We’re finishing up the holidays in grand style. Today we’ll celebrate second Christmas with Ed, Lynne, and around 20 other folks. Tomorrow we’ll have a Circle dinner.

We’re nearly caught up from being away from home so long. The first week back we went to the grocery store nearly every day as we kept on finding things that we usually keep in stock but weren’t in the cupboard. I spent two days updating our neighborhood website. We’re finally getting into our routine. Life is beginning to feel pretty normal.

Is this the perfect kitchen brush?

One of our highlight meals was centered on some very nicely flavored sausage that Ryn made and sent us for Christmas. It was quite yummy.

When we were at Pipe Spring, there was a kitchen brush I liked. I made such a fuss about it that Danita went out and bought me one. My new brush is even better — it may be the perfect kitchen brush. This picture includes a coaster to give you an idea of the size. It fits in the hand perfectly. The bristles are flexible enough to get into the corners; stiff enough to dislodge all those pesky food particles. As a wonderful bonus, I can make a very interesting “puff” noise with it. This recording loses the nuances of the perfect puff. The real sound is way cooler than this recording indicates:

That’s plenty excitement for now. I hope this finds everybody in good health.

1886 Benz

We left I-40 and turned southeast to head towards Atlanta. This is our last night in a hotel. Tomorrow, we will visit Danita’s cousin Darlene and her husband Dick. Thursday we will be at Jul’s. Sunday we will leave Jul’s and drive home. There’s not much to see in this part of the world. We did find the largest auto museum east of the Mississippi in Tupelo, MS. Besides being very large, it had a great collection. Here’s some of the great cars we saw: 1886 Benz, two steamers (including an ’18 Stanley), ’17 Pierce Arrow, 29 Cord (with front wheel drive), ’29 Duesenberg, ’48 Tucker, among many others.

’18 Stanley Steamer

’29 Cord

’29 Duesenberg

’29 Pierce Arrow

’48 Tucker

Judge Parker’s Court (maybe)

Yesterday we drove to Fort Smith, Arkansas and visited the Fort Smith historic site. It’s not particularly photogenic, but it is very interesting. It served as the peace keeping force for the Indian Territories created by Thomas Jefferson. Later it served as the site where federal justice was dispensed. Judge Parker is famous for being a hanging judge. On the other hand, he presided over a court that heard thousands of murder and rape cases over a period of 21 years. Here’s a picture of Judge Parker’s courthouse. The most amazing thing about this room is that it is totally made up. That’s right. The accuracy-obsessed National Park Service created this room out of thin air. It seems there was no documentation, sketches, or photos of the Judge’s court.

Fort Smith Gallows

Today we drove to Memphis, passing through Little Rock. In Little Rock, we visited Clinton’s Presidential Library. If you ever have the chance, you should visit. It’s an amazing place, no matter what your political leanings. This place is so un-photogenic that I didn’t take a single picture. So instead, here’s a picture of the gallows at Fort Smith.

The library’s architecture is some of the worst I’ve seen. But the content overcomes the building. Even though this is an awesome place, they wouldn’t let us eat here. So we took a detour to a small town’s park for our lunch snack. It got us off the interstate and gave us a ha’f hour’s relaxed ride into Memphis. I imagine this should be a good town for night life. But I’m more interested in a good night’s rest. I doubt I will have any more to say about Memphis in tomorrow’s blog.

Tower Station and U-Drop Inn

We took two stops on the way to Oklahoma City. The first was an art-deco gas station and cafe in Shamrock TX, called the Tower Station and U-Drop Inn Cafe. It was built in the 30s. Today it’s a curio shop and small museum. We didn’t get to go inside, because it’s closed on the weekends in the winter.

1929 Caterpiller Tractor

Our other stop was the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City, OK. This cute little tractor caught my eye. For the second half of the drive, winds picked up to about 30 MPH. We were happy to get to our hotel. When we got here, the clerk upgraded us from a room to a suite, which was very nice. The wind died down this evening. We had a Tucker Onion Burger for dinner.

Tomorrow we have a short 3-hour drive to Fort Smith.

