Santa Fe and the Land of Enchantment

Santa Fe New Mexico is the first real city to be reviewed by this blog.  I intended the blog to be a more serious literary work of write-ups befitting a travel and tourism publication (hint hint to anyone who knows anyone in the industry).  Though it seems, if you’ve been reading, that it has morphed into more of a diary.  This entry aims to get us back on track – giving you, dear reader, a review of the places we are exploring.  Don’t expect this to be objective or comprehensive – it is still my diary and I intend to make our (you’ll see both he said and she said) opinions clear. 

We spent a week in New Mexico at probably the worse time of year to see the place – sometime after harvest and before the ski season officially takes off.  The state is called the Land of Enchantment according to its bold yellow and turquoise license plates.  It is also about to celebrate its first 100 years of statehood in 2012. 

Santa Fe is our nation’s oldest and highest capital.  And like a smoked out Rastafarian it has its own very distinct vibe.  Strict planning codes mean that everything, everywhere must have the same look – adobe (the mud bricks) or pueblo (the step back architecture) or some sort of federal style (early American west).  What that means is that as you drive north from Albuequerque, an immense landscape stretches in front of you like a light brown Casablanca.  It actually works quite well.  In this high desert landscape, you have mostly dust coloured ground spotted with scrubby pinons (a relative of the pine nut) and juniper trees.  These are more aptly called bushes as they rarely reach over my head.  The homes also help with the intense heat – so we’re told – of summer.  With a stronger bent to modern architecture, I was surprised not to see more people playing with the pueblo style and more modern nods to glass. But it could be that these homes are in the more affluent eastern parts of the city. 

Large Homes on the Eastern Side of Santa Fe

Preconceived Associations:

She says she was expecting:

1.     Older women in flowing white garments
2. ·      The “art crowd”  - expensive galleries specializing in native American arts
3. ·      Really good food, very local farm-to-table, a great farmers market
4. ·      Great villages on the way to the big ski town in Taos
5. ·      Psychics and gem stores

He says he was expecting:

1. ·      Pretty and old and easy to get around
2. ·      Wealthy eastcoasters – they type of people who have gone to find their inner native American selves – you are the coyote
3. ·      Modern haute cuisine with tex-mex touches – foie gras with chilli in a tortilla type of stuff, confit duck sopaipilla with raspberry and chilli reduction

Spoiler alert – wow were we wrong!

Upon Arrival – First Impressions

We rolled into town after dark and after a long day’s driving.  We checked into a small casita (a one bedroom apartment like a guest cottage) and the owners directed us to Tomasita’s – an institution in New Mexico cuisine for our first meal.  After so many hours on the road, we were more looking forward to stocking up on groceries at Trader Joes and just nipping in for a quick margarita.  As a result we didn’t have too much input to our first impression of the place. 

Nonetheless our first impressions were that the city was not at all what we expected:

I didn’t know the city was going to be surrounded by snowcapped peaks. 

I didn’t know that everything would be in adobe / pueblo style architecture. 

I didn’t know the sky would drip with stars.

I didn’t know the temperatures would fluctuate so much between day and night. 

I guess I didn’t know the city was at 7000 feet and would leave me gasping for air. 

Nor did I know the whole city would smell of burning wood and sage 24-7. 

Upon Exit – Lasting Impressions

I was not enchanted by the land of enchantment.

I was going to title this post “Santa Fe is sucky” but even I see that this is a bit unfair. 

Santa Fe doesn’t suck at all.  It’s just a product being run by a bad brand manager and a poor innovation team.   There is no reason not to love Santa Fe – great weather, great national parks, great ingredients for food, etc etc.

The problem with Santa Fe is that it did enchant a bunch of people, yes wealthy eastcoasters, sometime in the 80s and 90s and then hasn’t had an updating since.  Those people are still here and now they are all about 70 years old.  Unlike the senior citizens of Arizona which come from all over the country, it feels like the folks of Santa Fe could have been on the 1980s version of Jersey Shore.  They think they are dripping with class and style, but they aren’t.  Their art is old, their food is old, and they seem better placed dining at IHOP than shopping in a farmer’s market.

