Category: United States (Page 6 of 8)

Today started out better for me than I anticipated. Last night was the overnight software goLive I had to support for my client in Indiana. My tasks started at 11pm Eastern and lasted until 4am (if all went well). The great thing is, being out west and in Arizona, which doesn’t do daylight savings time- it was only 8pm to 1am my time! Things ran a bit long, but I was asleep by 2am and the software changeover went smoothly, at least from my perspective of handling a lot of the old system shut down. I’m sure they’ll have a fun few days coming up as they work out some small kinks, but they did a good job.

So, we were up and at ’em on time and headed to the Grand Canyon! This was one of Norah’s USA bucket list items for travel, so she was pumped. We got to the shuttle parking and the lot wasn’t very full…so I started to get worried.

I read this sign and was like WELL CRAP! …I had planned out an entire day of shuttle stops and sites! What now?? But… it ended up being better! Because all of the shuttles weren’t running to the village or any of the major points, you could take your car… so we drove right into the Village and parked right away and walked around. And while it wasnt empty, it was nothing like the crowds I was expecting. I heard a lady in the store say “the calm before the storm in the mornings” so I guess because people daytrip out from Phoenix or Vegas or Salt Lake City, that the early mornings are quiet until like 11am and the afternoons are a zoo. May be good info for anyone else headed this way in the future!

Our first view of the Grand Canyon.

Norah had seen a canyon of some sort along the way and said “that looks like the Grand Canyon” and we said “no….thats nothing like the Grand Canyon, just wait” That was like 3 days prior and as soon as her eyes caught a glimpse she just said amazed “you’re right. That’s nothing like the Grand Canyon” and we laughed both because of her amazement and because we had completely forgotten about even saying that. ha

The pictures really cant even do justice to the massiveness of this canyon. Its so big it makes your head swim trying to focus and get your bearings looking at it and its so far to the other side, its hazy and it just looks like a really well done backdrop painting. Doesn’t even seem real.

Norah made a friend at the first stop- she quickly named him Fat Gus. This led to discussion of a pet squirrel, then to maybe a guinea pig would be a better choice.. to maybe turning her desk area into a giant hamster park. Dream big, girl. haha

The above photos were from Mather Point by the visitor center. After these, we drove down to the village and parked near the Thunderbird Lodge to walk around the historical town area starting at Bright Angel Lodge.

There was another building at this site from 1896, but this hotel was built in the 1930’s by Mary Coulter (same architect from Petrified Forest and the hotel in Winslow.)

There is a history room there with a 10 foot fireplace designed by Coulter. It has all the same layers of rock as the canyon does.

They had a lot of Fred Harvey Memorabilia there, including old photos of some of the Harvey Girl wait staff from the lodges and restaurants.

Giant binoculars that used to be located at Lookout Studio, where we headed next.

We passed Buckey’s Cabin on the way. Buckey O’Neill was an interesting character. Irish immigrant, moved around and explored the West after completing Law school. Worked as a publisher, printmaker, judge, mayor, speculated on mines and eventually joined Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and was killed in battle in Cuba. (in the TNT movie Rough Riders, Sam Elliott plays O’Neill) This is the only remaining building from the pioneer era of the Canyon settlement.

We visited Lookout studio- another Mary Coulter building, built with great vantage points to see the canyon.

We walked back along the rim to the El Tovar Hotel. This hotel was built by the Fred Harvey Company in partnership with the Santa Fe railroad to draw more rail travel to the canyon.

Across the street from El Tovar is Hopi House. Another Mary Coulter building.

She built this to look like an old Indian Pueblo, complete with low ceilings, even lower doors and the ceilings with the natural branches still have leaves on them. She purposely built the floors uneven to give it an even better realistic and old feel. Pretty cool.

Our last stop in town was the Train Depot. This was built in 1901, designed to complement the El Tovar Hotel for the guests that would be arriving to the Grand Canyon along the Santa Fe railway.

You can still take a train trip from Williams, Arizona to the South Rim on a train that comes to this station!

For someone that was so excited at the beginning, she sure was over it by the time we started driving towards Desert View Watchtower. ha We’re driving past miles of canyon scenery and she has her head buried in her phone.

First time we had even seen a mountain lion crossing sign.

We arrived at the Desert View Watchtower, another Mary Coulter design, but going inside the tower was closed. But that’s OK- the view was still fantastic from outside.