Fantasy Edsel

We planned 3 stops on our drive to Amarillo. The first stop was the Route 66 Auto Museum in Santa Rosa. This turned out to be a dealership that tried to rebuild and sell cars from the 30s to the 70s, who lets people walk through his show room for $5 a head. He’s developed a good business of selling cars from the 50s that run well but are somewhat rusted. He says the car “has patina”. It works because in the desert, the cars can develop a “coating” of rust without having the body rusting out. It was way too much money to view the cars, but it was fun and it gave us a good stretch at the 1/3 mark of our drive today.

1935 Airstream Torpedo

Our second stop was a total bust. We got off the interstate to drive through Tucumcari, NM; which was supposed to be trying to make a living on Route 66 era businesses. It turned out that almost all of the Route 66 businesses had gone bust. In all, over 2/3 of the businesses in town had gone belly-up. We visited the Tee Pee Curio shop, which was as bad as it sounds.

55 Airstream

Our last stop was the free RV museum at Jack Sisemore Traveland. This was a gem. Danita and I had a blast looking at camp trailers, camp buses, and more. Above is the oldest Airstream in existance. It was built from plans sold through Popular Science. The ’55 Airstream shown here is less interesting historically, but it’s a beautiful trailer and much more typical of what I think of when I think of an Airstream trailer. Note the way cool bike that matches the Airstream beautifully.

Woodstock or Bust

For the hippies in the crowd, here’s a VW minibus. It’s the perfect vehicle for visiting Woodstock. After viewing the museum, we went to the indoor showroom and walked through several new RVs. We had no sales pressure. We were amazed at what the inside of those huge mobile campers look like. By the time we were done, it was almost 3 and we hadn’t had lunch yet. So we went to a diner and had “lupper”. We have plenty of left overs for an evening snack this evening.

Tomorrow’s goal is Oklahoma City.

El Morro

The drive from Gallup to Albuquerque is short, so we had plenty of time. We goofed off in the hotel room to let the sun get up, and to let the temperature warm up. (The low was 14 degrees.) We stopped at two small parks. The first was El Morro. Sandstone rocks are common in AZ, but rare in NM. This was one that stood alone.

Pen Long of Baltimore

El Morro was important because it had a pool of water in a desert area. Several people carved their names in this rock. Those who did it early enough were recording history. Those who did so later were creating graffiti. Those who do so today are breaking a federal law and can be fined. Among those who recorded history was Pen Long of Baltimore.

El Malpais Sink Hole

Our next stop was at another lava flow, El Malpais. We were on the back road, which had the El Malpais information center, which was closed for the winter. But they had a brochure with a map in a box on the gate. (The visitor center is 20 miles away right off I-40. We stopped there later on to use their bathrooms.) We decided to walk part of the El Calderon trail. The scenery wasn’t up to the trail name. Neither stop was awesome, but it was lunch time, the wind was down, and the sun felt good; so we ate lunch on the El Calderon trail.

It’s all downhill, from here to the Mississippi River

We were surprised to cross the continental divide (I thought it was further west). Our last stop of the day was the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. This brand new museum was across the street from our hotel. It was heavily biased. I think we can allow the Pueblo Indians a little leeway. However, they seemed to say that they deserved their lands more than the other North American Indians because they were civilized. Nevertheless, it was a good museum. We went back there to eat dinner at their restaurant, the Pueblo Harvest Cafe. The food was excellent.

I guess we’ve been spoiled living on the Arizona Strip. When we arrived in Albuquerque, we both noticed the air was quite hazy. I asked several locals. None of them had noticed the haze. Tomorrow we’re off to Amarillo, TX.

We had fun driving from Page to Gallup. We took highway 89 from Page to Flagstaff, which had been closed due to a rock slide. But it was repaired. I’m glad we took it. The scenery was spectacular. At one point, the road was cut into a hill. The road had no shoulders; the walls of the hill seemed to go straight up and almost touch the sides of the road. The San Francisco Peaks were fantastic. We made an impromptu stop at Sunset Crater — a volcano flow site, which was quite interesting.

