Riverside + Santa Barbara + Lompoc

Kristen at the top of the Mt Rubidoux in Riverside, CA

We left Flagstaff and headed immediately for Riverside, CA, to again stay with Julie en route to Sacramento.  The drive was mostly uneventful, besides the previously mentioned detour onto Route 66.

We stayed with Julie for 2 nights, which gave us a full day in Riverside.  We were a little antsy after sitting in the car for 8 hours the previous day, so we decided to do the famous local hike, up Mt Rubidoux.  It was a nice hike, up a paved road, with some cool granite outcroppings to play on at the top.  Later that day, after Julie was done with class, we hung out, cooked dinner, and watched Sherlock Holmes.

After Riverside, we planned to do a day of wine tasting on our way up to Sacramento.  First stop was Santa Barbara.  We left early, and arrived in time for a lunch of pho, and a nice cup of coffee from I.V. Drip, at Steve’s recommendation.  After lunch, we visited 3 wineries in the Santa Maria valley – Zaca Mesa, Fess Parker, and Qupe.  As usual, the wines were so good, we ended up buying more bottles than originally anticipated.

That night, Kristen cashed in some points for a free stay at a Hilton in Lompoc.  Lompoc isn’t a typical travel destination, but it has one distinctive feature – the Lompoc Wine Ghetto.  It’s a square block of industrial buildings, filled with rows and rows of small, independent wineries.  We got there a little late, so we only had time for two – Loring and Taste of Santa Rita Hills (featuring wines from producers so small they don’t even have spots in the wine ghetto).  We need to go back to this place.  What an experience – 20 or 30 wineries all within a few feet of each other, and all so fantastic.

That night, we ate what would be our last Indian packets of the trip.  The next day we would finally drive back to Sacramento, thus ending our North American odyssey.  Next up: South America!

Route 66

Jeff standing in front of Delgadillo’s Sno Cap restaurant in Seligman, AZ

In 1979, my parents visited Bruce and April in Chinle, AZ.  On their trip, the stopped at a little diner called Delgadillo’s Sno Cap on Route 66 in Seligman, AZ.  They ordered foot-long hot dogs, and the guy at the counter asked what they wanted on their feet.  “Shoes and socks” they replied.  The guy at the counter said “like these?” and showed them he was wearing two different colored socks, one red and one blue.

About a decade later, my dad was again driving across Arizona on Route 66.  He happened to stop again at Delgadillo’s.  This time he was prepared – the same guy was behind the counter, and my dad insisted that he was wearing two different colored socks.  He was right.

I’ve been hearing this story from my dad since I was old enough to hear stories.  It’s family legend.  So of course, when Kristen and I were driving across Arizona, we had to stop at Delgadillo’s.  It’s now 33 year later, though, and there was a young girl behind the counter.  Still, we told her we knew someone on the premises was wearing two different colored socks.  She was shocked.  It was her – she’s the granddaughter of the original guy behind the counter – and she was wearing two different colored socks.  According to Delgadillo family legend, it’s good luck.

Grand Canyon

Kristen with a remote view of the Colorado River

Us on the edge of the abyss at Shoshone Point

I don’t really know how to put this.  The Grand Canyon was spectacular, yes.  The Grand Canyon was beautiful, yes.  And yes, the layer cake rock formations were fantastic to contemplate.  But given it’s notoriety and reputation, we were a little . . . underwhelmed?

I think we’d been traveling for too long at this point.  Too many spectacular scenes, too many sunsets on empty vista points with 100-mile views.  There was just something about this place, with its massive infrastructure and bus loads of tourists from around the world cramming every view point, that maybe felt a little forced to us.

But still, we enjoyed it, and we spent the day walking the rim and riding our bikes to various view points.  Our favorite was Shoshone Point, which requires a trip down 2 miles of unmarked dirt road, and was the only place where we could take pictures without being surrounded by a crowd.

The day before, we had gotten a call from Beth saying she couldn’t go on the hike to Supai.  She had hurt her knee mountain biking in Moab, and was on her way to Gallup to see a doctor.  We had contemplated doing the hike without her, but on the way home from the Grand Canyon, we decided we’d had enough.  No more nights in tents, out in the cold.  No more 10-hour drives.  Our lack of utter awe at the Grand Canyon was the last straw.  We’d compressed the schedule in the Southwest to its breaking point, and it was time to go home.