I found it a very depressing place.  I saw more billboards for and ads for Medicare and Unemployment benefits than anything else.  No, I lie – I saw more advertising for Indian Casinos – and not the behemoths that are Mohican Sun or Foxwoods – these were little affairs with old run down cars in the parking lot.  With so much natural beauty why aren’t there more entertainment complexes embracing the outdoors?

The best restaurants – and you may have heard of some of them – Coyote Café, Café Pasqual, Restaurant Martin, etc – go out of their way to try and be European, and fail, miserably.  They are expensive, they need editing on the plate, and they serve the same boring things.  I don’t care if you have managed to get your hands on Wagyu beef – it’s still steak tips.  Yawn.  Oh, you’re serving scallops wrapped in bacon. Double Yawn.    I ordered something called “Autumn Textures of Fruit with Blue Cheese Soufflee” and received a long dish covered with various fruit (can we call it what it is – a fruit plate) that is neither autumn nor complementary to blue cheese.  There was kiwi and pineapple and mandarin oranges amongst fig and pear and pomegranate.  The last three would work.  The first three did not.  A little editing would have made it a lovely first course.

As for entertainment?  I guess it’s just about going to galleries and shops.  Snore.  There are some very good spas.  But at the prices of Santa Fe you won’t be able to go more than once. 

There are a bunch of day trips to take – we took the “High Road” drive to Taos.  But don’t plan on seeing much.  The scenery is spectacular, and you go by all these churches made famous by Georgia O’Keefe and Ansel Adams.  But there’s very little to stop over for.

Oddly there was a fantastic hike to be had – and glorious weather to have it in – just 20 minutes away at Kasha-Katuwe  (Tent Rocks) – and no one was there.   This place has the same geology as Cappadocia in Turkey.  Two hikes there take you to a cave once inhabited by the indigenous people and a very narrow but awesome slot canyon trail up to the Mesa top.

Tent Rocks National Monument and the Slot Canyon

In the rearview mirror as we head out of Santa Fe you realize that it’s really the same old medium sized city wrapped in an adobe shell. 

Even the IHOP is in adobe/pueblo style

He says:

It’s up it’s own arse.  It’s like the Cannes of New Mexico – it thinks it is awesome and somewhere everyone should come, but in fact it is just a bit shitty.  It looks backwards, and towards Europe too much.  I wish it would look forward and do its own thing.  I do however see the inspiration Gaudi must have taken from New Mexico – tent rocks becomes La Sagrada Familia and the pueblo style architecture becomes Casa Mila.

She says:

If I wanted to go back to new york in the 1990s, I would build a time machine.  This city needs an Extreme Makeover and a good marketing campaign – it has all the right stuff – great weather, great scenery, great history, but hasn’t packaged it right.  It could be a mecca for extreme sports – rafting the rio grande, skiing and snowboarding, skydiving, climbing – or a mecca for extreme cooking at the crossroads of Mexican and American cuisine. 

Recommendations should you find yourself here:

1. Cocktails – great cocktails at Secreto in the Hotel St Francis, at The Den (with a backlit menu) using dry ice and other interesting flourishes.  Do a pub crawl around the plaza – there really are fantastic cocktails to be had. 
2. Frito Pie – served in an actual frito bag – and other bbq at Cowgirl bbq.  Don’t forget to try their ice cream baked potato  
3. Dinner at Restaurant Martin or Café Pasqual.   Be very clear, neither is worth making a trip to Santa Fe for, but if you are in town, this is probably as good as it gets (sadly).
4. Day hike at Tent Rocks – absolutely gorgeous, one of the newest National Monuments. 
5. The obligatory walk up Canyon Road where all the art galleries are (but our take is to laugh at the arty crowd and realize that even if you could afford it there isn’t much being sold you’d actually want.)  
6. Sitting in your hot tub and gazing up at the stars – especially up and out of town at 10,000 waves.  Now that’s enchanting.

