Is This Our "Final Answer?"

**** A quick disclaimer: The date listed for this blog is deceptive. While I started it in late December, it was actually posted in mid-late January. Sorry for any confusion. ****

So as many of you know, one of the purposes of this trip Laura and I have been on for the last half-year or so was to figure out where the next part of our life was going to lead us. It was hard for us to leave our home of seventeen years in Anchorage and there is much that we will miss about Alaska, not the least of which is all of our friends there. However, I think we've figured out that there is just so much that we still want to do and see, and a home base down in the lower-48 will allow us to do some of that. Oh, and the shorter winters surely was not a factor at all in our decision... :)

So the next step was to figure out where we were going to settle next. For most of our trip, Western Montana has been at the top of our list, though we've found that there are many parts of the country where we could be quite happy. We were able to spend the holidays with family in the PA and NJ area (which accounts, in addition to my laziness, for the lack of blog posts here for over a month).

Then after the holidays and a month of worrying about the RV in a winter environment, we headed straight south to warmer climes (more on that phase of our trip in upcoming blogs). While we are going to wait out the rest of winter in sunny Florida and over into Texas, we've finally come to a final decision as to where this adventure is going to end, and the next one will begin. In reality, when all is said and done, it comes down to one simple thing: Family. The holidays helped us realize that, more than anything else, we need to be closer to our respective families, and that means a return to Pennsylvania.

So after all the searching and exploring, we are, once again back to the original plan of settling back on the East Coast. There are still many questions to be answered such as where specifically we'll be, and what career path we'll each be taking now, and I promise that we'll keep you all "in the loop" as these things are figured out.

One thing I do regret is that we will not have the opportunity to continue to reconnect with the West Coast part of the family in a manner that living in Montana would have allowed. The time that we were able to spend with that side of the family will remain one of the most important parts of this journey, and I promise that we are not going to allow that connection to lapse again. And to my long lost twin: I'm sorry that we won't able to serve as that fly-fishing base camp in Montana, but I'll scout the East Coast for you, and you'll have to come out this way some day. Oh, and by the way Patrick, you did win the latest music trivia question with the Winslow, AZ answer, and your prize will heading your way soon. I trust that answer was at least in part based upon personal knowledge, as opposed to a blind googling!? Sorry Karen, couldn't resist the jab.

One last thing before I wrap this one up. As some of you already know, I finally acquiesced and signed up on Facebook, so be patient with me while I figure that one out.

Soon to follow will be posts on the recent South Carolina and Florida parts of our trip, but I realized that during the lapse in posting, I never did get out the last installment of my bird photos from the Festival of the Cranes in New Mexico, so here they are:




I have another photo of this mule deer with it's ears back, but I couldn't figure our how to animate it to flip back and forth on this blog...





Gamble's Quail


Which of these things is not like the other? I call this my "Where's Waldo" bird pic...


and finally, "ghost geese..."

More from the Crane Festival...

Blog 2 of photos from the Festival of the Cranes:














I was sufficiently vague that I have no winners for my recent music trivia question, so here's a clue: the town was in Arizona, and we went to a street corner (that should make it pretty easy).

That's all for this edition, but I'll have one more post of pics from Socorro soon.

Festival of the Cranes

OK, as promised: photos from the 2008 Bosque del Apache NWR Festival of the Cranes, without the inconvenience of having to read my rambling thoughts...

Santa Fe and on to the Crane Festival

After we left the Petrified Forest, we did a drive into the late night hours on into New Mexico and up to Santa Fe. I actually tend to prefer driving the RV at night as it's mostly just us and the truckers, but you do miss out on the scenery (and Laura doesn't like it so much, so she sits there and grumbles and attempts to turn the dogs against me). Funny, but I don't get any complaints when we get up the next morning where we were headed, ahead of schedule.

We decided that Santa Fe was interesting enough in and of itself, so we spent a few days there before heading down the Socorro and the long awaited Festival of the Cranes, saving Albuquerque for the spring leg of our wanderings. We actually didn't even get to see all that we wanted to in Santa Fe, so there may be an encore there as well. While there we did spend a bit of time in the downtown area, which is pretty cool even if it is basically a Southwest shopping extravaganza. The downtown parking situation is one which, in fitting with the casinos scattered around the state on New Mexico (and most of the West and Southwest, for that matter) seems more a game of chance in which the jackpot is you finding a parking space at which you are privileged to have the opportunity to feed exorbitant quantities of change into a "no-armed bandit." If there were any justice, you'd at least have the one-in-a-million chance to hit the jackpot and receive your parking for the day for free...

