Random Comments along the way….

Friday 11/10/2023

It’s down to doing laundry, gathering up all that we had squirreled away around this two-bedroom Casa, and repacking for the plane. We shipped our hiking poles back by USPS so we didn’t have to check baggage. We filled the box with gloves and long underwear. We’re tossing all creams and lotions over 3 ounces and still eating all that remains on the shelves and in the fridge. It’s up early tomorrow for a 2 1/2-hour drive to the Albuquerque Sunport Airport, returning the car, and catching our flight back to Seattle. I may add one more post about Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji…….

Monday 11/6/2023

Yesterday it was Pizanos, today it was the Tiwa Kitchen. It is located just outside of the Taos Pueblo grounds. We saw it on “America Outdoors With Baratunde Thurston” on PBS. They serve a menu that mixes in more traditional items, like Frybread. I had the Frybread burger with green chilies and a iced ChokeCherry lemonade, E got the Zucchini Fingers.

Friday 11/3/2023, 9:20AM

It was a long day in LA. Came in late at night and grabbed a metro train, the Blue A Line, for one stop, we didn’t want to be wandering after dark on the edge of downtown. The Hotel was great, the Miyako, it is modern Japanese in style and vibe. Then it was up the next morning for a breakfast of hot steam buns (E had a ‘Curry Man’ and I had a ‘Taco Man’) and cappuccinos around the corner in the Japan village at the only coffee shop open at 6:30.

            Then a walk up to the city hall, Gloria Malina Park, was interviewed by a USC collage news team, Disney Concert Hall, the Basquiat exhibit, then back to the Japanese village for lunch and a second film crews interview, then back to our room. All before 1:30.  

Having had such a busy morning our Olvera Street visit was not as long as planned. I looked for the glass figurine artist that I saw on my last visit at age 5 with the family.

Our impressions of LA were that it was clean and neat around the government building core and then less so the further away we got. More homeless, more trash, and more stern faces with each block. Lots of chained gates and security too. The train ride out in the evening emphasized that observation at an even greater distance. Mile after mile.

We woke on the train in Arizona then New Mexico during breakfast. Scrub and dry grasses with red stepped hills as our horizon.

The trains roomette was cozy on the way to LA and then a bit cramped by the second leg of the trip to Albuquerque, resigned to waiting to get off on our own.

Our last train breakfast was relaxed and easily shared with an Amish couple heading back home to Kentucky from their visit to Mexico. They weren’t sure where Seattle was but had heard of Alaska. They were traveling in coach all that way, Kentucky to Mexico and back to Kentucky.

We’ll pick up a car in about an hour and head up the High Road if things work out.

Saturday 10/28/2023 – This trip plan started out as a drive to New Mexico. That was too much time staring at tail lights and concrete and changed to a train trip, and how about a roomette? yes! Meals included, private room, big window? Yes! Pick up a car in Albuquerque, rent a little adobe house on the edge of town, great NM food, and 1.7 days of rain per month. oh yes!