Leaving the Grand Canyon, we headed towards Tuba City to see the Navajo Code Talkers display at the Trading Post.

They have a traditional Navajo Hogan built outside. This would have been the homes of most Navajo up to the 1900s when the government would only pay for housing that met HUD standards…which obviously didn’t cover mud covered log buildings… but there is a revival happening trying to bring back the Hogan. We saw a lot of houses on Indian land with these 8 sides structures out in their front yards. They are rarely lived in anymore, but some are used for ceremonial purposes.

The code talker museum was smaller than I expected, more like a display of a few items supplemented with some photos- but still nice to see.

The code talkers were such an important piece of our victory in World War II – a Major said “if it weren’t for the Navajo, the Marines would have never taken Iwo Jima”. The code was so effective because Navajo is a mostly unwritten language. They used traditional words that could translate to English for the phonetic alphabet to spell words. Like, “wo-la-chee” was the Navajo word for Ant, so it was used for the English Letter A. They also used Navajo words for items where there wasn’t a native word- like “Submarine”- they used “besh-lo” or iron fish.

After the code talker museum, we stopped at a travel station because all of the restrooms were closed everywhere we had been. This truck stop type big station was open, but they still required masks and they had a girl doing temperature checks at the door and only letting 4 families inside at a time. They are still VERY serious about Covid restrictions out here. I was very surprised.

Norah found a bag of fruit jellies that she just couldn’t live without. haha its some TikTok thing that is making these super popular right now.

Our next stop was at Moenave for dinosaur tracks! I had read that you could give a “donation” to the Native American vendors set up on the side of the road and they will give you a tour of the track. So we did… and it was amazing! She had such good information. I would have missed half the tracks and things she pointed out. She used a disposable water bottle with a tiny hole poked in the lid to squirt water into the tracks to make them more visible to us. It was so dang hot and dry that before I could even take half the pictures, the water was evaporated! She did seem surprised us fair skinned folks didn’t have hats to take with us out onto the tracks area…and of course, I’m like ‘we’re fine! we’ve got on sunscreen”. Ten minutes later we were all cooking and bright red. hahaha Listen to the Native Americans. They are wise. ha

We continued on across Arizona over towards the Utah border. Lots of gorgeous cliff faces and very desert like scenery.

Our last stop was Horseshoe Bend. Page, Arizona has a new $10 parking and bathroom structure at the site. With a paved .75 mile walk back to the view. It.was.hot. Omg. I’m a weakling.

We gave Norah a hat and loaded her up with sunscreen again for the trek. Going down was absolutely fine. You can see below the steady stream of people heading down to this. It was our busiest site of the trip but still wasn’t crazy packed…

The view was worth it.

To keep the blog real, I had Kegan take a photo of me after the .75 miles back uphill in the 90 something degree heat. It cant all be smiles and rainbows. haha I was a mess. I was so dehydrated from not drinking enough water earlier in the day, I was starting to get cold chills as we approached the SUV. I figure thats not good.

I had a splitting headache after that, I assume from dehydration. So I chugged a couple liters of water, blasted the AC in the car to the hotel, took a cold shower…and life was much better! ha Lesson learned. Water, water, water.

We got Big John’s Texas BBQ for dinner. Good ribs. Norah had a hot dog. I forgot to get photos in my headache heat exhaustion stupor 🙂 haha Tomorrow we’ll head to Utah and end at Zion!

This morning started out from Gallup, NM and straight to Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona right along Route 66/I-40. We took the north loop first up through the Painted Desert. We passed the Painted Desert Inn. A guy built this originally in the 1920s out of petrified wood to be his home…but he built it on top of a bentonite clay layer and bentonite clay has a huge swelling/shrinking profile with water… so the poor guy’s house was very unstable. ha He sold it to the national park service in the 1930s. In the 1940’s – 1960’s The Fred Harvey Company leased it and operated tours and hotel stays here.

If you’ve never heard of The Fred Harvey Company, they operated a very interesting business model of offering high quality and luxury type travel to the Southwest via a partnership with the Sante Fe Railroad. Their hotels offered fine dining, comfortable transport and full guided tours to areas like the Petrified Forest or the Grand Canyon. They hired “Harvey Girls” which all had to wear a certain uniform, they couldn’t be married, some of the jobs had very strict roles- like at the Grand Canyon-the Harvey Girls had to have college degrees in history or similar, speak Spanish and were mentored by local architects and anthropologists so they could speak to everything about the Southwest as tour guides. Other Harvey girls worked as hostesses or waitresses but almost always young, attractive, educated and unmarried.

