take themselves away from a position of remaining empty and restore their purpose. We are containers of important things such as knowledge, experience, and love, we should work together to develop our carrying capacity. We cannot relegate our function and utility to forces that only desire the sea of humanity to fill the role that brings fortune to a select few and not ourselves.

Think of this display as the face of humanity: we are pictures, baskets, pots, vessels, clothes, books, and rugs, things that all have great value, treasures if you will. When all these things are brought together, they are impressive in their magnificence, and we can easily recognize their collectibility. All of these things have something in common: someone with specific skills labored over each object to imbue them with form, particular characteristics, knowledge, artistic qualities, and every combination of those attributes that lends beauty and purpose to them. People are exactly the same, but we’ve lost sight of that as we’ve reduced individuals to being merely a thread, a particle of sand, a piece of wood pulp without real value, as though they were only a tiny constituent part of something bigger. This is plain wrong as we are all potentially fully formed artworks, fonts of wisdom, inspirations for others, and beacons of light that will lend skills and aesthetic grace to the next generation who can benefit from sharing if we don’t forget that we all have something worth offering each other.

The land is the surface we all dwell upon; the tree shares its durability and strength to give us shelter, comfort, tools, food, and heat. In the case of this hogan, the earth is also the roof that protects us from the elements. With basic sheltering needs cared for, we can turn our attention to our other needs, such as growing food, but in modern society, that is often available as a convenience at a nearby grocery store where the variety exceeds almost anything we might produce for ourselves. If those necessities are the minimum that is met, we must turn our attention to decorating ourselves and our environment. In earlier societies that meant painting and adorning ourselves, embellishing the walls of our dwelling, filling the air with our song and the music of our instruments. In modernity, while many are still occupied with the brand of clothes, makeup, size of a television, type of car, or cult objects turned into fetishized commodities such as phones, bikes, or handbags, the real element of total importance is how we enrich the internal world of our mind.

The exterior of your home, the entryway into that space, and the things that accentuate the appearance of places all carry little weight when it comes to what you bring to how you will see the world when standing before the multitude of situations you are ill-equipped to understand if you are willing to venture into the liminal.

Two-hundred forty-six years ago, in 1776, humanity required a document to express the need for freedom and declare independence as the greed and brutality of a ruling class that was busy owning other people in various forms of servitude or had yoked their subjects in rules and taxes that proved that souls and bodies had been conquered reached a breaking point. It would be 90 years after that and only after a civil war that those who might otherwise claim enlightenment were vanquished, and their ideas of slavery would start to be arrested. One hundred years after that and only one year after I was born, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. With this knowledge of the glacial pace of change, I suppose reluctantly that the recognition of the importance of the freedom of mind space and the necessity of knowledge acquisition won’t be a larger issue of societal imperative before 2065, when I’m long dead. It’s tragic how slow we are to come full circle.

The human is but a vessel. It is this idea of us carrying the dreams, aspirations, inventions, covenants, tools, traditions, and love that we should honor this maxim instead of trying to squash it, which I feel we are doing at this time. While we cannot know with any certainty who our distant relatives were 10,000 years ago, I believe that although life might have been fraught with quite difficult struggles, they understood freedom and independence in ways that transcend anything we believe we know. Circumstances would have dictated radically different approaches to survival, but reliance on family, community, and the wisdom of those with life skills would have been paramount. Today, we proverbially throw the weak to the wolves; we cast them to the street and into existences that bring such despair that the only way to survive is through substance abuse, violence, and ultimately an early death. Our compassion for one another is less than we might place on rare and valuable objects such as this old Navajo basket.

Please do not correct me by giving examples of those who help one another, the individuals who succeeded against the odds, or the various programs designed to alleviate these issues. We know full well that ignorance locks the unfortunate in systems and paradigms they are unable to escape from. It is only with concerted efforts to pry them free of their own darkness that they have a chance at finding greater value from within.

Take these three clay vessels of Navajo creation and design; today, they are likely worth more than $20,000, but sitting on this shelf, their value is merely theoretical. Someone must fall in love with them and recognize what they represent, and then if they are so fortunate, they might find a way to acquire them for their own home, but if they are truly magnanimous, they will donate them to a museum for all of humanity to enjoy into the future. Imagine if society as a whole was so generous.

