Home from another adventurous road trip!

Two-thousand miles in seven rollicking days.

We are firm believers in St. Augustine’s adage “The world is a book and those who don’t travel only read one page.”

This time our travels took us from California through both Arizona and New Mexico which, on the map, could come across as hot, flat, and boring. Especially in August, one of the southwest’s hottest months with an average high temperature of 103 degrees.

For us, quite the opposite. Our fourth road trip together, played out chocked full of exoticness and entertainment and education. Truck stop eats to fine dining. Soaring elevations to sea level. Stifling heat to canyon cool. Thunder and lightning. Rain and sunshine.

In our minds, nothing beats the thrill of a trip of discovery and the education that comes with it.

Our first stop’s treat, a creamy Medjool date shake in Dateland, Arizona. As we tasted, we learned about the soft, sweet, succulent morsels known as the “Cadillac of Dates.” which were originally grown in Morocco exclusively for royalty.

Somehow, in a plastic cup from a palm-tree oasis in the Arizona desert, the date shake added banana worked brilliantly for us wayward commoners first day out.

The amazing geological formations and intriguing mysteries of past cultures in the 83,840 acres of the Canyon de Chelly Monument captivated us. It was established as part of the National Park System in 1931 to preserve ruins of Native American villages that were constructed in deep-walled canyons between A.D. 350 and 1300.

We were sickened to learn more about the Navajos ‘Long Walk’ to imprisonment in 1864 when, in a forced removal, the U. S. Army drove the Navajo at gunpoint as they walked from their Arizona homeland and New Mexico to Fort Sumner, 300 miles away at Bosque Redondo leaving hundreds dead and many brutally injured.

We both stood dazed on the South Rim, overlooking Spider Rock, the monument’s main attraction, a sandstone spire that rises more than 700 feet from the floor of the canyon, which was named for Spider Woman, a key figure in Navajo lore.

Here we encountered Andrew Keith, a noted Navajo silversmith displaying his wares. The soft-spoken artist, who farms land below in the canyon’s fertile green space, is known for his ‘Canyon de Chelle Storyteller’ bracelet, which we purchased as a remembrance of the spectacular site and the legends within.

At the historic Thunderbird Lodge located within Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona, we learned No Alcohol in Navajo nation. Dang, we had left half a bottle of wine at our last stop. No problem—there were blue corn pancakes and fry bread and pinto beans, all prepared from longtime Navajo recipes.

We DID have alcohol at the five-star Inn of the Anasazi in Santa Fe where we didn't stay but stopped into the bar where a most friendly bartender shared his recipe for Silver Coin Margaritas:

2 ounces tequila

1-ounce fresh lime juice

1-ounce Cuantro

I dehydrated lime slice

Rim glass with tajin

You're welcome!

Five major art museums to visit—hard to capture the highlights—there were so many. Starting with The Heard in Phoenix and it’s exhibit Home: Native People in the Southwest. This poem, "Redefining Home," by Ofelia Zepeda,Tohono O'odham, has stayed with me:

As children we grew up knowing our neighbors,

not as people living next door to us, but as relatives.

Our aunt and our family lived on one side, and our cousin and his family lived on the other.

That is the way it had always been.

A home is both the space inside and outside the building.

A home is more than just the structure, the house, the ki:

the hogan; the wikieup.

Ki: in O'odham means both house and home.

It is the aroma, the textures of the building that help us remember.

The smell of the wet dirt walls,

the smell of dry dust.

It is the smell of the green brush on the roof, in the walls.

It is the texture.

The smooth mud walls,

the rough ribs from cactus and ocotillo,

the branches of cottonwood and posts from cedar and pine.

Home is a place that has the right feel,

the right smell,

the right sense of coolness when you touch the walls.

Again, you're welcome.

At The Phoenix Art Museum we went first to three fabulous Kahinde Wiley’s based on Memling’s portraits. We came across The Flight of Sor Juana by Carillo, an  arresting painting of the leading female Spanish philosopher and writer who has inspired me, both in my writing and my study of art, by American artist Eduardo Carillo, done in 1982.

In Santa Fe, we visited the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, this time for an extraordinary glimpse into the artist’s daily existence and iconic lifestyle in the Making a Life exhibit. Watercolors, pastels, drawings. Personal property, her kitchen, her iconic clothes and style all up close and personal.

After the Silver Coin Margarita refresher, we visited two more—The New Mexico Museum of Art, a treasure also in Santa Fe, and The New Mexico Museum of Contemporary Art Vladem where we came across a familiar favorite, a maquette of Luis Jiminez’s Border Crossing, familiar to San Diego Museum of Art goers.

And icing on our road trip cake!!!

The show-stopping Santa Fe Opera, the primary reason for our southwest journey, did not disappoint. Verdi’s La Traviata (listen!) is the leading Italian19th century composer’s operatic masterpiece even more magnificent in the unparalleled setting, one of the most romantic spots in the world.

Living vicariously through Violetta’s sparkling and tragic life, we marveled at the lavish production as the evening sky alternated sunset and rain clouds.

In between our sightseeing and travels, we experienced room service nights watching Michelle and Barack and Oprah and Tim and Kamala. And we saw Trump signs and restaurants full of non-DNC-interested patrons.

We never turned on the radio, but we learned (thanks to Google as we go) of The Purple Trail and its heroes, Kit Carson’s vicious sieges, how pinyon nuts are harvested, some history of the Hopi Indians, and how turquoise is mined. Master classes on the road!

We dined in five-star manner with friends in Scottsdale, fast food at McDonald’s in Blythe, California and not-to-be-missed warm, poofy sopapillas and gallery hopping in Santa Fe.

Classic roadside diner, June’s Café, at a four-corner stop in Heber, Arizona where the server insisted on calling me “my lady” (delicious fries, thirst-quenching lemonade and garden burgers so big we each left half) and the most memorable Wagon Wheel in Needles where I had to wrap the meatloaf in my napkin and carry it out to a trashcan to keep from insulting the waitress who touted it as “the best in the world.”

Our most welcome meal was lunch at Panda Express in Riverside—healthy stuff and so yummy! Two hours from home.

At this point, we were like cows heading for the barn. San Diego within site; we hit the city limits with the odometer reading 1996.

We must have seen a thousand trucks and equally as many freight trains, both manners of transport dominated by Amazon Prime containers. I was taken aback at the changing face of freight trains, at least in the southwest. Many stacked with double rectangular pods, a newer form freight transport now being used for nearly seventy percent of US. Intermodal shipments.

What have we concluded?

The economy is in great shape if we can judge by the number of trucks and trains moving products—books, tools, cosmetics, groceries, clothing, automobiles, computers, whatever—from one location to another.

It’s all good. Unless you are a small business owner and even then sometimes, a good operation and staff can excel.

Call me Pollyanna-ish, but stuff is being consumed!

Travel is all good too. Truck Stop to fine dining and everything in between.

Often, I find the most memorable travel involves encountering something new and unfamiliar. (Although I love returning to Texas which I do at least twice each year)

Traveling seven days, six nights, nearly two-thousand miles of new scenery, people, and customs proved to be exhilarating, eye-opening and every bit as wonderful as St. Augustine promised when he wrote, “The world is a book and those who don’t travel read only one page.”

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PS. Take heart y'all. At least you didn't have to watch my slideshow!