I digress, by the 1960’s even Fred Harvey had to move their business to a new visitor center at Petrified Forest because of the building being so unstable. It was scheduled for demolition in the 70s but a campaign to save it still has it standing today and maintained by the National Park Service.

The north rim was very pretty but nothing just spectacular to photograph. Most of the painted deserts hills were very far off on huge lookouts. We completed that loop and headed for the south loop of the park. One of our first stops was Newspaper Rock to see petroglyphs from over 1000 years ago from ancestral Puebloan people of the area. There are over 650 petroglyphs on these rocks, but you could only view them from a lookout point high above…so the photos I could get are grainy.

We continued on around past The Teepees, named for the cone like shape the formations are in.

There were lots of quick pulloffs from the car to see various parts of the Blue Mesa

We saw The Agate Bridge, a 200 million year old tree that petrified into stone still spanning this gap as all of the other dirt and rocks has eroded over the years.

Jasper Forest was a lookout point where there were tons of petrified wood scattered all over the ground. Then we did the Crystal Forest walk which was a mile or so loop through a lot of up close petrified logs.

These trees would have been alive around 200 million years ago….when they fell, or floods in the area at that time would have washed them downstream in a bunch of mud or volcanic ash, they were covered by a silica sand for so long with such low oxygen content that it slowed the rot of the wood and had just the right mineral conditions for the silica to slowly, slowly replace cell by cell of the organic tree material with the silica through a process called mineralization that eventually hardened into solid rock like opal, chalcedony or quartz. So even though these “trees” still have bark, rings showing the age, etc- there is no wood left at all, its all rock hard stone.

We saw a Collared Lizard on our path. That was the highlight for Norah. It was cool. Yellow feet!

This sign made us all giggle. Be in your car by 6:30pm or hungry coyotes might eat you. haha So cheerful and yet macabre. I love a good juxtaposition.

After finishing the loop, we stopped at the Crystal Forest Gift Shop where Norah picked up a piece of petrified wood and a piece of turquoise with her souvenir funds. We continued along Route 66 to Holbrook, Arizona where we passed the famous Wigwam Motel. I’ve always wanted to stay here for some reason. There is another part of this same WigWam hotel chain in Cave City, KY…and when we go to Mammoth Cave sometime when it opens back up post-Covid, I think we may stay there. Someone just bought that one and is remodeling it.

The Route 66 travel continued along to Winslow, AZ.

Where, of course, we had to stand on a corner! 🙂

We headed for lunch at The Turquoise Room inside the La Posada Hotel. This building has a fantastic backstory and history. The same architect that saved the Painted Desert Inn with a redesign for the Fred Harvey Company was Mary Coulter, one of the only female working architects of her time. She also designed all of the buildings at the Grand Canyon south rim which I’ll blog tomorrow. She had a vision for this hotel to be an exotic destination for railroad visitors to stop and stay, since the Santa Fe Railroad didn’t really have sleeper cars, travelers had to find lodging at the various depots along the way. She wanted to give this hotel a backstory, so it was designed to appear to be an old Mexican hacienda that had fallen on hard times and was purchased and expanded into a hotel for guests. She even designed in a fake archeological site into the grounds to look like the “hacienda” was even built on an old fort. Of all the buildings she designed- and thats a lot- she considered La Posada her best work.

She added walled gardens and wishing well fountain, inset nooks for saints and other southwest influences… there are still tons of stuff on the internet about the original “hacienda” family or the ancient site. ha I love this. She faked it so well, today we still think its real!

The hotel opened in 1930, right after the stock market crash of 1929…so business was slow. It was good business into the 40s…but steadily declined as people travelled by car instead of by rail. It eventually closed, became an office building… and someone bought it in the late 1990s and restored it to its glory as a hotel and restaurant. I would totally recommend a stay here if you’re in Winslow. It had a great vibe. Norah was just impressed with their cornbread that magically arrived with her grilled cheese. ha The girl loves her cornbread.