The three Diné women offered a generous and friendly embrace in taking the time to share in our enthusiasm for the native culture out here in Ganado, Arizona, and the history of the Navajo Nation as an outpost and container for the traditions of their ancestors. Caroline is once again sworn in as a Junior Ranger, but this time, it was after learning more about the lives of Ganado Mucho, who was the 12th signer of the U.S.-Navajo Treaty of 1868 that ended the captivity of  Navajo following the Long Walk. We learned of John Lorenzo Hubbell (known as the “Old Mexican”), who in 1878 started this trading post whose success in part relied on the friendship of Ganado Mucho. Hubbell, who had learned to speak Navajo, had the distinct advantage of being able to better share and communicate with the survivors of atrocities that risked erasing the people of these lands, and with that ability and knowledge, he helped establish trade in Navajo crafts that allowed the post to remain an important location into the 1960s when the National Park system took over operations. Had the Fred Harvey company taken over Hubbell, it might very well have been turned into a tourist attraction similar to the “Friendly Indian” places along historic Route 66, selling imported “hand-made” jewelry and plastic tomahawks. Today, we had an opportunity to peer into history and understand a little more about the changes our ancestors wrought upon the indigenous people of North America due to the empathy of a governmental body responsible for preserving not only nature but knowledge too. If you wonder if I’m contradicting myself, nothing is ever black and white, as people, governments, and cultures should all be evolving if they are to remain healthy. Just because mistakes are made every day, this doesn’t imply they can’t be rectified as our knowledge grows.

So there isn’t “nothing” out here in the middle of nowhere. There is everything that embodies the potential of people to find what they don’t yet know, to discover that freedom and independence emerge from wide open spaces that encourage people to learn what they’ve not found. First, people mustn’t be afraid of the apparent emptiness that their ignorance casts as something evil, hostile, or in need of being conquered by force; it is simply the unknown that, with time, is knowable. It is the wandering in open spaces that speaks of the greatest freedom and begs visitors to fill that apparent void with the truth of reality that exists everywhere.

The ideas regarding freedom and independence might seem like a rock impervious to the folly of fools, but it is precisely the fools that erode the structures that hold together the mountains of society and culture. Humanity is at a juncture on the map of our future to harness the potential of people to do good, or we can turn and do bad and erase all the beauty we could preserve if we chose to understand how fragile the most important things are. Happy 4th of July! On this day, we celebrate our opportunity to experience freedom and this incredible independence while being stewards of such important ideas.

Beautiful Summer Day in Utah

I need a generic photo for blog posts describing the first nights we are out on the road; that photo would be of a golden brown rotisserie chicken dripping fat as the fire sweats that old bird. This would best illustrate how we sleep on these restless roadside stops. One never knows the quality of the bed, the temperature of the room, or the wail of the window air-conditioning unit. Does this imply that we slept poorly? Obviously, because we struggled to find something even close to the thing known as sleep. So it goes, we know this dance in the been there, done that sense.

Our no-frills breakfast (thanks to our in-room microwave and the ice chest of stuff we are dragging with us) saved me from the potato/toast orgy my petulant inner 4-year-old expects when we are out in the land of the greasy spoon. The menu in cabin 6 featured warmed-up pre-cooked burgers and a shared avocado, which helped keep things in the keto realm for me, and right now, that will have to do.

A few miles away, the state line separating Arizona and Utah was crossed with no fanfare; we just drove in and minutes later stopped in Kanab for some weak coffee, which in a pinch is better than no coffee. Experience tells me that a photo of our coffee stop makes for boring imagery so I skipped that, and anyway, the scenery surrounding Kanab is far more interesting. No, this isn’t Bryce National Park, but it is indicative of what is seen out that way. As we were just visiting Bryce not too long ago, we’ll just keep going north.

Hey, is that something beautiful over there? Well then, we’ll just have to stop to look at the forest through the trees.

This brook with bleached volcanic stones was the main attraction, and while I should have made an effort to photograph the nearby craggy lava field, we have places to be and know from past experience that we can be our own worst enemies when it comes to arriving somewhere at a reasonable hour.

Ninety minutes north of Fredonia, Arizona,  we arrived at our first destination, Cedar Breaks National Monument. Not sure if these people are done with their 4th of July holiday already or if they were just passing through, but they are pointed at the exit. If you’ve read one of our previous posts where we visit a national park or monument you probably have guessed by now that we’ll be making our first stop at the visitors center for Caroline to pick up her Junior Ranger booklet.

With booklet in hand, along with a new t-shirt celebrating the season of wildflowers, we are on our way up the Spectra Point Trail. It’s obviously a beautiful day out here, and nobody else is parked at the trailhead yet, so things promise to be quiet. Our elevation is 10,500 feet above sea level (3,200 meters), and I’m feeling a bit lightheaded but nothing too uncomfortable.

What surprises await us just over the crest?

