REWIND I

April/May, 2021

Let’s be clear, Brian has not physically hugged anyone but Barbara since October, 2019. That includes friends, family, children and especially grandchildren. Our family has, rightfully so, been separated since…well, this crazy corona virus began its nasty, insidious world-wide domination. We’ve stayed away because of common sense.

It’s a little better for Barbara who had a chance to hang out with one of our granddaughters last November (Happy Birthday, Helena!).

Sure, we’ve stayed in touch. Thankfully facetime and messenger and skype, texting and e-mail as well as plain old-fashioned phone calls, grandchildren’s art work mailed to far away places and occasional letters have kept the connection to family as alive as it can be during the time of a pandemic. But it’s not the same as telling a granddaughter to give a final hug before you part company, or seeing little hands wave goodbye through the front room window.

Fast-forward more than a year later…As of March 23, 2021 we’ve had our 2 vaccinations (Pfizer) and passed the “2 weeks to best immunity threshold.” On faith that vaccinations would be available to our age group, we began planning our 2021 spring/summer travels in December, 2020. We certainly wanted to reinvigorate the Pacific Northwest National Parks, Olympic Peninsula, Oregon, and Redwoods trip originally planned for last summer. Exciting right? HOWEVER, to get to the Northwest a slight 4,700 mile detour east northeast would be essential, mandatory, and had to be accomplished without fail. Title this one GRANDKIDS!

So A REWIND since our heading out to the west in 2019 became the first goal for spring/summer 2021 – heading back from Mesa, through Austin (hello Jon and family) through Bloomington (hello Kyra, Spencer, and Vange) through Yellow Springs (hello Maggie, Penny, Elyssa and Ben; hello Rowan, Graham and Leigh). That being accomplished, and thinking about how to then get west we decided to travel north northwest to International Falls, MN and Voyageurs National Park dropping down through Fargo then west through Coeur d’Alene to the Pacific Northwest.

Other blogs documented our 2019 trip west as we passed through cities including Nashville, Memphis, Hot Springs, Dallas, Austin, Fort Stockton and Las Cruces…add on stops in Yuma, Tucson and San Diego, too. Some were just cool cities in which to hang-out. Other stops were good locations in order to visit National and/or State Parks. Wherever we were we made sure to see whatever sights were within reach using our favorite websites for the traditional and unusual to guide our adventures when we weren’t exploring, hiking and being amazed by our National Parks, Monuments and Forests.

So who knows what we’ll find as we REWIND from Mesa in 2021 on our obsessive pursuit to actually hug grandchildren?

For this trip we agreed that if needed we’d extend our usual daily 250 miles or so in order to reach more accommodating campgrounds along the way. So, when we broke camp in Mesa on April 1 our first stop, after 388 miles, would be Las Cruces, New Mexico. Oh yeah, there’s another oddity in this adventure – it’ll be the first time since September, 2019 that Aimee would be out of Arizona not to return until approximately 8,000 miles traveled and 6 months has gone by.

Coming west we spent time in Tucson before moving on to San Diego and became very familiar with US Interstate 10 out of Texas and Interstate 8 from Arizona into California. However, going eastbound from Mesa to Las Cruces our GPS instructed us that the best route would be 2-lane State Highway 70 (not the US Interstate), which would take us over and through the Peloncillo Mountain Range – a much more scenic route than Interstate 10, and the distance was not really a big deal except for battling 40-50 mile-an-hour winds that made the trip seem longer, take more time than anticipated, and be more exhausting.

Las Cruces is a thriving city of a little more than 100,000 people, and is home to New Mexico State University (Go Aggies!). While we didn’t spend any time in Las Cruces proper during our stay we did enjoy a re-visit to Mesilla, a small village of about 2,200 immediately adjacent to Las Cruces. We came into town the evening of Maundy Thursday, and the town square was packed with people heading into the Basilica of San Albino in observance of this Holy Time in the Catholic faith. We enjoyed walking around town a bit, found a little wine bar down a side street and sat listening to the “open mike” performances for a while.

Twenty-three miles east of Las Cruces is the US Army Garrison White Sands Missile Testing Range and just about thirty miles further is the entrance to White Sands National Park. We had visited both the Army Garrison and, what at the time was, the White Sands National Monument on our way west; however, we felt like a nice hike about in the National Park would help us shake off the long ride and wind-blown stress of traveling the day before.

The last time we were in the neighborhood we didn’t follow Atlas Obscura’s call for us to seek out the “world’s largest” pistachio nut sculpture located at Pistachio Land in Alamogordo…couldn’t resist this time around.

There are several pistachio nut farms in the area as soil, weather and other necessary growing conditions are perfect for growing this tree nut. Pistachio Land is a very commercialized operation offering tours of their pistachio groves, sampling, an ice cream parlor, a play area for young ones, and, since the region is also perfect for growing varietal grapes and producing wine, wine tasting (!). We visited Pistachio Land, saw the sculpture, took the tour, sampled the nuts and drank some wine, then moseyed along and visited the more sedate Heart of the Desert Pistachio and Wine Company. After chowing down on salty and spicy flavored pistachios followed with wine tasting, it was no wonder Barbara and I bought a bottle of wine at our second stop.