After lunch, it was time for Meteor Crater. The biggest tourist trap this side of Wall Drug. ha (we’ll see that in a couple weeks ha)

Billboards and signs for miles tell you not to miss it! Funny, we actually tried to go here back in 2010 on our way home from Salinas, California on our first stent out there… and we had Izzy dog with us (which by the way, she’s still kicking- 13 years old with a giant tumor on her side…so who knows for how long…but she’s still around) We got all the way to the parking lot only to find out they didnt allow you to walk a dog up to the crater.

Well, this time around, they have built a huge visitor center and they now have dog kennels, I noted. ha But we didn’t need it this trip! A huge storm was rolling past so all the photos are very gray. They weren’t even giving guided tours of the crater because of the weather. I was nervous letting Norah hold the metal binoculars…so we made it a quick visit outside.

After Meteor crater, continued to Flagstaff area and headed north towards Grand Canyon Village which was our stop for the night. I had REALLY hoped this Flintstone Bedrock City would be open when we passed – and so did Norah- she had been asking for days when we were going to get to Flintstone City. haha This is another example of something I wish I would have found a few years earlier to buy and fix up. Someone new just purchased this RV Park to turn it into a Raptor experience park. I think they planned to tear down the Flintstone park eventually- but so many people visiting asked to see it that they have started charging admission into it again and I hope plan to bring it back to some envisioned glory.

We paid $8 a person to walk into the “backyard” of the Raptor park to visit Bedrock City. Someone’s grand vision that just never quite got there. ha But I LOVED it.

Can’t you just see us buying rundown Bedrock City and fixing this up?? I’d live in the Post Office. I was having total renovation visions in every one of the buildings. It was SUCH a cute idea but so grungy and gross. haha I’m truly sad I can’t own this! But super excited it might be getting a second life.

We drove on into the Grand Canyon Village and decided we felt like Mexican tonight. So we paid $110 for your average tourist Mexican dinner. eek. ha Kegan did get the Molcajete, which is a HAVE TO anytime its on the menu, its beef and shrimp and chicken are marinated in red sauce, usually with cheese and cactus pieces, served with tortillas and always served in this giant volcano lava bowl that literally has it all boiling when it comes to the table.

Norah tried Horchata for the first time. Big fan. She said it’s like Cinnamon Chex milk at the bottom of the cereal bowl. I had a big pile of carnitas covered in guac to keep it low carb. It was great.

Kegan walked outside to get the last of our stuff and encountered 2 elk across the street munching on some shrubs. He said you could hear them eating and crunching. ha Look how close they are to the lady on the sidewalk and they didn’t care one bit. Until some other lady came out making noise and filming and spooked them a bit. Seriously- its like people near these parks have literally never encountered an animal before. No chill. No idea how to act. But I’m practicing my Zen this trip…ha

Overall a much better day of sites and open amenities than the past couple days! Tomorrow we’ll explore Grand Canyon!

We left Los Alamos this morning heading for Puya Cliffs Monument to the East of us, only to arrive to a big visitor center that said “WE ARE OPEN” (and the website said they were open) only to find out the gift shop was open but the actual cliffs and tours have been closed for over a year from COVID. So…while I understand… that felt a little crappy because we drove a bit to go there and they could have been a little more forthcoming.

We turned around and headed in the opposite direction to Bandelier National Monument, a part of the Pajarito Plateau that was the ancestral site of Puebloan Indians. It was our first chance to use our National Parks Annual Pass!

There is evidence of human activity in the area from 11,000 years ago, but these preserved petroglyphs and cave dwellings date from around 1150 to 1600. We started out at the Frijoles Canyon overlook and you could really feel how vast the canyon was.

We stopped at the visitor center which had some really good models of the area in its prime.

We did the Main Loop Trail which is where the majority of the sites were marked.

This rock with all of the porous looking holes is actually called Tuff. It’s a thick layer of compressed volcanic ash from an ancient volcano. This soft rock made it easier to carve out dwellings and cave houses. Although I’m sure it was still a crazy undertaking with just the tools they had available.

The model of the structure above as it would have looked when the area was occupied.

We were able to climb up the rock and climb ladders into the little cave dwellings to explore.

After exploring Bandelier for a while and walking the Nature Trail back to the visitor center, it was time to head over the mountain pass to go to the west side of New Mexico into Navajo land.