While in the Santa Fe area, we made it to a couple wineries and a few breweries, so I'll give you the short version of my take on them, but I'll leave the more knowledgeable review of the wineries to Laura. As far as the wineries go, my first impression of New Mexico's offerings was not a good one. We started out at the Santa Fe Winery, where we evidently caused the pourer (the person who provides the wine samples and is supposed to be knowledgeable of them) there great inconvenience by asking to sample some of their wines in the hopes of perhaps buying a bottle or two. He didn't seem interested in sharing any information about the wines, nor was he impressed with my taste in them, which he made all too clear. Interesting sales strategy, and not one which left a positive first impression...

Our next stop was at a winery that didn't appear to actually exist, unless you consider a ramshackle shack on a dusty, chained-off lot which bore a strong resemblance to a salvage yard to be a likely purveyor of fine wine. OK, so not much of a second impression...

I was about to write off New Mexico wines, but fortunately, we next visited the Black Mesa Winery. Aside from the dubious distinction of having a stable of winery cats instead of the far superior winery creatures of the canine variety, this was a much better experience, with respectable wines that both Laura and I found enjoyable. Their claim to fame is a red table wine, Black Beauty, with chocolate flavoring added which even I found ridiculously sweet, though we still bought a bottle for family members whom I know will enjoy it.

OK, on to the microbreweries...

We found the Second Street Brewery in what appeared to be one of Santa Fe's more colorful neighborhoods. The atmosphere, the food, and the beer were all adequate, but not spectacular. Not a place that I'd go far out of my way for, but if I lived close by, I'd probably find my way to it often enough to fill the occasional growler.

We didn't eat at the Santa Fe Brewing Company's modest cafeteria style eatery, but we definitely sampled some good beer there. We left with a growler of the Oktoberfest (it was Laura's turn to choose, although I couldn't complain about her choice- it was a very easy drinking ale), but I had to also pick up a bomber (22 oz. bottle) of their Chickenkiller Barley Wine: definitely one of the smoothest barley wines I've had. I'd have to say that given their selections, I'd definitely be keeping a growler of their beer in the fridge on a regular basis were I a local.

Last, but definitely not least was the Blue Corn Cafe and Brewery. While I can't vouch for their downtown location, if it's anything like their south side location, I'm sure that the food and brew is excellent. On the food front, Laura had their recommended carne adovada, while I had one of the specials, spicy shrimp tacos. I can offer thumbs up to both, because I used the leftovers from Laura's substantial meal in a quesadilla the next day (did I mention that we finally broke down and picked up a quesadilla maker? More on that later). As far as the brew side of things, I particularly enjoyed their Road Runner Pale Ale and their Sleeping Dog Stout, but I think most will find a beer to their taste there. I guess if I lived in Santa Fe, I'd be alternating growlers of Blue Corn and Santa Fe Brewing.

Back to the quesadilla maker. Since we got it, I've been driving Laura nuts with my willingness to put just about anything between two tortillas, so I'd love to hear some creative suggestions that would really send her over the edge.

From Santa Fe we headed a couple hours south to Socorro and the Bosque del Apache NWR's Festival of the Cranes. In the next couple blogs, I'll keep the commentary to a minimum and focus instead on some bird pictures, so if you're into that, check back in the next couple days.

A Different Kind of Crater, Frightened Trees, a Sunset Dinosaur. But first, a humble apology.

First things first: For all of you who were getting ready to send out a search party, I have to apologize for neglecting the blog for the last several weeks. For those of you who are interested in some of my creative excuses (I'm really good at them), let me know and I'll be happy to provide some. The best of them play off the themes of being busy taking amazing pictures to post (well, taking some adequate ones at least), not having good internet connections, driving cross country in a brief period of time, and just being really busy in general.

For those of you who aren't aware, we are now in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey area for the holidays and are inflicting ourselves on various family households in a pathetically parasitic manner. Good thing we haven't done so in a decade or so as we'll likely not be welcome back for another ten years after this...

