Arizona and the detour!

I left New Mexico for a jaunt next door: Arizona. Based on a recommendation from a Southwesternly-knowledgeable lady (Kate!) I took a drive a bit further north, off the interstate and through the Navajo Nation. I hadn’t wanted to dash from point A to point B, but instead I wanted to take an extended driving tour to see more of both New Mexico’s and Arizona’s awesome landscape. It was perfect. It was a quiet, two-lane drive with few cars and even fewer clouds. More time to think and more time to listen to THE BEST mixed CDs made by Liz, Rusty, Ben, Anna and Pete.

I rolled into Scottsdale, AZ later that night where Sue so graciously welcomed me into her home and adopted me to join in the girls’ retreat weekend. (SUE! YOU ARE THE BEST! THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE YOU MAMA G!!) It was only a matter of moments before I was settled in front of the fire with wine and some absolutely lovely ladies to end the night. Sue, Paula, Trish, Betty and Martha were an amazing group of women to spend the weekend with and I feel utterly revived for the last leg of the trip. Some sun, some wine, some laundry, some sleep, some delicious food and some wonderful women truly rejuvenated this road wanderer.

Thank you ladies for allowing me to join in on the fun!

I filled the weekend with a good hike and a small spy mission to Grandma and Boppa’s old house–complete with a super sneaky peek over the back fence (the place really does exist! its not just a figment of my childhood memory or the background from a handful of early family photos). Additionally, I made my way to 25-house-garage-sale-date with Mr. James! Though James and I didn’t find any superb treasures (I did get another pair of earrings…oops), we had a wonderful encounter with the owner of Goldwater salsa, a chat about the hilarious painting she was selling of her father, former senator Barry Goldwater, plus, she sent us off with a taste test of her awesome salsa. We finished the jar with two spoons before we’d even made it out of her driveway. YUM. James and I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up, ALMOST buying an almost-meant-to-be Burberry coat at the sale, and downing several cokes on a nearby sunny patio restaurant.

Before the weekend was over, we celebrated Paula’s birthday and Sue’s birthday, had a few amazing dinners and lots of tasty wine. And then, just when we thought I was ready to go on my way…..Sue and I schemed up a little detour so that Kate and I could cross paths sooner than we anticipated….

I flew to Portland, Oregon on Sunday for a quick night with Betsy (THANK YOU BETSY CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU SOON! Say hi to Sidney!) and then met up with Kate Monday morning! We swiftly made our way down the west coast and back to Phoenix with a lovely stop in Napa Valley for a good dinner and a good sleep, well rested for a tour of Frog’s Leap Winery the next morning followed by a day-long trip down route 1 and an all night driving-fest for an early A.M. arrival back in Scottsdale!

To rewind back to the Frog’s Leap visit–this was my first ever visit to Napa Valley, not to mention my first ever visit to a winery, and my oh my, Frog’s Leap is amazing. They are doing everything right, from completely organic grapes with no imposed irrigation system, to growing fruits and veggies, raising bees and chickens, solar power, all processing/bottling happening right there, winery dog Abby to follow you around and winery cat Tara to sleep in front of the fireplace, an amazing tour from an amazing host (BOB, THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING!!), plus a wonderful story of how the whole company got started–I want to see the ins and outs of every winery I drink from to know that they are up to par with Frog’s Leap!

So after a morning of wine-tasting, Kate and I were off down the coast for what we didn’t realize at the time would be a marathon 19-hour meander to our Arizona destination. We stopped for lots of good views along the way, headstands at sunset, snoring/grumbling/yelling elephant seals, pizza and coffee, and then powered through the night fueled by podcasts and techno and intermittent naps.

Our triumphant return to Scottsdale started with a nap in the sun. MORE TO COME…

New Mexican Adventures

Like I said, the drive out of Marfa was spectacular, but it was not without a fight. The drive was beautiful, but very windy, with armies of tumbleweeds racing  across the road in front of my car, exploding into thin air upon impact. After about 45 windy, dusty and sandy minutes, I saw a state trooper in the distance blocking off the road. As it turns out, there was about a 20 car pile-up further along the road, due to the high winds kicking up so much dust and causing zero visibility! I had to wait about 45 minutes for another state trooper to come along and drive a whole group of us to safety. I eventually make it back on route, with about three hours taken away in the Texan desert. It was a beautiful detour though.

I watched Mexico outside my driver’s side window all afternoon. Sometimes the drive felt just like the Wild West, sometimes it looked like the Moon, sometimes it looked like what I imagine the Middle East to look like, and other times it looked like a few distinct levels from Mario Kart.

I loved New Mexico the second I seemed to cross the border, and it only got better from there. New Mexico is a wonderful place. I made my way to Albuquerque where Kyra, Seth, Abby, Luna, Jude, Maple and Squeaky welcomed me into their home (THANK YOU SO MUCH YOU GUYS!! And make sure to give Maple a pat for me…I never said goodbye!)

The next day Kyra and I took a day trip up to explore Santa Fe. It was so cute and quaint with lots of cute shops and little streets. We wandered around for a few hours, checking out the cathedral, the tempting jewelry vendors laid out on the plaza, the Georgia O’Keefe museum, the beautiful Nedra Matteucci Galleries (Thanks for the chat and the tour Ann!!) and just taking in the beautiful southwest sun! Luckily I found TWO pairs of earrings that I fell in love with and are now safely in the always-growing collection. We headed back to Albuquerque to make it home in time for dinner.