Food, Fitness and Friends in Flagstaff

I first visited Flagstaff Arizona in 1995 when Katy & Dave were living in Phoenix.  We were en route to the Grand Canyon and stopped off at the Beaver Street Brewery – us being MIT beavers after all.  I fell in love with it instantly.  A gorgeous snow-capped mountain towers over the main drag.  Massively long trains come through town every few minutes – the very picture of the old west – parallel to old route 66.  The college town vibe generated by the campus of Northern Arizona University provides liberal politics in an otherwise very red state. 

Susan and Skip bought a house up here a couple of years ago.  And I do mean up – Flag is at 7000 feet elevation.  When you come from sea level you really feel it.  Andy I went for a couple swimming sessions in the 50 meter pool at NAU and there is a sign hanging over the pool reminding you of the elevation – those first few laps are a bitch.  Swim teams from around the globe come here for their high altitude training.  Where normally you start to feel your body loosening up on lap #3, instead you feel yourself searching for more air.  Andy went for a run and he said he never had a chance to sweat – his lungs gave out before his muscles even got a workout. 

We’ve been up here for Christmas, up here for a wedding, and now we come for our last ‘just landed’ week of getting sorted out before our real road trip begins.  On this trip we are trying to imagine what living in each city would be like – not just visiting or vacationing, but your everyday humdrum activities – grocery shopping, using the post office, working out, etc.  This is truly a difficult exercise in Flagstaff because every day here feels like vacation.  You cannot wake up to deep blue skies and snow capped mountains and not think about going outside. 

Over the summer our trainer moved her business from the gym to the park.  It was a very welcome transition and I spent the summer learning how to get a full workout with cables and boxing gloves that you can bring to any park and have a good resistance workout.  In Flagstaff I recalled Buffalo Park, which is in the heart of the city, and dragged Andy along with our cables and boxing gloves.  As we headed out the door Susan reminded me that there is a circuit there already – a 2 mile loop with stations every 100 yards or so to encourage different exercises.  Our cables and gloves stayed in the car. The workout was superb. The views – especially when a herd of deer came through the park – were superb.  Sam will be proud of us when she reads this, for getting our workouts in, but in a city like this, it really is easy.

It is also essential to workout because the food is really really good.  Our friends say they’re bored of the restaurants in Flagstaff – but Andy and I think they are crazy.  There may only be 5 exceptional restaurants in town, but unless you are eating out every single day, I find it hard to think you’d get bored.  There’s the young kid who opened Pizzicletta – a dream he had cycling through Italy and eating proper Neapolitan pizza.  He is only open for dinner, only has dine-in service, only has a long communal table, and when the dough he has made for the day runs out, then that’s it folks.  There is the team who run Criolla Kitchen and its sister restaurant Brix – who do an eclectic modern American fare.  And there is the albeit somewhat pretentious chef owner of Tinderbox Kitchen who not only stamps his waitstaff and paper table covering with his trademark T, but also stamps his menu with the red letters “No Substitutions”.  This appears to be a new trend in the kingdom of foodieland.  Chefs are upset with the ‘make it your way’ customizations that Burger King taught us and want us to try their flavor combinations. 

Halibut over sweet potato gnocchi in a sage butter sauce at Brix

 I’m torn about this.  The list of foods I don’t like is a mile long – this always come as a major surprise to those who know me well – with all those tasting menus with exotic ingredients I am always posting pictures of.  But in a tasting menu, it’s ok to eat one beet, one piece of cauliflower, one single leaf of a brussel sprout.  I am not sure I could handle a whole portion of these foods, let alone an American-sized portion.  I understand that a busy kitchen cannot handle all the substitutions and requests americans desire, but a simple ‘hold the beets’ shouldn’t be prohibited;  Especially if that means you’re losing most of the audience in town.  I decided to be brave and ordered the chef’s tasting menu – with no preview whatsoever of what we’d be served.  There were beets, and it was delicious.  My only criticism was that the ‘main course’ of the menu was a steak covered in steak sauce.  It was a fantastic piece of meat, but a) it didn’t need a smothering of sauce and b) is steak really a showstopper worthy of a place on a tasting menu? 