It doesn’t take long before I grow uncomfortable with the nearness to the edge of a massive dropoff. We only made it a little more than a quarter-mile up the trail before a particular corner whispered at me that I wouldn’t enjoy coming back this way as, at that point, I’d be having that open abyss painted spectacularly large throughout my peripheral vision. Time to turn around.

But it’s not time to leave; we are here to stop and smell the flowers, all of them.

Just up the road is our next trail, and it starts at the Chessmen Ridge Overlook; we’ll check that out first.

Blam, Chessman Ridge.

Straight ahead is the Pond Loop Trail. Oh, lucky day.

It was ten years ago that I first identified the common donkel (donkey-camel hybrid genetically engineered to walk on two legs) while on the island of Oahu; see proof right here. Since then, this specimen has proven to be incredibly valuable over and over again, though as she ages, her humps have been shrinking (front and back). The utility of my donkel cannot be underestimated as she continues the life support functions required to support me. All she requires on my part is a near-constant stream of hugs and for that, I’m offered water, snacks, sunscreen, and extended vision with the use of binoculars she seems to always have at the ready.

I thought pink and blue Spanish bluebells would have been on separate plants, but here’s nature proving me wrong, or is this just a trick of comingling plants and my inability to differentiate their cohabitation?

It’s spaces such as this that will have to suffice as being the parade route we’ll be missing this year, while the flowers will have to fill the gap of not seeing a fireworks show along the way.

Heading up into Utah this long 4th of July weekend during early summer, I don’t know what we were expecting beyond the planned hiking trails, but running into these columbines are proving to be a nice surprise. I wonder if Alltrails has a search function that allows us to find the most spectacular displays of wildflowers as an attribute of trails across America?

If you are thinking I’m getting a bit redundant with similar shots, well, that’s just the way it is, as these reminders are here to bring us back to July 1st, 2022, when Caroline and I found ourselves walking along a canyon edge to a pond during a magnificent wildflower bloom. These were the days, huh, wife?

The columbines are everywhere, and while I probably took photos of dozens, I present just one more, as this post is about more than beautiful flowers.

It’s also about forested paths under deep blue skies and fluffy little clouds.

Just out of sight was graffiti carved into a fallen tree that said, “Monet was here.”

What doesn’t mix with beauty are the idiots who feel the need to bring gadgets that play their music out loud so everyone within a couple of hundred feet has to listen to their insipid soundtrack that erases the wind, birds, frogs, insects, and any semblance of their consideration or intelligence. Then, there was the lunkhead who brought out his drone; even though everywhere you go in the parks today, people are told that they are in a “N0 Drone Zone.” People pay as much attention to that as those told that dogs are not allowed on the trail. Aside from those annoyances (quickly pushed out of mind for my well-being), we were again alone and enjoying the serenity of the place, undisturbed by the selfish abominations that went about their merry ways.

After a couple of miles, though our Fitbits said it was closer to three miles, we were aiming for the parking lot, where opened our ice chest and made some of these terrific lettuce-wrapped bologna-and-boiled-egg sandwiches.

Ms. Happy Nerd-Face has yet again been granted the privilege of representing another national monument after geeking out on answering all the questions there are to answer in order to be anointed a Junior Ranger. I’d imagine that by now, if she were to attempt wearing them all, she’d be stooped over like Quasimodo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

It was time to leave the park as we still have a long drive up Utah Highway 89 which parallels Interstate 15 but without the freeway stress and far enough away to feel like we are appropriately on vacation, not in heavy traffic and franchise ugliness.

A million thanks to everyone who opts for freeways, thus affording us nature freaks these moments when the entirety of nature within our purview is ours alone. I should point out that my grumbling about the numbskulls that intrude into our solemnity in some paragraphs/photos above is my own fault as we typically know better than being out in America on major holidays due to the dragging out the worst examples of rabble our country has to offer.

Just think about this: here we are under a blue sky where a dirt road slicing through grasslands running to a distant mountain offers us the opportunity to be among approximately twenty-three octovigintillion particles coursing through reality and where idiocy is kept at a distance, there is nothing else to do but enjoy the perfection of it all in peace and happiness.

Here is the result of a lost 20 minutes where I searched for what mountain this is. I know it’s near Provo, Utah, but I can’t find it using an image search from Microsoft or Google. Streetview hasn’t come to my rescue, and now, frantic, I have to give up and return to writing. I’d wager a dollar that after Caroline gets hold of this acquiescing to failure there’ll be a note from her telling future us just where we were and what mountain peak we were looking at. [It is the “backside” of Mount Timpanogos – Caroline]

This is Bridal Veil Falls, which I have zero ambiguity about. Believe it or not, there were people crazy enough to cut over the thinnest trail on the scree slope visible on the left of this image in order to reach the foot of the falls. My knees buckled as I watched others carefully maneuver the razor’s edge.