A day of exploring different neighborhoods of Albuquerque followed, including a yummy southwestern breakfast (who am I kidding, a yummy southwestern breakfast EVERY morning!), a great second-hand store (with many, many ALMOST finds…), lots of great shops and funky motels around the historic route 66 area. Albuquerque is super cool and I am so glad to have it on my radar!! That afternoon we made the trek up to Chaco Culture National Historic Park

CHACO. WAS. AMAZING. If EVER you have the chance to go through northern New Mexico, make a stop here–if not for camping, at least for a day of hiking! Being so early in the season, we practically had the place to ourselves. We got in that night just before sunset and had a chance to take a little bike ride to the petroglyphs and enjoy the site before darkness was upon us.

After the night of camping, a few sierra nevadas, attempted grilled cheese sandwiches over the campfire  and my multiple attempts to find the constellations I’d just learned in Fort Davis, Texas–Kyra and I embarked on a 9 mile bike ride plus 5 mile hike. We stumbled upon all the incredible 1000 year structures still standing from when the Chaco culture inhabited the lands and discovered (what we later found out were) fossilized shrimp burrows from when the canyons used to be under water 80 MILLION YEARS AGO (minds=blown).

Again, we made our way back home in time for dinner and a good night’s rest before we both headed on our separate journeys–me to Arizona and Kyra having a few more days in NM with her fam before making her way up the coast to Washington where she just landed an incredible farming job. WOOHOO! New Mexico was awesome and set a great tone for more southwestern adventures…

west texas

So much for that car wash….west texas was WINDY and SANDY

After a quick stop in Austin to say hello to Rachel and Daniel, take an evening bike tour of the UT campus, grab some Texas BBQ and get a good night’s sleep in their bright turquoise apartment (THANK YOU I LOVE YOU GUYS!)…Rachel and I teamed up with Rose for an early morning trek to Marfa!

The drive to Marfa definitely won for the best drive of the trip so far (but would be beat out only a few days later by the drive through the rest of Texas and into New Mexico…). Driving in very western Texas is really awesome. Roads stretch further than the horizon and the sky canopies wider than the world is round. The perfect accompaniment to the drive was a bluegrass and podcast serenade, windows down and sun, sun, sun.

Rachel and Rose and I rolled into El Cosmico, our home for the weekend, and got immediately settled into our yurt for a good sleep before our morning tour at Chinati.

The stars in Marfa will knock your socks clean off your feet, and so will the temperature fluctuation–sunburn and 80s to freezing and 20s once that sun disappears. Our little yurt did its best to keep us warm but the layers of sleeping bags and wool blankets really did the legwork.

The Chinati Foundation was really spectacular. Echoes of Dia Beacon and The Menil collection followed me at each building, but there was something so drastically unique about the isolation of Marfa, the history of Judd’s pilgrammage and habitation, the repurposing of army barracks (major echoes here of mass moca–especially with a kabakov installation bringing back building 17 memories…).

The afternoon tour at the Chinati brought sunburn, an overwhelming amount of Flavin, surprises behind each door, and lots of great insight and details into the foundation, donald judd, and the artworks on display. Plus, the reiteration of how many wonderfully creative things are happening in so many corners of the world.

Saturday night we ventured to the Mcdonald observatory in Ft. Worth where we got to look through lots of telescopes at Jupiter (its moons and cloud belts!), star clusters (specifically M79 which is 41,000 light years away), and the middle star of orion’s sword–which is no star at all, but a huge cluster of stars! We also got a constellation tour, where our guide used the craziest green laserpointer I’ve ever seen, and pointed out all the constellations across the sky. Cross my fingers I’ll retain the knowledge to be able to impress you all in the future…but, there is a good chance that I’ll still only be able to find the big dipper (maybe the little dipper) and Orion’s belt. Though I do feel pretty confident about Taurus now.

Marfa is wonderful. Really truly wonderful. If my words haven’t convinced you, hopefully more of these photographs will.

WELCOME TO TEXAS!

The foggy, early morning drive out of new orleans brought me across western louisiana and into our second biggest state (right?) THERE WAS SO MUCH ROADKILL. I mean, an unbelievable amount and a lot of variety too–turtles and armadillos plus all the usual stuff.

I arrived in Houston that afternoon. I didn’t realize Texas was so muggy, it was only in the 70s when I got out of the car but it hit me like a wood-stoked sauna. I found my way to Katia’s lovely apartment in the museum district and had the pleasure of welcoming her home after a day of class. SO ADORABLE and so perfectly situated within walking distance of every single thing on my checklist of Houston to-dos: MFA, CAM, de Menil Collection. DONE. KATIA I LOVE YOU THANK YOU FOR THE WONDERFUL TIME!

The art in Houston has been a total knock-out. SO impressed with the MFA–it was really refreshing as a typical survey museum with little surprises here and there: a gun powder painting of Cai Guo Qiang’s, a medical cabinet of Damien Hirst’s, and a light tunnel of James Turrell’s. The Menil Collection is absolutely wonderful with little sequestered homes for a Flavin installation, a Twombly gallery, the Rothko chapel plus a recreated byzantine chapel (not to mention their lovely collection!). The CAM had on an awesome exhibition: Answers to Questions, a survey of Wood and Harrison, a duo from the UK. They have a hilarious body of video works.

After getting some steel wool for little-bike’s rust, a check-up for Wilson plus a good car wash for all the northern salt/sand residue, we were off and away for Austin for a quick pit stop before the trek to Marfa…