Farewell Dinner at Brix with Susan and Skip

We ate well in Flagstaff, yes we did.  And after dinner, we relaxed well.   A nightly ritual of donning a swimsuit and streaking through the freezing air to the 102 degree heated hot tub;  an awkward ten minutes waiting for the motion sensitive spotlights to turn off before a dark sky dripping with stars to the horizon revealed itself to us.  And then zip – zap, was that a shooting star? And another?  Turns out it was near peak Leonid meteor shower time.  Lucky us. 

It is with a lump in our throats that we say Farewell to Flagstaff – the snow capped Mt Humphrey lingering in the rear view mirror for over an hour as we head out, properly, on our road trip adventure across America.   We can only hope there will be more friends, more food and yes, even more fitness on the next legs of our quest to find a city as everyday livable as Flag.    

Sedona - a Round of Red Rock Roughs

Sedona, Arizona is a short drive from Flagstaff – 20 miles as the crow flies, but 2500 vertical feet down.  You can go two ways – (1) on the scenic route 89 which is about 24 miles, two of which are severe switchbacks where you drop 1000 feet in elevation or (2) along the highway route 17 which is almost 45 miles.

Switchbacks galore down oak creek canyon

I’ve been to Sedona maybe a half dozen times before, and Andy has been there twice.  We were wondering, therefore, if we would still be amazed when we headed down the hill and had the first glimpse of the famously celebrated red rocks.  In a word: yes.  In two words:  you betchya.

I just cannot imagine ever growing tired of the views.  I would seriously get tired of the chintzy shops selling all sorts of psychic/healing/spiritual artifacts.  I would get tired of the tourists, but that’s a little rich of me to say since I am a tourist myself.

A couple of Christmas’s ago Andy and I took a boxing day hike up a gorgeous canyon.  We had left knee-deep snow and freezing temperatures in flagstaff and by the time we descended the hill we were able to hike in a short sleeve shirt.  I’m sure if you were in Sedona in the heat of summer you’d feel equally glad to drive 20 miles up a hill and be able to be outside without air-conditioning.  It’s a great place of compromise. 

Teeing off on the first hole

On this trip we decided to play a round of golf amidst the red rocks.  We googled the various courses, trying to find the one with the best view of the rocks.  With a name like “Seven Canyons” we figured we couldn’t go wrong.  We drove up the access road and our jaws dropped and dropped and dropped.  I don’t have a grasp of the adjectives to describe what we saw – you really just have to see it for yourself. 

What a round of golf it was!  Totally friendly, totally manicured, totally awe-inspiring views – and we hit them straight the whole round.  In addition to the views of seven different gorges, we had eyefuls of wildlife – javelinas, deer, and jackrabbits accompanied us along the way.  It was a Tuesday – our new favorite day for golf – and we had no one ahead of us and no one behind us.  For $50 we had the course to ourselves.  Eat your heart out fellow golfers – we were in paradise.  

Quite possibly the most beautiful hole in golf anywhere

100 Years of Ghosts

Jerome with Red Rocked Sedona in the background

About 50 miles south, and 3000 feet down the plateau from Flagstaff there is a town carved into the Mingus Mountain of Arizona called Jerome.  It’s a ghost town left behind from a copper rush.  

Population during the rush:  15,000

Today’s population:  353

We were told it was an artist colony with a no rules, free living vibe.  Our first impression was that it was trying too hard to be a ghost town, Sedona-healing-vortex spin off. There are some galleries there, but mostly filled with southwest stuff – you know painted cow skulls and copper crosses.  There are some paintings too, but the subjects are mostly “out there” topics of tarot cards, UFOs and mystic wolves. 

