Friday, May 27, 2016

89er Days, Guthrie, OK

As Susie's health has improved, we decided to to take another Tuzigoot trip.  Our destination was Guthrie, OK, a town that was established on April 22, 1889, when settlers raced to claim land in central Oklahoma (known as Unassigned Lands; various Indian tribes had been assigned to much of the land in the Oklahoma Territory).  Guthrie became the state capital until Oklahoma City stole it away.

Here's a display in Guthrie's Territorial Museum showing how the many tribes were assigned and gathered in Oklahoma.




Guthrie's 89er Days celebration includes a carnival, rodeo, car show, street food, and a parade on Saturday, April 23.

We left home on April 20th, stopped in Santa Rosa, NM, for lunch at the Love's Travel Center that son Jeff Hinkle is now managing, and then drove on to an RV park on the east side of Amarillo for the night.  One feature  to note is that the I-40 corridor across the TX Panhandle is lined with wind turbines all the way.  Quite a sight.

On Thursday we drove on to Guthrie, setting up camp at an RV park just west of town.

On Friday my sister, Connie, and her husband, Tom, came up from their home in Edmond and we rendezvoused with my sister, Verla, who is a Guthrie resident and promoter, then strolled through the car show spread out on city streets.  Nephews Peter Collins and Sterling Raines joined us for dinner at a really good barbecue joint, Stables Cafe, in a building that was once stables in downtown Guthrie.



Saturday was the main event - the 89er Day parade.  I never saw so many Shriners, zipping around on all sorts of motorized vehicles.



There were dance troupes.




tractors,

and, of course, Fire Engines






Lots of excitement and lots of noise.  Lasted about two hours.


There are many fine old buildings in Guthrie.  Some examples:



 (I've probably posted some of these after previous trips to Guthrie.  You can Google Guthrie for more city pictures.)

The historic marker outside this building, which had most recently been a Chinese restaurant, but now closed, said that this building was built to be a two-story toilet.  I'll leave its interior design, early 1900s, to your imagination.  Do you suppose that historic marker was bad for restaurant business?




Sunday we went to Cowboy Church with Verla in nearby Perkins, OK, then gathered at Connie's in the afternoon.  Five of Connie and Tom's six sons with spouses and children came over too, and it was good to see all of them.

Going home, we again spent a night in Amarillo, different RV park, and had dinner with our friends, former Albuquerqueans, Sue and Roy Sooter.  Routine trip home the next day.  Tuzigoot took good care of us.

We'll be in touch.

Rob and susie


Guthrie, OK

89er Days, Guthrie, OK

As Susie's health has improved, we decided to to take another Tuzigoot trip.  Our destination was Guthrie, OK, a town that was established on April 22, 1889, when settlers raced to claim land in central Oklahoma (known as Unassigned Lands; various Indian tribes had been assigned to much of the land in the Oklahoma Territory).  Guthrie became the state capital until Oklahoma City stole it away.

Here's a display in Guthrie's Territorial Museum showing how the many tribes were assigned and gathered in Oklahoma.




Guthrie's 89er Days celebration includes a carnival, rodeo, car show, street food, and a parade on Saturday, April 23.

We left home on April 20th, stopped in Santa Rosa, NM, for lunch at the Love's Travel Center that son Jeff Hinkle is now managing, and then drove on to an RV park on the east side of Amarillo for the night.  One feature  to note is that the I-40 corridor across the TX Panhandle is lined with wind turbines all the way.  Quite a sight.

On Thursday we drove on to Guthrie, setting up camp at an RV park just west of town.

On Friday my sister, Connie, and her husband, Tom, came up from their home in Edmond and we rendezvoused with my sister, Verla, who is a Guthrie resident and promoter, then strolled through the car show spread out on city streets.  Nephews Peter Collins and Sterling Raines joined us for dinner at a really good barbecue joint, Stables Cafe, in a building that was once stables in downtown Guthrie.



Saturday was the main event - the 89er Day parade.  I never saw so many Shriners, zipping around on all sorts of motorized vehicles.



There were dance troupes.




tractors,

and, of course, Fire Engines






Lots of excitement and lots of noise.  Lasted about two hours.


There are many fine old buildings in Guthrie.  Some examples:



 (I've probably posted some of these after previous trips to Guthrie.  You can Google Guthrie for more city pictures.)

The historic marker outside this building, which had most recently been a Chinese restaurant, but now closed, said that this building was built to be a two-story toilet.  I'll leave its interior design, early 1900s, to your imagination.  Do you suppose that historic marker was bad for restaurant business?