At one point the road said “unmaintained mountain road ahead, no semis or large trucks” and we were nervous. ha Turns out it was fine! It was dirt…but wide and fairly smooth. It honestly looked exactly like rural Norway when we were driving from Sweden out towards waterfalls. I expected to see Moose but all I got were deer.

The other side of the mountain looked much more “new mexico” with the striated rock beds and flat mesas.

Those mesas and plateaus gave way to flat plains for quite a way.

We drove another 1.5 hours through navajo nation off-reservation trust land on a terrible TERRIBLE dirt washed out road for about 15 miles to reach Chaco Culture Center, Another ancestral Native American site of ruins. We have a hilarious video of us bouncing all over the car capturing the craziness of the drive, but I cant upload it here. ha

This area, from around 950 to 1100, was a very advanced and huge community of Puebloan Indians. No other structures this large would be built anywhere in North America until the 1800s. They have found cocoa bean residue in pots indicating vast trade routes and networks as cacao beans cant grow in this area of New Mexico. They also found macaw and parrot skulls which would have only come from South America.

They found over 50,000 pieces of turquoise in just that one lit up square room!

This culture was very tied to astronomy and the moon. They had spirals carved into rocks that hit exactly on the minimum and maximum of the suns trajectory over a 9 year cycle. They set up their long walls of the buildings exactly along moon track lines across the sky. Crazy the amount of knowledge acquired over time that would have been needed to lay this sort of thing out. It would have taken at least 18.5 years alone just to witness and document one full minimum and maximum of the moon cycle.. so obviously multiples of those were witnessed over generations to know that they repeated!

The ruins are in a 9 mile loop that you can drive and park nearer the sites. We walked between 2 of the biggest ruins along what is called the Petroglyph trail.

We had a nice time out walking in the sun and some warmth for the first time in 3 days. It has been so rainy and gloomy almost everywhere until we hit the west side of the mountain. I very much enjoyed it.

We were saved by the trusty Honda Pilot and her built-in 2014 GPS system as none of us had signal and our phones wouldn’t tell us which road to take towards Arizona!

I had planned to visit Window Rock, the capital of Navajo Nation, eat at a Navajo Diné restaurant and see the navajo museum, but unfortunately everything on Navajo land is still closed to non-residents. They have been going back and forth for a couple weeks here…so I still had hopes we could visit… but it looks like we are missing the opening by a couple weeks. So, on to Gallup, New Mexico for the night. We were arriving around 8:30pm and a lot of places close then, so we ended up with Mediterranean food again at a place called Oasis Restaurant. Lamb kabob and a combo plate.

Tomorrow we will cross into Arizona and end our night at the Grand Canyon. Let’s see what we can find open 🙂

We started out fairly early for us. I think we were on the road by 7:30am. We knew we had a lot of ground to cover today!

Our first planned stop was Cadillac Ranch on I-40 just past Amarillo, Texas. At the exit is the “2nd Amendment Cowboy”. He’s an old muffler man purchased at an auction in 2014 by this RV Park right by Cadillac Ranch.

I was honestly super surprised at the number of people already out at Cadillac Ranch before 9am. The guy who runs the show out here selling merch, spraypaint and food wasn’t even set up yet. We beat him here! ha

We came prepared with out own spray paint because I figured it would cost $20 a can there. Actually, it was quite reasonable at $6/can… (pending you don’t beat the vendor to their own site)

Norah had been excited about this since before the trip. So she spray painted everything.

Her name.

A tire.

The dirt. haha

Overall, she really enjoyed herself. On our way back, we saw a couple headed out with no spray paint, so we offered them our cans that still had plenty of paint in them and off on our merry way we went. 🙂

Right at the New Mexico line is an exit for Glenrio. Not much left at Glenrio, but I wanted to stop because its such a great (terrible) example of what happened to some of these towns when the interstate highway system was put in.

Every building down through here was just sitting derelict- a casualty of Route 66’s fading of importance. At one time, this place was quite interesting. Sitting right on the border of New Mexico and Texas, the town got creative. Gas tax was cheaper in Texas, so all of the fuel was sold on the Texas side. But Texas was a dry county there, so all the bar and liquor items were sold on the New Mexico side.

We drove through Tucumcari, New Mexico next. Such a neatly preserved Route 66 gem. So many mid century hotel signs. This town actually didn’t feel like it died 40 years ago… it was alive and well. I really loved its character. We planned to go to the Mesalands Dinosaur Museum here, but they were closed on Mondays. Go figure. The Route 66 museums we passed in Oklahoma were closed on Sundays. We should have left 1 day later, I guess!