One of the terraced streets of Jerome

The surprise was that there are almost as many wineries as there are galleries.  Sadly the wine is not so good, and when we looked at the bottle of one, the wine room attendant helpfully told us that the label was from a local tattoo artist and if we wanted he could ring him up and book us an appointment. No thank you, we were actually wondering what the grape was.  Silly us.

We wandered, up and up and up this little town mostly in awe of the views – 25 miles from the red rocks of Sedona, 50 miles from the snowy peak of Mt Humphrey, this place has a perfect scenic perch to gaze out at the geologic wonders of northern Arizona.  Sadly the town hasn’t taken advantage of their views.  Buildings are ratty and dark.  A few of the original buildings are still in tact – turned into hotels and museums which specialize in celebrating their paranormal activity. 

The House of Joy (Apparently)

At the top of the hill a long line was gathered outside a smoky hamburger joint.  Clearly this was the place to eat, but standing in line for a hamburger didn’t make sense to us so we walked back down and down and down the hill to a Mexican place we had seen earlier – Quince – Spanish for 15.  Their menu looked interesting – not just the standard burrito and enchilada buffet.  Wow was it awesome.  I asked for the house margarita and got a blood orange sour, not sweet, thirst quencher.  We asked for chips and salsa and got three amazingly fresh house specialties. We were told we couldn’t buy some to take home because the shelf life was only 3 hours – they just keep making it fresh all day.  I ordered the fish tacos which were beer battered fish covered in a mango, cilantro, chilli, pomegranate salsa.  So fresh and bright.  It’s worth the trip to Jerome to visit this place alone.

Quince Restaurant in Jerome

Fish Tacos

After lunch we decided to continue up Mingus Mountain towards Prescott to see the scenic route 89a in more of its mountain pass splendor.  It didn’t disappoint and before long we were back up above 7000 feet elevation.  A little curiousity expedition led us on a slippery narrow dirt road with switchbacks and drop offs to oblivion.  2 miles up the road we passed a sign saying “no shooting from this point” – we hadn’t been aware that shooting had been allowed up to that point.  Yikes.

A spectacularly scenic drive along route 89A - By the way, londoners, this is what they call a 'cloudy' day here.

We headed back down Mingus and into another little old town, Cottonwood.  We lucked out.  Main street was closed to traffic for a festival celebrating Arizona’s centennial.  My god, has Arizona only been a state for 100 years?  1912 apparently.  The street festival was small, but had a line of old cars to gaze at, a wine tasting area and a public Zumba class which went on for as long as we were there.  Back at our Virgin Active gym in London we always saw these funny women in Zumba wearing belly chains for extra glitz as hips sway and pulse to the music.  Zumba in downtown Cottonwood was a little different – cowgirl style.  It was fantastic to watch.  I think the ghosts would be very happy to take part indeed. 

Public Zumba - note the tie-dye and belt buckles!

Arkansas, My Nemesis

This is a blog about heading west, but we have a pre-existing 8 week detour to address first.  About 6 months ago we made plans for Christmas in the Southeast – exploring Charleston and Savannah and the romance of Southern Fiction and Southern Cooking.  How much fried chicken and biscuits can this girl eat?   We were living in the UK at the time and knew that our future was a bit uncertain; so while we reserved vacation homes for the trip, we didn’t bother to book flights.  Now that we’re homeless and in the US with a really big car, we thought – why not just drive?  Sure it’s over 4000 miles round trip, but just think of the exotic places we can stop off at? 

Our first stop will be in Santa Fe.  Neither of us have been there and we hear great, but mixed, things.  Stay tuned for my ‘is it or isn’t it just a town filled with crystal happy hippies in flowing non-bleached hemp garments?’ post.

The original ‘straight  line’ route we had planned from Santa Fe to Pigeon Forge (where we’re celebrating a 40^th birthday at Dollywood) followed old route 66 (backwards if you are singing the song) from Flagstaff, AZ through Gallup New Mexico, to the Texas panhandle town of Amarillo, to Oklahoma City and then off-song, but onwards to, Arkansas and Memphis.  Looking at the calendar I saw that this would have us celebrating Thanksgiving in a motel 6 somewhere in Oklahoma.  Try as I might, I couldn’t find a good solution to do justice to the friendliest, homiest of holidays.  As with all conundrums, I turned to my faithful facebook audience for some help – where can we stop off between Santa Fe and Tennessee? 