Sunday we went to Cowboy Church with Verla in nearby Perkins, OK, then gathered at Connie's in the afternoon.  Five of Connie and Tom's six sons with spouses and children came over too, and it was good to see all of them.

Going home, we again spent a night in Amarillo, different RV park, and had dinner with our friends, former Albuquerqueans, Sue and Roy Sooter.  Routine trip home the next day.  Tuzigoot took good care of us.

We'll be in touch.

Rob and susie


Thursday, April 07, 2016

Arizona

Arizona

Our route home from Las Vegas was loosely planned (is that a surprise?).  We wanted to spend some time in Arizona, possibly in the Phoenix area, for spring training baseball games.  So, just east of Kingman, AZ, we took US 93 SE toward Phoenix.  I’d never been on that highway, that I remember, and some of it was marked “scenic” on the map, so that looked inviting.  Turned out that scenic meant frequently two-laned.  But, there were rugged mountains to look at and some interesting areas of saguaro cacti and Joshua trees. 
We had not made any reservations in Phoenix, but thought we might first spend a few days in the Sedona area and plan subsequent AZ days.  The shortest route from Kingman to Sedona is to take I-40 from Kingman to Flagstaff, then south to Sedona.  But, that involves some pretty steep ascents and descents.  And, lots of rough pavement on I-40.  Hence, the decision to skirt around the Mogollon rim country and to stay in an RV park in Camp Verde, about 25 miles SE of Sedona. This meant we went SE on 93 to Wickenberg, then east to I-17, then back north to Camp Verde.  Once we got there, we decided to stay through the weekend – five nights total.  Quite a bit to see in the area, plus I was not looking forward to encountering Phoenix or the drive back up I-17 on the way home.  Next year, spring training - maybe.  Depends on how well the Lobos do.

[I have some Camp Verde history.  Way back in 1987, friend Roger Eaton and I rode in the "Almost Across Arizona Bike Tour."  Started at the south rim of the Grand Canyon (hence the "Almost") and bicycled to Nogales.  This was an organized tour: a truck hauled our tents and sleeping bags and the tour company arranged camping at parks and football fields (I recall the water sprinklers coming on during the night we were camped on the Flagstaff HS field) and meals at schools or churches or country clubs, even.  From Flagstaff we rode to Camp Verde, by way of Sedona.  The next day's ride was to Payson.  This required a long climb and finished with a decent descent.  But it was a tragic day.  One of our riders was killed when struck by logging truck when the truck's trailer sideswiped the rider.  We got snippets of information as we rode to Payson.  Roger and I were not riding together and didn't know who the victim was for sure until late in the day.  We both worried it was the other until we found out.  I shudder just thinking about it.  The rider was from NY state and was on the tour with his wife.  Several riders left the tour after that tragedy.]

Sedona

Thursday, we drove to the hot-spot of Sedona, known for its fabulous red rock scenery, and new-age vortices and the like.  There are lots of pictures at the linked VisitSedona website.  Traffic was already heavy, as Easter weekend, also a time for many school spring breaks, approached.  I found out the next day that this week was by far the most popular time for tourists to visit Sedona.  Going into Sedona I pulled into a shop advertising tourist info.  I decided to sign up for a jeep tour.  Turned out this office was a front for a time-sharing resort.  If I would listen to a 2-hour pitch I could get a jeep tour free and $50 cash, I believe.  I've done a few of those, but not this time.  I bought a ticket straight-up.  The time-sharing agent called the Jeep office and made a reservation for me for Friday.

Friday morning when I showed up at the Pink Jeep office, they didn't have my reservation.  Let that be a lesson.  Fortunately, I had a receipt and they had a spot available on the tour I wanted to take.  Here's the staging area in downtown Sedona:


They sent out about 20 jeep-loads bound for different 10 o'clock tours .  This is a big operation, and well-organized.  Our guide said the company has something like 75 jeeps, all modified from stock jeeps in Pink Jeep's mechanical shop for their tour purposes.  I was on the Coyote Canyons 'rugged' tour - the alternative was the easy or sissy tour.  We didn't do any technical boulder-crawling like you may have seen; we just drove a moderately rough and rocky backroad that required a high-clearance vehicle. 

Our guide and driver was Dan Swan.  He was great - told us a lot about the geology of the area and the human history and the history of Sedona.  (I usually take notes on tours for subsequent blogging, but that wasn’t possible on the terrain we covered.  So, I’m going by (limited) memory.  You could look it up - the history, I mean.)

