But so far it is just small things. Staying on top of them and fixing them before they turn into bigger things will assure a much better chance of many more years and miles of reliable transportation.
One of the last couple of days neither one of us even got out of our pajamas until almost four in the afternoon. We would not have even done it then were it not for me getting a wild hair and telling Cyndee to get herself together so I could take her out to dinner.
We went into Winslow and stopped in at an historic landmark, the La Posada Inn. It was one of the last and maybe grandest Harvey House built.
The front entrance is less than grand, but once inside it is a real "wow".
Like many Harvey Houses it was built track-side to the Santa Fe line. Although there are no trains in the picture, this line sees 90 trains a day. It was more of a rarity to get a picture without a train than with one.
Since the railroad was the primary delivery point for people to the hotel, the back of the hotel was more impressive and inviting than the front.
But inside was the real treat. We planned dinner for the Turquoise Room, it usually requires reservations but we were there at 5pm sharp, opening time, and were able to get seated next to a window that overlooked a croquet field and the passing trains.
The entrance was into a lobby of sorts, more like a large hallway. And there were about a half-dozen of these large hallways, all essentially a museum of their own.
The reception area is a bit of a quirky set-up. You have to go to the gift shop cash register and check in, schlepping your luggage past racks of dream catchers, kachina dolls and jewelry cases full of turquoise.
This outstanding old hotel was almost lost to the wrecking ball. By 1957, after only 27 years since being built, it had fallen out of favor as a hotel and was converted into an office building for Santa Fe Railroad. Almost all the original fine décor was stripped out and auctioned off for the conversion. Santa Fe did little to conserve or preserve the old building, it was nearly demolished several times over the years, the latest threat came when Santa Fe moved out for good in 1994. A private investor got involved and formed an LLC to raise funds and restore the old hotel to its original purpose. $12 million later and you have a great old hotel on the national register. A brochure said that reservations are necessary as the hotel is full nearly every night.
Our dinner in the Turquoise Room was time well spent, if not a little on the expensive side. We had an appetizer that was a sacred Hopi bread with hummus. The bread was not anything that you would expect from something called bread. It was green and rolled up like a burrito, but the layers of this corn-based bread were as thin and flaky as you would expect from a French pastry. It was far too fragile to dip in the hummus, while gently holding the roll of bread in one hand you had to spoon the hummus on carefully with the other.
The dinner that followed was just as interesting and delicious. It was a dish called Killer Grilled Vegetable Plate. The things that the chef did with vegetables was amazing. We went through about nine different variations of grilled vegetables and huge freight trains lumbering by about every ten minutes.
As I write this it has become fully dark outside and Cyndee has just informed me that the sky is clear. After nearly two months on the road and I forget how many campgrounds out in the boonies, we have not had a night where the sky is clear and light pollution minimal. Tonight everything has come together for some serious star gazing. There is a break in the monsoon and not only is there no clouds in the sky, but the air is dry and haze-free too. After a few minutes our eyes adjust to the dark and before us lay a carpet of stars. At first the Milky Way appears as a wispy, thin cloud but the more our eyes adjust to the dark the more pronounced the spiral arm of our galaxy becomes. Outstanding! The desert is calm, only the slightest breeze and a perfect temperature. The end to our stargazing is brought on by cricks in our necks.
Today we were supposed to move to Flagstaff as a staging area for the trip to The North Rim. But after a lot of searching for campgrounds in Flagstaff we found that the price for a sight at anyplace that could accommodate us was outside what we find as acceptable. We just decided to add two more nights to our stay here at Homolovi and drive an extra 50 miles on moving day.
But we still have to lay in a stock of supplies before leaving for the remoteness of the north side of the Grand Canyon. Winslow has a Walmart where we can get access to some of the specialty items we like for our diet plan. Today we bought eight boxes of Special K Protein cereal, a slug of Mio flavors and a whole basket full of paper-goods like towels, plates and tissue. We are stuffing things anywhere we can find to put it. Tomorrow we will get over to Flagstaff and buy our large quantity items, mostly frozen food like chicken, fish, beef and vegetables. We have three containers that we can keep cold food in. But they are going to need a little help to keep things frozen until we get to our freezer at the campground on the North Rim. To do this we will find someplace that we can get dry ice and line our two freezer bags and one ice chest.
We are also going to buy as many cases of bottled water as the back seat of Big Gulp will hold. The bed of the truck is already full of junk, that is why the back seat is going to be the water pantry. We'll get quite a bit of what we need bought in this one trip but we know that there will still have to be some long trips to the grocery store in Utah to replenish fresh foods.
Our volunteer coordinator said that we can come a day earlier than planned, the camp host site is going to be open the afternoon of the 31st so we are going to go ahead and get in there. My next post will probably be from the North Rim.
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