We did lunch at Blake’s Lotaburger- a New Mexico chain that started after WWII in Albuquerque. They are famous for their chopped hatch green chilis you can add to your burger or your breakfast burrito.

We loved their fries- very crispy and good. Their chicken sandwich that Norah ordered was good… but their burger was just…ok. The hatch chilis on it though were good. I also wanted to sample the breakfast burritos they have…and it was only 10:15am, so I added a carne adovada to our order. and THAT is where the prize is- their breakfast burritos. ha So we’ll have to pick up one of those one morning here before we leave New Mexico.

After leaving Tucumcari, we headed north toward the town of Taos to see the Taos Pueblo.

Finally after winding up through the roads for a couple hours, we arrived in Taos. I knew that we couldn’t enter the pueblo because of COVID restrictions still in place on Indian land… but I figured we could at least look at the outside. Nope. Big blockade keeping anyone that is not a resident out. So that was a big disappointment and 3 hours of driving for nothing. Well, not nothing… I felt like I would really like Taos… so I wanted to explore it. We have entertained a rental house out west- Vegas, Phoenix, New Mexico.. Taos’ hat had been in the ring. It’s no longer. It’s out. ha

Apparently it snows a lot there in the winter and its a ski destination because the elevation is so high (which made me feel better when Kegan told me I WAS out of shape…but I wasn’t just huffing and puffing walking through town because of that. ha I hadn’t even considered the elevation!)

The whole town was under construction that had standstill traffic up and down the streets. We stopped to go to the Kit Carson home and museum- guy standing out front that works there tells us it’s closed for the day. When everything and the signs all said it was open. He told us to come back at 11am the next day (it was like 3pm at the time ha)

We went to get a bite of food and beer at the Taos Mesa Brewery that had “crowlers” to go- basically giant “growler” cans. So Kegan got one. We tried to get a table, but the person working told us it was a 30-45 minute wait but we could order takeout and it would be done super fast. Ok, so we ordered Norah a small pizza- which did look great, by the way… but it took 35 minutes for it to come out. and Everyone around us got seating in less than 15. We bet on the wrong horse. Per usual.

So, with Taos being a bust all around.. we headed back down towards Santa Fe. I had skipped Sante Fe this trip because as I was researching I found tons of stuff I wanted to do and we could see it all on a quick pass through- so we decided to skip it entirely and make a long weekend trip to Sante Fe sometime in the future. Well, now we had 4 hours of evening I didnt plan for… so we headed down the 2 hours towards the city.

We saw Camel Rock along the way. It wasnt very “camel-y” more like Turtle Rock.

We arrived at Meow Wolf Sante Fe, a giant art installation of over 70 rooms with blacklight psychedelic experiences that was actually commissioned by George R. R. Martin of Game of Thrones fame. He actually lives in Sante Fe. When asked WHY SANTE FE?? he said:

“It’s one of the oldest cities in the U.S. Older than anything even on the East Coast. Because it’s a state capital, it has many amenities that you associate with a larger city—great museums and wonderful restaurants. “At the same time, I like the small town thing. You can get in the car and get anywhere in 10 minutes. Of my 10 years in L.A., two of them were on the freeways…” Then there’s the question of addiction. When I got to Santa Fe, I became addicted to green chile. You can’t get it anywhere else. I can’t imagine life anywhere else.”

So, of course- I REALLY wanted to go to this- so I picked this one thing to go do in Sante Fe for the night. Sold out for the evening. Even though they themselves on the Google Reviews said you didn’t need advance tickets for weekdays. (I did try to book online but it only allowed you to book two days in advance) *sigh* another item for the day, closed. So basically we did 6 hours of driving for no reason today except to see the scenery.

At this point, we were defeated for the day- time to pack it in and try again tomorrow, so we headed for Los Alamos. We climbed back up some elevation from Santa Fe and had some great features and views outside.

When we arrived, I was shocked to find that it was a cute vibrant nice town! Its home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory which was the site of the atomic bomb testing or the Manhattan Project in WWII. They have repurposed the old project gate into restroom facilities at the town park.