The answer was surprising:  Lawrence, Kansas.  About a year ago at Mark’s wedding Andy and I were sat with his friend Sheyda.  It turns out that Mark, who is typically one of the best ‘connectors’ I know, had neglected to tell us that while I was living in the UK for 7 years, his friend Sheyda was living in the UK for 2 years.  Oh and she’s a foodie.  Thanks Mark.  Anyhow, Sheyda is now professing English or something like that in Lawrence, and responded to our facebook post with an invite for thanksgiving. 

Is Kansas going a bit out of our way? Yes. Do we have anything better to do?  Not really.  Am I completely bummed that I won’t get a chance to drop in on an old high school friend who now lives in Wichita (but will herself be away for the turkey holiday?).  Ummm, yeah. 

There is however a giant flaw in the Kansas plan.  You see, I am a collector of states, and I think I have about 40 now.  Despite driving across the country in college, along the eastern shores as a kid, and across the southeast with an old boyfriend, I have never managed to step foot in Arkansas.  I was really hoping this trip would be the one to finally nail down the elusive central state.  Also, the walmart heiress just built a kick ass art museum I wouldn’t have minded seeing. 

But, as you can see from the map, we’ll be driving 4000 miles around Arkansas.  So I guess we’ll just have to see it another time. 

Once we committed to the Lawrence detour, my trusty map obsessed husband pointed out that we go right through St Louis on the way to Tennessee, and ‘isn’t Sarah’s family from there?’.  Yes, that’s right, Hillsboro, Illinois.  What better way to end a long thanksgiving weekend than getting filled up on Sarah’s mom’s cooking?  And doesn’t Andy need/want to see this flatland farming town which created Sarah?  Sadly, and ironically, we will be there about 2 weeks before Sarah arrives.  Story of our lives...

In another ironic twist, Annegret & Mike will be in Chicago the week after thanksgiving.  Despite only being another 5 hours north, there was no way you could convince me that a drive from Santa Fe to Tennessee involves a stop over in Chicago. 

From Hillsboro we will head back southeast to Nashville.  We’ll take a ten day rest from the road and get back to work.  We’ll also try to ‘do as the romans do’ so we’ve booked tickets to see Arlo Guthrie at the Ryman/Grand Ole Opry.  You know there’s a future post about the crowd watching of that scene.

On December 9^th we roll into Pigeon Forge.  Home of the Great Smoky Mountains and Dolly Parton’s themepark.  We meet up with our friends and spend the next 3 weeks at points HIJKL of the map above – Asheville, Charlotte, Charleston and Savannah.                                                                            

Finally, around New Year’s Eve, we really will be heading west.  We want to take a southerly route, perhaps stopping off in New Orleans.  The only other certainty is that we want to see White Sands and Las Cruces New Mexico.  Otherwise we are making no guesses. If you have some ideas, our ears are wide open – but I’m still not making any stop-overs in Chicago.

I promise I won’t end every post with a song, but for those of you musical-ly inclined, this one from Big River seems a perfect bittersweet ending.  Arkansas you really are the ark- to my Kansas plan.

Well, I aint never travelled much
But someday when the moneys such
Id like to see the world and all
And maybe go through arkansas

Arkansas, arkansas
I sure love old arkansas
Love my ma, love my pa
But I just love ole arkansas

Id like to get my picture took
Put it in my memory book
And someday hang it on my wall
To say that Id seen arkansas

Arkansas, arkansas
I sure love old arkansas
Love my ma, love my pa
But I just love ole arkansas

My grandpa was always good
Id play horsey on his foot
Hed tell me when Id get tall
Wed both go see arkansas

Arkansas, arkansas
I sure love old arkansas
Love my ma, love my pa
But I just love ole arkansas

Arkansas, arkansas
I sure love old arkansas
Love my ma, love my pa
But I just love ole arkansas

Getting Back to Tucson

Andy trying to pose like the Saguaro

 Tucson isn’t a new city for me, but I still think it deserves a posting.   It’s hard for me to recall exactly what my pre-visiting expectations were of Tucson.  I knew it was desert, hot and sunny, and a lot more laid back than Phoenix. 