In the next week or so, I endeavor to catch everyone up on our escapades, and I promise yet again not to allow things to lapse as they have. As an added bonus, I promise not to write too much- I'll try to simply post a bunch of photos, particularly of the crane festival in New Mexico.

The following three photos depict a really big hole in the ground in the middle of Northern Arizona, and a piece of what caused the hole. I had all kinds of information and facts to share with you about the crater, but it's been so long that I've forgotten them (like you really wanted to hear them anyway). Bottom line: big meteor = big hole and a pretty cool stop. Thinking about what it must have been like at the time of impact brings to mind the movie Armageddon, though without the splintering Empire State Building and other urban destruction.





The next half dozen pictures are of the afore-mentioned frightened trees. For those of you who may be pun-impaired: petrified forest...get it? yeah I know, but sometimes I can't help it. Unfortunately, we had spent too much time at the previously mentioned hole in the ground, so we weren't able to spend as much time as we would have liked here, so it makes the list of possible places for a return visit.







Just as amazing as the process by which these trees were transformed into their hardened state (via the replacement of the wood fibers by various minerals while the fallen trees steeped in their mineral bath) is the fact that this desert area was once treed to begin with, and then was covered by the water which allowed this to occur.

As we headed out of the park, the sun was setting as we once again crossed a portion of what was once the Historic Route 66. We've had the pleasure of many beautiful desert sunsets, and have been on or paralleled Route 66 for the better part of several states, but this particular confluence provided an interesting perspective of the recent dinosaurs that roamed the area.




OK, before I sign out for this particular blog, it's time for another musical related trivia question. Around this time frame of our trip, we drove through a town to check out a particular location. Name the town, the specific location and why we did this, as well as the band that made it famous. Extra credit for the author. This one's already too easy, so I can't say any more, other than the fact that the quality of your prize will in part be based upon the quality and completeness of the first correct answer (google on, Karen).

Sunset Crater, Wapatki Pueblo, and Not All Cows are Created Equal

While in the Flagstaff area, we took advantage of two nearby National Monuments, Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument and Wupatki National Monument, which abut each other and are in essence, partner parks.

Sunset Crater was formed almost 1000 years ago in a volcanic event that some of the Hopi people living in the area at the time attributed to the fact that the people were "koyaanisqatsi," or living a life out of balance. The Kachina Qa'na Katsina (Kachinas are the powerful spirits which govern the natural world around us, according to several Native American peoples)caused the eruption to serve as a warning that they needed to get back to a more principled way of life. It is said that a failure to lead that "balanced life" could cause another eruption, so given today's state of affairs, we're probably overdue for a big one...





It was really quite interesting hiking around lava flows that reminded me more of Hawaii than of the high country of Arizona. You aren't allowed up to the crater itself anymore as a measure to try to preserve it's condition, and you can actually see the remaining damage from those climbing around on it decades ago.



Wupatki National Monument preserves the remains of numerous pueblos, with the Wupatki Pueblo (pictured below) the largest in the area. In it's heyday about 800 years ago, it would have had over 100 rooms, and it is estimated that over 2000 people would have lived here or within a day's walk. This pueblo is the most significant in the region for the time period and was likely a central meeting place for the agricultural peoples of the area. There are quite a few more pueblos within the monument, some of which are accessible by the public, others that are off limits, and still more that have not been excavated at this time. It's hard to imagine that such a number of people living in a seemingly desolate landscape would be successful in an agricultural lifestyle, but somehow they made it work (although they did ultimately abandon this immediate area for even larger villages by about the year 1300).

Laura was really in her anthropological element, and I know she wants to return to spend more time here, so we'll have to add this to the list of places to revisit.






If you've ever traveled out west, you've no doubt seen, and probably driven over, the livestock grates installed in the roads to prevent cows from wandering helter-skelter about the countryside. If you haven't, here's

Exhibit A:



Obviously, the cows can't negotiate the grates, so the road can be open, but still contain the livestock (to be completely honest, I had a hard time walking over them also, so I'm not sure what that says about me). However, it appears that not all cows are created equal, and Arizona must have some dumb ones.

Exhibit B:



Laura assures me that dairy cows are smarter and would not be fooled by white lines painted on the roadway.