Flagstaff

The Little Painted Desert

The saddle between Mt Humphreys and Mt Agassiz

We spent 3 days in Flagstaff:

Day 1

We arrived at our B&B in Flagstaff (my gift to Kristen to celebrate our engagement in a place other than a tent) at dusk.  On the way over, we were lamenting the fact that our detour to Canyon de Chelly made it so we couldn’t see the Painted Desert.  But, as luck would have it, the back road we were on passed right by the “Little Painted Desert State Park”.  Which was honestly sort of a dump, but had nice-looking badlands in what Kristen described as ‘some of the colors you’d see at the real Painted Desert’.

The B&B turned out to be extremely cute as well.  It deserved all 5 stars on TripAdvisor.  The rooms were remodeled, Victorian, and super cozy, breakfasts were delicious and reasonably sized, and the innkeeper, Gordon, laid out fresh cookies, cider, and brandy every afternoon.  After the 3 nights with Bruce and April, and the 3 nights at the B&B, we were in for almost an entire week (!) of sleeping on real beds.

Day 2

We planned to go for a hike on our first full day in Flagstaff, probably in Sedona.  At breakfast, we told Gordon our plan, and he flipped out.  “Don’t go to Sedona!  That place is whacked out with weird hippie crap, and if you’ve already been to Moab, you’ve already seen the red rocks.  You should stay in Flag and go climb Mt. Humphreys.”  We were a little suspicious.  Sedona is supposed to be gorgeous, right?  But after 10 minutes of Googling, we were convinced.  Top hits for Sedona include hikes to ‘power vortex’ areas, and cite the involvement of ‘crystal healers’.  The pictures were quite beautiful, but Gordon was right, we had just spent 3 weeks looking at red rocks.  It was time for an old-fashioned mountain climb.

Mt. Humphreys is odd.  It towers above Flagstaff, topping out at around 12,500ft.  Built into its side is the Arizona Snow Bowl ski area.  I had no idea they had skiing, let alone snow in Arizona.  The hike covered around 4,000ft of vertical, though we turned back at the ~12,000ft saddle, so our vertical on the day was around 3,500.  What a nice hike.  It went through dense forest for the first few miles, then broke above the tree line for great views of the plain below, through scree fields, and finally a scramble up to the saddle.

Altitude is funny.  Kristen and I were feeling great the whole way up.  Then we came to a sign saying we were at 11,600ft.  Almost immediately we started to breathe harder, and each step became more labored.  If there had been no sign, would we have noticed the altitude at all?

Day 3

We drove up to the Grand Canyon, which I’ll cover in a following post.  Afterward, we holed up in our room to watch the election.  It was over a heck of a lot faster than we anticipated.  Since we were in the Mountain time zone, the election had been called by 8:30pm, which was early enough for us to get ice cream afterwards.

Canyon de Chelly

Canyon de Chelly

Brilliant fall colors on the cottonwoods in the canyon

Before we arrived in Gallup, we had significantly modified our trip.  When we met up with Beth in Moab, she proposed hiking into the Grand Canyon to Supai village.  We really wanted to do the hike, so we shuffled our plans to create 3 extra days – we canceled our reservations at a campground in Canyon de Chelly and in Monument Valley, and pushed up our B&B reservations in Flagstaff.  But we still really wanted to see Canyon de Chelly, so we squeezed it in as a half-day side-trip on the way from Gallup to Flagstaff.

We arrived at Canyon de Chelly (pronounced de SHAY) in the morning, and immediately hiked down into it.  The canyon wasn’t the deepest we’d seen, or the longest, but it was quite spectacular.  The whole thing was made entirely of swirly Navajo formation sandstone, and there was a set of ruins in the bottom.  Our timing was perfect – the cottonwoods in the bottom of the canyon were turning brilliant yellows and reds, but the air temperature was still quite warm, making for a very nice hike.  Afterwards, we visited a few viewpoints along the canyon, and made our way to the Thunderbird Lodge for a lunch of ‘Navajo tacos’ (as recommended by Bruce and April).  A Navajo taco is a gigantic piece of fry bread with taco stuff on it.  Yep, it was delicious.  But the most interesting part about it was its symbolism of Southwest culture – Native American meets Mexican.