The idea of pink jeeps came about this way.  A man and his wife, whose names I don't know, started one of the first jeep-tour companies in Sedona.  He had been thinking about how to better market his tours.  He and his wife were on vacation in Hawaii, staying in the Royal Hawaiian hotel, which happens to be a pink stucco building.  She noticed that the golf carts and other vehicles at the hotel were also pink.  "There's your marketing angle," she told him.  Paint your jeeps pink.  People will remember pink and tell their friends about the pink jeeps at Sedona.  If it was just Jackson's Jeeps, say, they wouldn't stand out.  And thus a very successful business was created.  Kind of like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

As an artsy-new-age and wealthy-retiree community, Sedona is rather quirky.  Dan said the latest development was that the town, after much debate, had decided to allow street musicians, but only on one side of Main Street.  Sedona straddles two counties, so making decisions is not easy.  He also noted, when talking about how the indigenous pueblo-dwellers, called the Sinagua people, had moved out around 1400 AD, just as they did in New Mexico, that if you took a poll of Sedonans, 65% would say the Sinagua people were abducted by aliens from another planet.  Dan also told us quite a bit about the Sinagua's creation stories and how they related to the land.
Here are a couple shots from the jeep ride:




That's not a particularly daunting piece of road, but we were not moving and rocking so I was able to take a picture.

I was fortunate, because as a party of one I got to ride shotgun.  The other passengers in the back of the jeep were a couple from Scottsdale, and a couple and their high-school son from Nashville.  They mostly tried to top each other with stories of where they'd been and how important their jobs were.  I didn't have to even act interested.

So, it was a great tour.  If you're ever in Sedona and want to take a Pink Jeep tour, be sure to ask for Dan Swan as your guide.  You might want to go to their downtown office to sign up unless you enjoy time-share sales talks.
Here are a couple of our snapshots of the area.  Professional photos abound online.





I should edit out the pavement and buildings.

Saturday we drove over to Cottonwood, which is adjacent to the Tuzigoot National Monument, which I think I have mentioned was the site of one of the first trips we made in our first motor home which we subsequently named Tuzigoot.  We didn't tour the monument this time, but we got the picture.  We also found the nearby campground where we spent a night or two in Tuzigoot1 with Susie's cousin, Jane, and her husband, Dick.  And, yes, they had dog named Spot!


There's an extensive set of ruins on that hilltop.  I should photoshop a picture of Tuzigoot2, the motor home, into that picture.

In the "Old Cottonwood" part of Cottonwood, which still bears resemblance to the frontier town it was, we had spotted a BBQ joint on the drive in, so we decided to stop there for dinner on the way back to Camp Verde.  It's the Hog Wild BBQ café and quite good.  We had dinner and took home food for subsequent meals.  Remember that place, so if ....

Easter Sunday
In Sedona we saw a Methodist Church and made plans to go there for our Easter service.  But, because of their early start time and the time required to drive there, and unknown traffic, we thought we should check for Camp Verde churches.   On-line we found a listing for the Camp Verde Community Church, a Methodist church, with a 10 am service.  Google street-view showed us a picture of the back of a bunch of shops that didn't look very churchy.  They turned out to be across the street from the church.  We drove to the church address on Saturday and found the nice little church displayed at the above website.  We returned Sunday for what turned out to be one of the most memorable Easter services either of us had attended.
It began with a drama - three women playing/miming roles of women who were present at Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, while a narrator read the corresponding scripture.  It gave you the feeling of being there, not just hearing about it. 
Pastor Rick preached a very moving, personable, and even dramatic sermon about why Easter is important and what belief in the resurrection had meant through history and means now.  I wish I had taken notes.
After church we went back to Cottonwood to find a lunch place.  I thought Old Cottonwood might have something, but it was pretty well shut down on a Sunday.  Susie had spotted a hoppin' place in Cottonwood, so we drove back and found Georgie's Cafe.  It looked like the go-to place for weekend breakfasts and lunches.  (Yelp scores it as 4.5/5 stars.)  It has something of a Greek emphasis, but much more.  I had a beef gyro and Susie had meatloaf.  Very good, so the next time you're in the Cottonwood, AZ area, check it out.
Sunday afternoon I went to the Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well National Monument, both just a few miles north of Camp Verde.

The Sinagua people built what was a five-story, 20-room dwelling, 100 ft. above the valley floor, between 1100 and 1300.  When Teddy Roosevelt and Congress created the national monument program, this was one of the first four so designated.  Montezuma was never here, presumably, but the first American settlers in the area thought the structure was Aztec-built; hence the name. 

A year-round stream flows through the valley, so farming was good.  But the people moved to Sedona and were never seen again.