This hotel ended up being the nicest one we have had yet- it was brand new and its the first one with the pool or fitness center open AND they had a hot breakfast instead of just grab and go. I am SHOCKED at how closed down these hotels are. I personally think it has nothing to do with COVID and everything to do with needed fewer people and costing less money. But maybe I’m just a grumpy Karen. Anyway- this hotel was fantastic and the pool was available “by reservation” so Norah got to block an entire hour for herself to float around. We also found a fantastic Mediterranean restaurant for carryout and I was in low carb heaven (I’ve been really trying to stick to a keto diet this trip… we’ll see how I do.)

They had a shrimp/butter/ white wine appetizer.

Lamb shank that was amazing… I could eat this every day.

Kegan has kebab skewers with gyro meat… and Norah basically ate pita bread because she had the pizza earlier.

So, overall, the hotel and the food ended the day on a high note and made up for some travel bad luck and closures earlier. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Today started out just a quarter mile from our hotel at Graceland! The home of the King. We bought the VIP experience to skip the lines for the mansion. tour and have full access to the airplanes and museums as quickly as we wanted because we knew we would be on a timeline today. We arrived at 9am when the gates opened and our mansion tour was scheduled for 10am, so that gave us an hour in the museums that were built across the street in what appeared to be a Tanger Outlet Center repurposed for Elvis. Ha

They had different shop areas turned into specific museums dedicated to portions of Elvis’s life- army life, music, Vegas jumpsuits, early recording, his cars. Tons of real items on display, items like his hand written notes as he arranged How Great Thou Art. I thought his personal set of keys to Graceland was a cool little display.

The Mad Tiger Jumpsuit is by far my favorite of all of the jumpsuits. it’s absolutely ridiculous haha

We got a private VIP shuttle over to the mansion. (And then dumped right into the same line as everyone else haha)

There was an audio tour room by room inside the mansion and it was narrated by John Stamos describing all the items and decor in the house.

I took a hundred or more photos of the place so if you’re super into it, just ask and I can show you the entirety! But for everyone else, just a few highlights:

The living room with the peacock stained glass panels

The 1960s kitchen that was the height of function and fashion when it was last remodeled.

The famous, yet slightly underwhelming, Jungle Room. The green ceiling and green carpet were interesting choices 🙂

The stairs to the basement were mirrored on the walls and the ceiling which was really trippy!

The light switches won my little mid-century heart. I didn’t even hate some of the panelling!

Elvis’s TV lounge in the basement with its own yellow bar. He heard President Lyndon Johnson had three TVs rolling so he could watch all the news channels at once, so he wanted the same.

The pool room had fabric stretched over the entire thing! Insane haha

I was envious of his racquetball court with a mid century seating area and bar. This was definitely something I’d like to transport to my own house!

On our way out, we stopped by Gladys’ Diner for a traditional Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich grilled with bacon grease. Elvis’s favorite.

Lastly, we walked out to the airplanes and did a quick tour of Elvis’s private planes.

We got back to the car and were setting the GPS and I heard crinkling of foil in the backseat. I turned around to see Norah eating a chicken finger. From her dinner last night. That sat in the hot car for 15 hours at that point.

She is a really smart kid, but somehow we missed food safety class. My goodness. So, after prying chicken fingers from her hands as quickly as possible we made a “you don’t eat anything until you ask” rule. (We’re now 22 hours out so I think the food poisoning window has passed thankfully!)

After Graceland, we headed towards downtown Memphis. We sought out Aretha Franklin’s birthplace and if you can tell by the condition of her house, you can guess that the area was a little sketchy… no one has preserved Aretha’s childhood home like Elvis’s in Tupelo, Mississippi…instead this one sits abandoned, falling down. The internet says that Aretha wasn’t terribly attached to this house though, that she felt more of Detroit as her home…. So maybe that’s Ok.

Downtown Memphis had lots of statues and tributes to various artists and prominent figures.

We did a drive by of Beale Street just because we were going 6 blocks away. Beale street is the home of the Blues- specifically of course , the Memphis blues. WC Handy was the first famous musician making music on Beale Street- but tons of famous artists played the clubs here from the 1940s to the 60s- BB King, Muddy Waters, Louis Armstrong just to name a couple of the most famous.

But just like most things, Beale street as it was is dead. By the 1970s, it was a ghost town and the city was trying to clean up downtown… leveled blocks of buildings around Beale. But, people eventually saw the significance and history and brought it back as a historical preservation effort. Now , it seems there are still lots of blues clubs playing the blues at night… but places like Hard Rock Cafe are now the major attractions.