Gallup

Inscription Rock at El Morro National Monument

Bruce, April, Kristen, and Jeff at the summit of Pyramid Rock in Gallup, NM

Bruce and April Forman have been some of my dad’s best friends since grade school.  After med school, Bruce took a job with the Indian Health Service on the Navajo Reservation in Chinle, AZ.  They moved back to Michigan for a decade or so, but are now back working for the IHS in Gallup, NM.  Gallup is sort of in the middle of nowhere – 2 hours West of Albuquerque, near the AZ border – so not many people come to visit, despite the fact that the surroundings are quite beautiful.  We stayed with them for 3 days.

The night we arrived, Bruce had to work late, so April took us for dinner at a great local Mexican restaurant for chile rellenos.  Navajo children were walking through the room throughout dinner, selling jewelry and other homemade crafts.  Kristen bought a pretty opal ring, whose setting and band the woman claimed was gold, but promptly turned Kristen’s finger green.  Oh well!  The opal is still very pretty.

The next day, Bruce and April went to work, but gave us several suggestions for an ambitious day of sightseeing.  (April should really be a tour guide of the area).  We first went to El Morro National Monument to see Inscription Rock, a place frequently visited by people traveling across the Southwest (first Native, then Spanish, then American).  The broad, soft side of the mesa at El Morro is perfect for chiseling, and it became a custom for famous travelers to stop and sign the rock.  Afterwards, we headed back to Gallup and made a stop at Richardson’s, the largest local Navajo trading post.  We didn’t intend to buy anything, but somehow left with $1,000 worth of Navajo rugs for our future apartment.  Which seems pricey, but as my dad points out, “$1,000 in a trading post doesn’t get you a lot of rug.”  That night, Bruce and April took us for pizza, continuing a family tradition of Friday-night pizza stretching back to the 1960s.

On Saturday, the four of us went for a 3-hour hike up Pyramid Rock.  The summit had commanding views of the surrounding mesas, the Southern end of the Navajo Reservation, and nearby Gallup.  Afterward, we had brunch at the old train station at their friends’ diner, went back to the Forman house, and hung out until dinner.  That night, April cooked us some delicious vegetarian fare: stuffed squash and a fresh green salad.  Mmm.

The Formans could not have been better hosts, and we’d really like to go see them again ASAP.

Santa Fe + Albuquerque

View of the Rio Grande from the Nature Center State Park

From Mesa Verde, we headed through Southwestern Colorado (via Durango) to Santa Fe.  We had found a campground just outside Santa Fe where we were able to stay for the night, October 30th.  The campground closed for the year on the 31st.  So . . . we were the only people staying there.  On so-called “Devil’s Night.”  Which was a little creepy.

This schedule gave us one full day to explore Santa Fe after packing up in the morning.  Most of our time was spent walking around the old town plaza, checking out shops (for engagement ring designs!), listening to buskers, and drinking coffee.  We then drove over to St. John’s College, where Kristen had once spent a week for Go Congress.  We walked around the campus, and felt compelled to do a short hike up a local trail into the woods.  That afternoon, we drove to Albuquerque to crash with our friends Josh and Dan Forman (Beth’s brothers).  Josh is an acrobatic yoga instructor and schoolteacher, and Dan is attending UNM.  We didn’t know much about Albuquerque, other than what we’d seen on Breaking Bad.  So we didn’t know what to expect.  But the Formans live right near UNM in a cool college-town feeling area of town.  That night they took us to a crazy (and very good) Indian-ish restaurant that had ‘Ayurvedic’ food, and we hung out at their place chatting for hours afterwards.

The next day, we popped by a local coffee shop recommended by Josh (again fantastic) and went up to the Rio Grande Nature Center State Park.  The park was a recommendation from April Forman, Josh and Dan’s mom.  (Bruce Forman, their dad, is one of my dad’s very good friends).  We walked along the Rio Grande, did some birdwatching, and ate lunch at the park.

Afterward, we drove to Pueblo Acoma, where the Acoma people live on top of a mesa.  We were very excited to see the Pueblo and possibly do a hike down the mesa, since Kristen had fond memories of visiting the place a decade before.  But, sadly, it turned out the Pueblo was closed for the day due to a local holiday.  So we watched a brief movie regarding the history of the Pueblo at the visitor’s center, and headed over to Gallup to stay with Bruce and April.