Nearby Montezuma Well flowed into the stream.  This "well" is a "limestone sink."  Spring water flowing through a limestone hill hollowed it out and the ceiling eventually collapsed, creating a remarkable pool of water in the middle of a desert.  Underground springs feed this pool at a rate of 1.6 million gallons per day and the outflow feeds the stream that flows by the Castle.  The pool is about 400 ft. across.  Divers have found leeches in the bottom of this pond like none ever seen elsewhere.  Now, explain that (brought here by aliens from another planet?).


Homeward Bound 
Earlier we had planned to spend a few days at a campground in Overgaard, in eastern AZ.  We stayed there several years ago and even planned an RV rally for there that didn't happen for lack of interest and bad timing.  But they don't open until April 1 and it was still March.  Nevertheless we took a route home via Overgaard just to see the area and to minimize our time on I-40. 
Our route, as we left Camp Verde on Monday, 3/28, was AZ 260 east to Show Low, then north to Holbrook and I-40, etc.  Thus we followed the route to Payson that Roger and I had ridden in 1987.  I saw a few memorial signs along the road, but didn't (couldn't) stop and see if one pertained to the death of our co-rider. In fact, the route is mountainous and the road narrow and the wind was blowing like crazy, so it was keep your eyes on the road and don't try to change the radio station or read the roadside signs.  I try to watch for opportunities to pull over and let people by, when traffic collects behind me, but sometimes by the time you see the potential pullover there is not time to stop.  So, you watch for the next opportunity.  Rte. 260, though, has fairly frequent well-marked passing lanes that help prevent traffic backup.
East of Payson, much of the road is four-laned.  It takes you up the Mogollon Rim. There's a nice viewing and picnicking area as you reach the top.  A very cold wind of near-hurricane force meant that only I got out for a quick picture.

I was going to take a video so you could hear the wind, but conditions were miserable and I couldn't see my iPhone buttons.
Around lunchtime we drove through Overgaard, but didn't find much open or accessible there, so we pressed on another hour to Show Low.  Weren't finding many lunch opportunities (though we could have stopped in a grocery store parking lot and eaten some of our remaining food supply - but that's not our style).  Just as we were about to leave town, one more hour to Holbrook, we spotted the Jalapeno Café, on the north side of town.  It had a large dirt parking lot, which must mean it's frequented by truck drivers, so you know it has to be good, right?  It features loaded tacos and quesadillas and much more.  It's the Subway model and then some.  You tell them what ingredients and - this is beyond Subway - how much of them to load on to your taco shells or quesadilla tortillas and they load and cook them.  You can choose among various salsas, meats, beans (refried, pinto, or black, e.g.), rices, and vegetables. Of course, chile: red, green, or both.  Awesome!  Here's a picture from their website of a loaded quesadilla.  I got a quesadilla, but not loaded to that extreme.  Susie had tacos.  Both dishes very tasty.  You may want to go to Show Low some time just to dine at the Jalapeno Café.  Stay a week.

We could have come all the way home, but decided not to push it, especially with the high winds.  We stopped for the night at a large RV park on the west side of Gallup.  Wind howled all night and continued the next morning as we drove to Albuquerque.  We stopped for diesel fuel at a new Love's travel center west of Albuquerque, where son, Jeff Hinkle, is in training to become a Love's manager at a place TBD (This just in: it's Santa Rosa, NM).  We changed our home-return routine in that we parked Tuzi in our storage lot in town, loaded most of our food, clothes, and stuff into the pick-up and drove that on home.  Thus, we avoided the hassle of disconnecting, reconnecting and getting in and out of our driveway.  Worked well.  Live and learn.
In conclusion (at last, you may be saying if you've made it this far) it was a nice, mostly relaxing, entertaining, and interesting three-week trip.  Glad to be home.  We'll be in touch.

Susie and Rob



Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Catching Up

Catching Up

As this post is started, March 20, we are in Las Vegas and have been here since March 9.  Came to see Heidi, Joey, Landon, and Julian, and also the UNM Lobos in their conference basketball tournament.  The Lobos were "one and done" the day after we arrived (which saved me from buying any more tickets), but we've had a grand time with the grand-twins.  They will soon be on the move.  Moving to Miami.  To the twins (age four this May), Miami is Mommy's -ami.  Get it.  My ami vs. your ami.  We're moving to Mommy's ami.

I'll briefly fill in the time since the last Tuzi-posting in November.

Susie and her good friend, Gay Blech, did their annual thing - matching pajamas for the annual PEO Christmas party.


The twins came to Cedar Crest for Christmas.




We had even more snow after Christmas.