Flagstaff is where we picked up I-40. We got off the interstate to drive through Wislow, where we stopped to visit La Pasada. This used to be a luxury hotel in the 30s, owned by the rail road company. It’s been restored and looks great. You can still get the Amtrak train from the hotel. We also got off at Holbrook to drive through the Wigwam Motel, originally constructed because of the popularity of Route 66. It’s still there and it looks to be in great shape. They park historic cars in the lot. Some of the cars look like they’re in bad shape, but it’s great fun none the less. Our last stop was at the Painted Desert, where we ate lunch.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any pics. The battery in my camera was completely dead. Fortunately, it seems to be charging up nicely. I should have pics of the better places from now on. In the mean time, all the places I mentioned are famous. I’m sure it’s very easy to find pics on the web.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This is our last day at Pipe Spring. We will spend much of the day packing for our return journey. Our checkout starts at 1:30. Then we’re off to our first hotel in Page, AZ. We’ll stop in Kanab to return our modem. Page is a logical stop considering the route and time available during the day. But it’s not as nice a city as Kanab. Here are a few pics one of the supervisors took to record our presence at Pipe Spring.

American Gothic

I suggested a bare-chested “Putin” pose. The boss told me if I wanted to do the Putin pose, I would have to look more macho by posing next to the longhorn steer inside the corral. That got him what he wanted. This is supposed to be American Gothic.

Arizona Strip

This is my favorite view from the fort. Pipe Spring is in the “Arizona Strip”. This is a 60-mile wide East-West strip of land between two impenetrable barriers — the Grand Canyon and the Vermilion Cliffs. Anybody traveling in the area is going East-West, and they are easily detected from the fort. That, plus the water, makes this a very strong position for a fort. You can see the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on the horizon, behind my left shoulder.

Courtyard

This is from inside the fort in the courtyard. You can see some of the Christmas decorations. You can’t tell from the picture, but the wreath in the background has a uniquely Paiute touch. It contains “Devil’s Claw”. This plant was grown in their “Three Sisters” gardens (beans, squash, corn). The seeds are edible. The exterior covering is black; long and curled like talons on a claw. The black exterior was soaked until it became flexible and used to provide the black fibers for their amazing baskets.

Baby Diapers

We had a nice weekend. Monday we had a little snow. Roads were OK, but we decided we didn’t want to go to Yoga, because we would be driving back too late. I called the Red Pueblo Museum to see if they would be open any time during the weekend. They said they would start a private tour in a few minutes. We were welcome to join in. So we did. Having a tour made all the difference. There is no signage. If we had just walked in and looked around, we would not have known what we were looking at. This museum has privately collected Indian artifacts. They have a lot of things one just doesn’t see in a more formal museum. Here is a picture of baby diapers. The one in the upper right is “fully loaded”.

Fancy Moccasin

The other picture is of a moccasin. The picture shows the bottom of the moccasin. The heel on the left is worn through. It’s hard to see in this picture, but the bottom has several fancy patterns — triangles, rectangles, and diagonals. It would make a distinctive footprint in the sand. It’s just like owning handmade Italian shoes today.

Since we were close to Kanab with no hard deadlines for going home, we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. Its reputation is excellent. We found it to be good, but not excellent. Tuesday we did our communion service and breakfast in Kanab. Then we did our online Christmas shopping. Wednesday we did chores and goofed off. I wanted to take a bike ride, but it was too close to freezing. I decided to stay home.

Today we rode west to Hurricane. I got my last Arizona haircut. (I never found a good barber in AZ.) We visited a silver mine ghost town. There were a lot of boom mine towns in UT in the late 1800s. This site was overlooked because everybody “knew” it wasn’t possible to find precious metals in sandstone. A story is told of an assayer who had a reputation for always finding precious metals in anything that was brought to him. A sandstone grinding stone was made in this area, fell off the wagon, and broke. The men decided to submit pieces of the grinding stone to this assayer as a joke. He said there was silver in the sandstone. They ran the man out of town, and he was never heard of again. Many years later, they found out the assayer was right. We enjoyed listening to this and other stories the docent told us.

We go back to work tomorrow. Danita and I will swap off manning the visitor center desk and offering fort tours. Realistically, that means we will spend out time sitting in the visitor center, because there are very few visitors this time of year. We check out Tuesday. We’ll drive to Paige, AZ Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday we travel through Fredonia, AZ and on to Gallup, NM. Fredonia is an important point of our travels, because that’s where we got off the 2-lane roads and pick up I-40. I-40 is reputed to follow the route old US Highway Route 66. We’ll even have the opportunity to see some of the old 66 roadside Americana.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.