We headed back down towards the National Civil Rights Museum which was our true destination downtown but we had 45 minutes until our timed entry so we crossed the street to Central BBQ for some lunch.

We both got a 1/2 slab of dry rub Memphis style ribs with house made pork rinds and greens. They were stellar. All of it.

Finally, it was time to go queue up for our entry to the Lorraine Motel and National Civil Rights Museum- the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April of 1968.

This museum was powerful. I’ve been thinking about how best to blog all of the information in my head about Civil Rights, black history, MLKs vision, the struggle ongoing today… but I just can’t do it justice. I feel like everyone should take a long slow walk through this museum and really “feel” the history. Get uncomfortable with it.

The museum did an amazing job of making everything factually based and well-documented. Photos, news articles, statistics and quotes accompanied every exhibit. I liked that because I think it’s easy- especially as white people who have never experienced that oppressiveness or people actively trying to keep me from exercising my rights- to think that maybe it wasn’t SO bad or maybe it’s people exploiting some previous racism for gain currently… but you go see example after example of this oppression, the blatant hatred, the state and local government’s unveiled attempts to keep the status quo and it’s hard to keep that mindset. It is just disgusting to really look at the history all together. I think we’ve grown and learned a lot as a society since the 1960s…but I know we aren’t through yet. I don’t think we get enough education on the hard truths and people who are ignorant of history are bound to repeat it…

We watched a fantastic documentary on MLK in preparation of the trip called King:A filmed Record. I would HIGHLY recommend it. Also The 1960’s mini series by Tom Hanks that CNN aired was a really good visual representation of all the various forces in play at the same time.

MLK was in Memphis to help bring visibility to the Sanitation Workers strike that was ongoing at the time.

The museum is in the motel where he was shot and the rooms that were rented for him and other folks staying here at that time are preserved just as they were when he was shot. He was standing on the balcony when James Earl Ray , from a boarding house across the street, shot a single bullet that hit him in the neck. He immediately fell and never uttered another word. Upon, hearing this news- the hotel owner of the Lorraine Motel suffered a stroke and died as well.

Overall, a very moving experience and something I wish everyone would experience.

After leaving there, we started our trek across the state of Arkansas. First stop in Arkansas was the RoundTop Filling Station in Sherwood, Arkansas. It’s an old gas station built in 1937, a Sinclair gas station in the 1940s, then a Philips from the 50s-70s, then closed..sat empty- auctioned in the 1980s, the guy died that bought it and his family donated it to the city which has been trying to restore it from the early 2000s. They finally decided to turn it into a police substation for the department and a day before it was to open, someone set a fire damaging the exterior. It looks like it is currently being used by the police department but there was no one there when we drove through.

We crossed the river into Little Rock and just made a brief stop downtown

We needed a bathroom break so we went into Hurts Doughnuts and Norah got a bright pink food dye heaven doughnut called The Homer (that we all paid for later this evening haha) kegan was boring with an Old Fashioned. All of those doughnuts in the case and he picked the plain cake doughnut haha he said it was great.

We wanted to see this very strange item for Little Rock Arkansas- the 80 Ton Korean Gate and Memorial garden. It is dedicated to the memory of Haeng Ung Lee- the Taekwondo Grandmaster- who founded the American Taekwondo Association in Little Rock in the 1970s.

After that it was back in the car to Alma, AR- the self-dubbed Spinach capital of the world to see their Popeye Statue.

Their downtown street was a literal ghost town. I’d say at least 20-30 storefronts and buildings- all closed and empty, the only building still open was the Alma public library.

We continued on to Van Buren which had a very active downtown area. Lots of old buildings to see.

Kegan looped the car around so I could capture the amazingness of a Papa John’s in an old Pizza Hut building. Ha

It is interesting to see what these old pizza huts get repurposed into.

Finally we arrived in Ft Smith, Arkansas- which I have to say was my favorite of the Arkansas towns- we didn’t explore anything on this trip, but I think I could spend a long weekend here exploring the area. I’d recommend a stop for anyone driving through.

We just wanted salad for dinner so we ordered salads from Texas Roadhouse outside our hotel and called it a night. Nothing exciting on the dinner front. Back on the road tomorrow across Oklahoma!