In mid-January Mike, Karen, and Jason came from North Carolina, and Jeff, Malia, and Macy came from Colorado to celebrate Jason's 16th birthday, see us, and to do some quality inner-tubing (like   the boys and I did back when they/we were young-er.)





Jeff had some videos posted on Facebook that still may be accessible.

Here are the three Easterling cousins.


iPads everywhere.

One thing we did that was very special was to have an open house to which several of Mike and Jeff's boyhood friends and their parents came.  Don't have any pictures, but a fine time was had by all.  Lots of memories.  Lots of laughs.

In February we went back to M.D. Anderson in Houston, where, as we reported via our email list, Susie had a CT scan that showed no sign of cancer.  The surgery in July removed the source and nothing has shown up elsewhere.  Hallelujah!

Then on March 3 we celebrated grandson Andrew's graduation from the Albuquerque Police Academy. 


Now, he's out there - making Albuquerque a safer place.  Also, recovering from an appendectomy and prepping for his wedding to the lovely Amy on April 15.  There must be a tax joke in there, but I won't try.

Here's a picture of the couch on which I spend a lot of time.  I've had the feeling that somebody was watching me.  Doo-doo-doo-doo.  Anybody you recognize?



All these good times led us to decide to get Tuzigoot out of storage and travel to Las Vegas.  Hadn't been driven in a year and a half.  So, here we are.  All has gone fine - no Tuzigoot problems and we've had a good mix of leisure time and family time.

Waiting for Grami and Grandpa.


Quality Time

I had one activity on my Vegas Bucket List and, since the Vargas family is moving to Miami,  decided now was the time for it -- ride the High Roller really big Ferris wheel.   


The High Roller is 550 ft. high and makes one circuit in 30 minutes, a sedate pace that translates to a speed of .65 mph.  So, you don't have much sense of motion.  But, lots of great views.



The capsule we rode in.


Selfie, anyone?



Yesterday's Bucket List activity for Julian and Landon was a visit with the Easter Bunny.  I told Heidi and Susie that that brings up bitter memories for me.  When I was a kid, starting at about the age of the twins, neighborhood bullies called ME "Easterbunny."  Easterling - Easterbunny.  Get it?  But, I choked back the tears and went along.

The boys were summoned for their interrogation and picture with the lurking Easterbunny.


I snuck a photo of the encounter.  All went well.



One morning in Vegas I made a trip to the Clark County Museum.  The museum has a nice collection of old machinery and buildings along with photos and descriptions of the county’s history.  Also, the museum has a residential street with period houses that have been transported to or recreated on the museum property.  

Early attempts to settle the area, including by Mormons sent by Brigham Young, and to develop mining or farming mostly failed.  In 1902 an area ranch was subdivided into town lots and sold.  Thus, Las Vegas was born.  In 1931 gambling was legalized.  Gambling and the quickie wedding and divorce business led to the boom that grew into present-day Las Vegas.  The wedding chapel in the background of this picture is the Candlelight Wedding Chapel which was moved to the museum from its downtown site.


 Here's an interior shot:


Among the celebrity weddings, Michael Caine, Bette Midler, and Whoopi Goldberg were married in this building.

Was anybody reading this blog married in Las Vegas?  In the Candlelight Chapel?  A museum display said that at one time, maybe continuing to the present, 5.5% of the weddings in all of America were in Las Vegas!

Sample antiquities:



The block of houses representing various decades is called Heritage Street.


Here's a predecessor of the Oasis RV Resort, where we stayed.



A touch of home: The museum had a temporary display of pueblo pottery, most of it, as in this picture, from New Mexico.




The museum is in the far SE corner of Henderson, half-way, it seems, to Boulder City (which is another interesting piece of Nevada to spend some time), should you some day be in the area and want to do something other than a losing activity, such as playing the poker machines or watching Lobo basketball.

One evening in Vegas I saw this double cloud.  Maybe something from Area 51 in those clouds.


Our last night in Vegas we went to the Donny and Marie (Osmond, just in case you’re not up on your celebrities) show at the Flamingo.  They put on a great show, blending material from their days as child stars to the present.  The neon billboard on the Strip says their show has been voted #1 since forever.  We enjoyed it a lot.   

Before the show we went over to the Bellagio to see their atrium decorated for Easter.





We had hoped to see the water show out in front of the Bellagio, but it was canceled because of wind conditions.  We would have high winds for much of our trip home.
From here, we're going Wednesday, March 23, to Camp Verde, AZ, which is in the Sedona area, also near  the Tuzigoot National Monument.  After that, maybe the Phoenix area, maybe elsewhere.  We'll be in touch.

Susie and Rob