We are starting to run low on daylight as we start passing the Deer Creek Reservoir with this image having to stand in for the end of the day. We are already in the Wasatch Mountains, which is the main destination of this adventure, and are now only about 15 minutes away from Heber City, where we’ll be spending the next couple of nights at the Swiss Alps Inn.

Celebrating America – Trip 12

Caroline Wise with her new U.S. passport in Phoenix, Arizona

We are entering the long 4th-of-July weekend here in the United States, with Caroline having just received her first U.S. Passport as an American citizen. She actually opened it last night, but I decided that it should go here at the beginning of the 12th trip of 2022, during America’s celebration of Independence Day. When her workday is finished, and I’m done with preparations, we’ll be driving up to Fredonia, Arizona, tonight. Just two months ago, we were passing through this small Arizona border town on our way to Bryce Canyon National Park. Tomorrow’s path will take us further north to Heber City, Utah, which will be our base for hiking in the mountains. While seemingly everyone else is lamenting the economy, inflation, the price of gas, the state of the union, and the myriad of other nagging issues, we are filling our tank, ice chest, and bags full of gratitude that even in the “worst” of times, this is still one of the greatest places to be. Happy birthday, United States, and thanks for welcoming my German woman to the fold.

Summer monsoons in Arizona

The same procedure as every trip? Yep, the same procedure as every trip. Wait until the last four hours before we are supposed to leave, and I get busy with loose ends. I was certain I had plenty of time; most everything was already done, or so I thought. Pack clothes and toiletries, the ice chest, the crate with dry foods, silverware, and a couple of bowls. Take out the trash, wash any dishes that were used this morning or at lunch, remember that I needed to get ice that I forgot while I was over picking up prescriptions, vacuum, turn up the A/C, power down computers, unplug all plugs that don’t have to be plugged in, sweep the patio, and get everything into the car. I’m at Caroline’s office at 3:05, five minutes late, but that’s okay because she won’t get away until 3:30.

Summer monsoons in Arizona

This is our normal and that’s that. We are on the road and driving north. I called our lodging for the night in Fredonia, the Grand Canyon Motel as it’s known, though it’s a good distance from that landmark, and told the proprietor Chuck that we’d likely not show up until between 9:00 and 9:30. Google is showing us that we’ll arrive right in the middle of that.

Sunset in Northern Arizona

It’s that old blistering-hot temperature of summer as we left the valley, but up in the mountains of Flagstaff, it slips into the mid-60s, likely due to all the rain clouds in the vicinity. We only see a few drops, see a few flashes of lightning, and in a few minutes, we are on the other side of the city. Somewhere near Wupatki National Monument, we pulled over for dinner. Actually, we needed to pull over for photos of the god rays, and well, that was a great place to break into the ice chest and fish out the bologna, boiled egg, and lettuce in which we’ll be wrapping our sandwiches. A simple, fast, on-the-go dinner so we waste no time and simultaneously save money while dining in the greatest outdoor dining room of all time.

Sunset in Northern Arizona

We had to stop a few more times for dramatic skies as a travel-themed blog post without travel photos would be like a bologna/egg sandwich without mustard. As a hint of things to come, this photo was shot near Marble Canyon between the North and South Rims of the Grand Canyon, where we’ll be staying in mid-October when I’ll be sure to bring my 70-200mm lens for photographing those condors that live nearby.

Sunset in Northern Arizona

It was 9:15 when we pulled into a Family Dollar that was open, the only store open after 9:00 in this small outpost of Fredonia; we needed fresh ice for our provisions. Our goal on this trip is not to go out for meals; you see, I came off a 5-day fast on Monday and decided to dip right into a keto diet as I’m aiming to drop 20 pounds. By 9:25, we are checked in and heading to cabin 6, which includes a small kitchenette, for a miserly price of only $70. It’s now 10:00, and I’m skipping photo prep as I feel more pressed to jot down these few notes before we turn in. Come tomorrow, we have a 70-mile drive before jumping on our first trail, but more of that then.

Not According To Plan

La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona

Up at 4:30 a.m., and by 5:00, we are heading out to the car to drop off a couple of things before boarding our train that’s scheduled to leave at 5:20 this beautiful morning. Before that though, we needed to stop at the front desk here at La Posada Hotel and hand off our room key and check out. In passing, I asked about what time last night’s Amtrak finally pulled in, “It didn’t show up until after 10:30 p.m., and this morning’s train is already going to be over 2.5 hours late.” Oh no, “We’re on that train!”