It’s 285 miles from Las Cruces, New Mexico to Fort Stockton, Texas. The trip is along the Interstate 10 corridor, and although West Texas is so, so desolate it’s a pretty easy trip. Texas requires a cursory annual safety inspection of all motorized vehicles ($7 anywhere in the State for any vehicle), and this was an important agenda item for our stop in Fort Stockton (fyi: both the Jeep and Aimee passed the inspection). Forgot to get a picture of Fort Stockton’s “mascot,” and the world’s largest roadrunner sculpture, Paisano Pete, the last time we were in Fort Stockton…

It’s a short trip from Fort Stockton to Big Bend National Park. The morning was overcast and threatening, but the local weather report promised a clear and warm afternoon – time for us to get our hike on, and the Grapevine Hill Balanced Rock trail was calling our name. As we were driving and getting close to Big Bend we had to stop and enjoy the Yucca in bloom as well as some other desert flowers hidden amongst the scrub.

Coming into the Park we stopped at the Visitors Center to refresh, and noticed the clouds over the mountains…

…but we had come to the Park for a hike…

Onward 336 miles to Austin. Once again an easy ride along Interstate 10 for 268 miles. Then the trip gets interesting once reaching the Fredericksburg exit and exiting the highway. As we then headed east on a twisty rolling 2-lane road for 78 miles we came to truly appreciate why this is called Hill Country. We took our time, and found a delightful campground waiting our arrival. Time for family!

After more than a year it was so wonderful to be able to visit with Jon and family. We had a couple of weeks in Austin, and while we didn’t spend every evening together everyone came to realize just how important family is to our overall well-being (and how important little treasures are in this world – thanks Lily and Benny for our artwork. We’re missing you, too.)

So, what else did we do this time around in Austin?

Well, we spent a day walking the streets of Fredericksburg, and while enjoying a glass of wine became engaged in conversation with new friends who were in town on a bus tour of the area.

Amazingly, there are more than 50 vineyards scattered throughout the Hill Country. We had lots already planned, but next time we’re in the neighborhood a wine tour is definitely on the agenda.

As is our custom we had to review Atlas Obscura and The Crazy Tourist listings to see what we had missed during our visit 2 years ago. The first stop on our tour to the unusual was the Austin suburb of Round Rock and the “The Flamingo House.” The owners of a fairly typical middle class single family home in a middle class neighborhood invites all who come this way to walk on their front lawn and amongst their ever-changing display of a flamboyance of plastic flamingos. The owners started the display in March, 2020 intending to provide the neighborhood a light-hearted diversion during the pandemic.

Davis Cemetery in Leander, Texas is the final resting place for many of Leander’s founding families and their successive generations. Amongst the gravesites we found a mass grave for the victims of the Webster Massacre – commemorating the death at the hands of Comanches some of the town’s original settlers.

Marble Falls Township is the location of “Dead Man’s Hole.” The depth of the hole is estimated to be 150 feet or more, and was used by Confederate States’ collaborators and soldiers during the Civil War as a burial site for executed Union Army sympathizers. Rumor has it that there had been the limb of a hanging tree over the hole.

Along I-35 near Austin, Texas we found the Mueller SunFlowers, a set of 15 innovative solar panels (!) disguised as flowers sprouting from the edge of an otherwise mundane retail shopping center.

Now every so often you get more than you bargained for…on a positive note. While taking in the sunflowers and considering the amount of electricity they can generate in a place that gets 228 days of sunshine a year Barbara heard a cacophony of some sort of bird. Imagine our surprise when we discovered a pair of large parrots hanging out in a tree just over our shoulders.

We couldn’t imagine for the life of us what the Larry Monroe Forever Bridge might be. Perhaps a loving tribute to someone’s significant other? Or maybe some kind of link between here and there, but a long way apart? Just where is the emphasis in the phrase Larry Monroe Forever Bridge? Turns out that Larry Monroe was a beloved musical broadcaster and scholar who spent 30 years on the Austin airwaves. When he died family and friends refused to let the “music or his memory die” and created a memorial in his honor. Artist Stefanie Disefano designed the “bridge” so that the walls on either side of the road are decorated with sculpted mosaic tiles relating to Monroe and the music that he played. Get it? It’s Larry Monroe Forever!

Last winter Austin was shut down for a good couple of weeks, after being hit with a cataclysmic blizzard followed by artic temperatures. The City’s infrastructure (snow plows?) was unable to respond. There were downed electric lines prohibiting the power company’s ability to keep citizens on the grid. It’s hard to realize the longer term effect of such a disaster, but one of the consequences identified by Barbara while we were driving to our campground was that the palm trees and cactus that could be seen along the route were dead or dying. Near our campsite a magnificent, old prickly pear cactus was a victim of the storm, and had become home to an escargatoire of snails.

The Turkey Creek Hike in Emma Long Metropolitan Park is a nice meander through the woods and along the shores of Lake Austin. It’s a great place to see wild flowers and some turtles as well – a perfect outing for families and us old folks.

The Contemporary Austin, originally known as the Austin Museum of Art, is an art museum, consisting of two locations and an art school. The Jones Center is their downtown location and is home to ever-changing exhibitions, and Laguna Gloria, a sculpture garden along the banks of Lake Austin.  

While walking in downtown Austin we found a couple of things of interest…

…Last but not least and remembering incredible deliciousness we were drawn to, compelled, and compulsively driven to share a Gourdough’s Naughty And Nice fresh-made as big as your head donut rolled in cinnamon sugar and served with honey butter…a must stop for us when we’re in Austin.

As we think about it now perhaps we minimized the effect of being in Arizona for the year of covid isolation more than we were willing to admit. We missed being on the road, seeing what there was to see, and blogging about our adventures.

That’s enough for Rewind Part I – there’s more to come from our adventures within an arm’s reach of Austin and continuing on our trip to hug Grandkids…stay tuned for Rewind Part II.