Dreams, Moments, Travels
That’s Jerry Roberts on the left, Rob Lazzarotto in middle, and of course my mother-in-law Jutta Engelhardt on the right. The team is preparing onions for the weekend market.
While Rob and Jerry are off tending to other tasks, Jutta is cleaning up the oranges.
Before leaving the Tonopah area, we stop in on Jimmy and Celia at Chile Acres where Jutta lends a hand to bottle-feed a kid. I don’t this German lady ever imagined going to America and spending so much time on farms.
Good, cheap migrant labor isn’t always easy to come by, but when you have a German mother-in-law spending time with you, it’s easy to sell her on working for nothing if you package it as part of the American experience.
Out at Fiber Factory in Mesa, Arizona this evening Jutta and Caroline began the first night of lessons with Shari Monsam to learn how to make a Navajo rug. The first step is learning how to set up a loom, no easy task. This is Jutta’s first-class ever taken with her daughter but won’t be the last as there are another couple of workshops I set up for the mother-in-law to do while on this visit to the United States. The hardest part for Jutta was listening to the instructions in English and learning specific technical weaving terms she wasn’t familiar with.
The mother-in-law is in training and today’s exercise involves hiking up North Mountain near where we live. It’s not a long hike but it is a test to see how she feels after scaling this puny mountain. She makes it as high as the trail will let her go and is treated to a wonderfully clear view of the downtown Phoenix skyline. Jutta is in training for an attempt next month to hike into and more importantly, hike out of, the Grand Canyon.
Off the trail and on to another trail of sorts, the horse trail. It was time for another horseback riding lesson. First though we had to get my mother-in-law her first pair of blue jeans – $9 at Walmart. Caroline lent her a pair of boots, Celia supplied the hat and I offered an extra lift to get Jutta back into the saddle.
Left home early this morning to head into downtown Phoenix to the open-air market. The first stop was to stop in and say hi to Jimmy and Celia of Chile Acres, they are down here every Saturday selling eggs. As we walked around we crossed paths with the mayor of Phoenix, Phil Gordon. I stopped him so as to introduce my mother-in-law to our mayor. Jutta was quite surprised because had never met a mayor in all her years in Germany but come to America, and there they are just strolling through the market.
Our next stop was out in Glendale to take Jutta to her first-ever baseball game. And how else could she better appreciate America’s great past time? With a beer and hotdog, that’s how. Our seats were perfect just behind the catcher but between the three of us, we didn’t much have a clue as to what was really going on so after the third inning and enough beer and hotdogs we took off.
This wasn’t our first time soaking in the hot spring waters that emerge out of Death Valley and spill into this pool near Shoshone Inn where we were staying, but the other night under the stars, it was impossible to take photos as it was so dark and it was too cold to even consider it. Jutta was a bit apprehensive to get out of the warm car after we changed into swimsuits that night and bristled at the idea that she was going to get in a pool when it was nearly freezing outside, but as we scurried through the gate and moved fast to immerse ourselves, a sigh of relief and awe went up from the three of us, luxury.
While we weren’t staying at the swanky accommodations found at The Inn at Death Valley, we had the indulgence of these incredibly cozy, beautifully warm waters all to ourselves.
After a hot breakfast at the Crowbar Cafe with Jutta furthering the indulgence to the start of the day by having strawberry-covered pancakes, we were once again on the road and before long were crossing into Nevada to visit a place that was on Caroline’s and my bucket list.
One doesn’t drive through a yucca forest and simply admire them, one gets out of their car and communes with them.
While visiting snowcapped mountains wasn’t on the itinerary, how could we leave somewhere as extreme as Death Valley and not contrast it with images of the winter Jutta was missing by being in America with us?
We are up in the Mt. Charleston area just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Of course, we got Jutta to fall back into the snow to make snow angels with her daughter. How often are you going to convince a lady near her mid-70s to do something so silly? Just five years ago, we had Jutta out in New Mexico making sand angels; click here to check out that day.
Mt. Charleston on a perfect day.
Speaking of contrasts, here we are at the item I mentioned from our bucket list, and the last reason for us to ever visit Las Vegas again is the Liberace Museum.
Update: on October 17, 2010, the Liberace Museum closed and never reopened.
Jutta had no idea who this guy Liberace was and Caroline only knew due to her time here in the States and learning about all the cornball stuff we’ve fetishized.
Well, now we’ve been here and done that: so long, Las Vegas, we may never see you again…at least until the next time.
If you were to look back at last year’s visit to the Hoover Dam when we stopped on our way to Death Valley, you might think these were the same photos. It’ll be another month before we travel with Jutta again, which is relatively extraordinary, but we have invited her to stay 83 days with us, with most of our focus on her experiencing what our normal day-to-day kind of life is like. She arrived back on January 23rd and will be leaving on April 15 if I can handle hanging out with my mother-in-law that long.