Rail stop in Winslow, Arizona

We now know why Amtrak is so unpopular. If we could be certain we’d be arriving at our destination in Las Vegas, New Mexico before the restaurants closed, that would be one thing, but then, in consideration of returning to Winslow for our drive home on Sunday, if we were late three hours or more getting back here with another three hours ahead of us to drive home, we might not return to Phoenix before 1:00 a.m.

Talking to the attendant at the hotel’s front desk and to another guest out here trackside, we learned that freight has priority on this route. So, we sit here having a coffee and contemplate our options. This is lamentable as there is no refund for our train tickets, only a voucher can be had. We also don’t know if tonight’s lodging accommodation can be canceled without incurring the full cost. There’s also the idea that if tomorrow’s train is late, we might return to Winslow without any dinner options aside from a frozen burrito at a gas station. We are stuck in a sucky decision that isn’t fun, and we are more accustomed to fun than suck.

La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona

The decision to cancel the train and the hotel seemed to be the best option, though if the hotel in Las Vegas won’t refund us, we could also drive up there today. I called The Plaza Hotel and the young man who answered informed me that in consideration of the train failing us and that it was still so early, they’d refund our money. We also now have an Amtrak voucher of uncertain value but hope we might throw it at a ride this summer between San Diego and San Luis Obispo along the coast of California, though we’ll confirm the frequency of late trains on that route.

About the rest of today, we’ll head over to Flagstaff shortly to visit the arboretum and maybe the museum before going home. While there’s some minor sense of defeat, we shouldn’t really sulk too much, as even a single overnight adventure qualifies as something a whole lot better than sitting around doing a bunch of nothing.

Amtrak pulling in at the La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona

This is the train we won’t be boarding because America doesn’t give a damn about sustainable transportation and capitalizing on its exquisite landscape via rail. As a people, we no longer think about a future as we are distracted by trying to survive the moment while maintaining absolute control and avoiding all things that smack of socialism but contradictorily embracing thoughts of totalitarianism. America smells more and more like a house on fire, but we can’t see the flames through the smoke. If you wonder how I can write something so hyperbolic just because we are skipping out on our first opportunity to ride the Amtrak, you’ve not read my previous few thousand posts to better understand where this is coming from.

Flower at the La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona

But there are options such as stopping to smell the flowers, admire the flowers, and photograph the flowers. Then you get back in the car and accept that the plans have changed because they were never set in stone anyway.

Arboretum in Flagstaff, Arizona

Strike this from the proverbial bucket list: we’ve finally made it out to the Flagstaff Arboretum.

Arboretum in Flagstaff, Arizona

Well, this is interesting as I’ve never seen something like this before 56 tubes holding water that absorb the heat of the day and release it overnight to help regulate a more stable temperature in this Horticulture Center.

Arboretum in Flagstaff, Arizona

Only about 50 acres of the 200 owned by this non-profit are under cultivation due to the obvious: lack of funding or donations. What could be a significant draw for visitors simply isn’t, as they don’t offer craft beer, wood-fired pizza, or big-screen TVs featuring live mixed martial arts of badass people kicking the shit out of each other.

Arboretum in Flagstaff, Arizona

Nope, they have plants, flowers, and trees. And trees don’t fight.

Caroline Wise at the Arboretum in Flagstaff, Arizona

But get this: mature ponderosa pine trees offer the scent of vanilla, or maybe they smell more like butterscotch? Since Caroline learned this on a recent trip, she’s been insisting we stick our noses into the bark to see if we can sniff out the elusive aroma.

Arboretum in Flagstaff, Arizona

And there it is: on a somewhat hot day when the sap is running, we agree that we can both catch the scent of butterscotch; wow!

Arboretum in Flagstaff, Arizona

We will now test this on every ponderosa pine tree we run across to ensure this one wasn’t artificially scented to fool us.

Arboretum in Flagstaff, Arizona

Back at the parking lot, we chowed on the lunch we’d packed for our train journey and called it quits for the weekend. All in all, it was a beautiful, quick out-and-back trip away from the desert and, strangely enough, our last travel until the last day of the month.

Amtrak Ahoy – Trip 11

Near Payson, Arizona

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.

North of Strawberry, Arizona

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.

Highway 87 going north to Winslow, Arizona

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.

Highway 87 going north to Winslow, Arizona

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.

La Posada Hotel in Winslow, 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.

La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona

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.

La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona

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.

La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona

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.

La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona

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.

La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona

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.

La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona

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.