I wasn’t expecting, however, the stunning mountains in Tucson that are even a little bit snow capped this time of year.  Nor was I expecting to see a wildcat walk past my bedroom window one morning.  Or javelinas and roadrunners on the golf course.  Or a coyote meandering about the street. 

I did have an expectation that there would be fantastic Mexican food, and after 7 years in the UK, that was extremely welcome.  I will never understand why the UK doesn’t have any decent Mexican food – all of the ingredients are there, but not in combination.  Tucson’s Mexican is an encyclopedia of specificity – you actually need to know your carne asada from your carne seca, your sonoran from your guadalajaran.

I wasn’t expecting, however, the arrival of the gastropub or the fantastic farm to table cuisine we’re seeing now in Tucson.  We stopped off at Union Public House recently opened off Campbell and had fantastic cocktails, french fries with a malt vinegar aioli and a gnocci with duck confit and sage butter.  The next night we went to Wilko and had more great cocktails served in vintage glassware, truffle french fries, truffle hard sausage, and an amazing mac and cheese.  If we were even a little bit worried that our foodie European days were over, we were well reassured that good eating is alive and well in the United States.

Skip and Andy drinking Cocktails at Wilko

We also went to Hub for icecream.  Oh my good dairy lord!  Andy and I shared a triple of “Sleepy Hollow” which was pumpkin and habanero (yes, pumpkin and habanero, oh my!), Bourbon Almond Brittle and Salted Caramel.  We ate and ate, and then put the leftovers in the freezer and ate and ate again the next day. 

I really like Tucson – Andy thinks it would be a great place to live if it was not so hot in summer and you removed a bit of the geriatric population.  I think it’s an amazing place – though a bit of an urban sprawl with a grid system of streets that can be a bit overwhelming as a new comer.  Sure it’s easy enough to drive these straight wide roads, but sometimes you don’t know if the place you are going is on the left or the right and you only learn too late that you should have been 5 lanes over to make that turn.  5 lanes, and I’m not even on a highway! 

One of the things I really love about Tucson is the signage.  Because of the easy climate, signs from the 60s and 70s still stand proud in front of their businesses.  It’s retro/vintage heaven.  One of our favorite places in Tucson is the Shelter cocktail lounge.  Outside it looks like a setting that would have worked brilliantly in the Big Lebowski.  Inside it only gets better – diamond wallpaper and Kennedy for President memorabilia.  You think you’re only going to get cheap American beer but then a quick conversation with the barman tells you he knows more about whiskey than most brits. 

Another great aspect of Tucson is that the city is framed by two halves of the Saguaro National Park.  I love being able to be home, and then in a National Park within a 15 minute drive.  We had been to the west side park before, but had not yet ventured to the east side.  It did not disappoint.  Even before you get to the official park you drive through rolling hills covered in these ancient plants.  I wouldn’t be the first person to say that they look like different characters on the hill – a boxer, a bowlegged cowboy, two lovers – but I might warn you that I find them irresistible to not give voices to.  There’s Joe Pesci, John Wayne and Oprah Winfrey.  Andy is thankful these voices exist only in my head. 

It is with sadness that I pack away my summer clothes for an 8 week ride into the cold north, but in the words of the Beatles, I too will get back to Tucson, Arizona,  time and time again, maybe even permanently.

“Jo Jo was a man who thought he was a loner

But he knew it couldn’t last

Jo Jo left his home in Tucson Arizona

For some California Grass

Get back, Get back

Get back to where you once belonged”