We are on the road and will be back in Natchitoches in a couple of hours. Its been an interesting trip. We stayed a night in Tucumcari, NM, at the Blue Swallow Motel. Tucumcari is a lot like the town in Cars, a sleepy place on Route 66 that wants people to come and try it out. Its like a return to the 50s and 60s, and sort of fun if you dont stay at a Holiday Inn and go instead to one of the motels on Route 66. From there we went to Taos for a Trujillo-Miera family reunion. It was great seeing some aunts and uncles I havent seen in years, and some cousins I havent seen since Grandma Trujillo died 15 years ago. Harlan complained about the food at every meal, often refusing to order because everything on the menu was disgusting, then deciding after the rest of us ordered that hed better choose something or hed go hungry. Then wed do it all over again at the next restaurant. My only complaint in Taos was with the Taos Pueblo. They were having a festival for two of our three days there and didnt allow photography those days. I went back on the third day to see if I could get some pictures, and theyd closed the Pueblo without explanation. The Pueblo has been there for a thousand years, and I guess it will still be there next time I visit. Ill take pictures then. As always, I liked Durango, but we have no cell or internet service at my parents cabin there. Harlan still complained about the food. Lisa and I celebrated our anniversary at Seasons, a place we enjoyed on our honeymoon there, and it was a very nice meal, but it would have been a nicer meal if wed left Harlan at the cabin. Why do we have to eat at a fancy place just because its your anniversary. I thought we were going to eat some fast food on this trip. Rainbow trout? That sounds disgusting! We had a flat tire our first evening near Moab. Between Lisa, Florent and me, we had no problem getting on the spare, but we were in Castle Valley, 40 minutes from Moab, where we could get a new tire. I wanted to take pictures in Arches National Park in the evening and early morning, but we couldnt go to Arches with the spare, and the next morning we had to spend at the tire shop. I had a radio program to do that evening (I had to borrow the innkeepers landline and use internet from his living room), so we got to Arches too late for many pictures, and we had to pack the next morning before we left the inn. We went into the park three times in two days, but as a photography expedition, it was a bit of a bust. Oh, and we were at a restaurant that served beef, veal, pork, fish, bison, elk, and vegetarian dishes on a terrace overlooking the Colorado River and spectacular canyon walls, and Harlan complained that it was just the same old food and it all sounded disgusting. They hardly have anything, and I dont want meat. They have vegetarian dishes. Yuck! Who wants to eat anything vegetarian? I was tempted to toss him off the terrace into the Colorado, though Lisa and I had to admit that he was occasionally good for comic relief. On our way back to Durango I called my parents to ask about getting rid of things in the refrigerator at the cabin, and Mom told me Dad was in the hospital. He was in a lot of pain, they found a lesion on his lung, there was talk of malignancy, and then I lost the phone connection. I tried calling back and got voicemail, so I called my sister to see if she knew what was going on, and at that point my iPhone died. Complete death. Black screen, no coming back on. With it I lost my hotspot, so I couldnt email anyone, and I didnt have any cell numbers memorized (a situation I intend to correct). We got to Durango in late afternoon, and while the kids swam, I used the wifi at the citys rec center to get in touch with siblings and get access to cloud storage for phone numbers so I could call on Lisas flip phone. We were planning to spend the next two nights in Santa Fe, but decided wed better go straight on to Ft. Worth after one night. We didnt want to try driving straight from Durango to Ft. Worth, and since I already had a hotel reservation in Santa Fe, wed make that our break in the drive. We closed up the cabin the next morning - cleaned out the refrigerator, took trash to the dumpster, vacuumed, folded up sheets and towels to take back to Ft. Worth to wash, and finally made it to Santa Fe in late afternoon. We were too late for museums or churches, and would have to leave in the morning before they were open, but I decided I at least wanted to see the San Miguel church, the oldest church in the U.S. and that has an altarpiece painted (at least in part) by my G-g-g-g-g-g-grandfather Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco. The church was only a block or two from our hotel (The Inn of the Governors, a block from the Plaza and a very nice hotel), so we walked over at 9:30 to see it and take pictures, then got in the car for the long drive to Ft. Worth. The lesion turned out to be an infection, and Dad is now home and doing fine. Mom was really glad to see us the night we got in, though (Dad was still in the hospital), and like Taos Pueblo, Santa Fe should still be there in a year or two. Ive been there overnight three times and have never had the chance to see any of the museums or go into any of the churches (until San Miguel a couple of days ago), but Ive decided next time we go to Durango, well stop in Santa Fe first for a couple of days. Something always happens when we go up there, so we should stop leaving Santa Fe for last.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 18:55:05 +0000
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