The Place Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder Built

During the years I lived in Ogden, Salt Lake City and San Francisco, I (sometimes we) took several trips over the years across Nevada and on one such trip, after having driven by this place just outside of Winnemucca, NV, numerous times without stopping, I had a change of heart, turned my car around and drove the messed up dirt road to get to Thunder Mountain, Nevada.  You can see it from the highway, but it doesn't look very appealing.  It just looks ... odd.  Up close, it looks ... still odd. 

It has a draw, though.  To me, it was like searching those hidden-picture puzzles that I think are so clever.  This was a few years ago, so maybe it's in a better state of repair these days.  The website certainly looks much prettier than what I remember of my visit to this lonely little roadside oddity and it tells of restoration, along with some background and history of Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder, the man who built the monument.

The story is quite interesting.  Tragic and mesmerizing, if you're into that at all.

http://www.thundermountainmonument.com/

A Little Bit of Enchantment (More Road Trip Pageantry)

This is the previously-mentioned trip to New Mexico through Ouray--nothing about Ouray in this post, but I sure like thinking about Ouray and saying it correctly which is "Your Ray."

"When the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe was completed in 1878, there was no way to access the choir loft twenty-two feet above. Carpenters were called in to address the problem, but they all concluded access to the loft would have to be via ladder as a staircase would interfere with the interior space of the small Chapel.

Legend says that to find a solution to the seating problem, the Sisters of the Chapel made a novena to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. On the ninth and final day of prayer, a man appeared at the Chapel with a donkey and a toolbox looking for work. Months later, the elegant circular staircase was completed, and the carpenter disappeared without pay or thanks.

After searching for the man (an ad even ran in the local newspaper) and finding no trace of him, some concluded that he was St. Joseph himself, having come in answer to the sisters' prayers."

Or, maybe it was Homer Smith.

"The design was innovative for the time and some of the design considerations still perplex experts today.

The staircase has two 360 degree turns and no visible means of support. Also, it is said that the staircase was built without nails—only wooden pegs. Questions also surround the number of stair risers relative to the height of the choir loft and about the types of wood and other materials used in the stairway's construction."

I like it because it's so pretty.  And shiney.

All of the pictures above this point were taken in Santa Fe.  This one below was just somewhere on the road, 

and these flamingos are denizens of Farmington, NM, where we spent several years when I was a child,

and spent a lot of my sofa pennies on these treats.

I took the pictures of the backs of my traveling companions while they thought I was off enjoying some little tourist attraction or other...little did they know, I enjoyed watching them more.  (Brother, sister, sister's grandson.)

Breakfast in Cuba, pronounced Kyuba and not Cooba. 

Anyone who's ever traveled that route might wonder how we came to be in Cuba at breakfast time.  Either coming or going, it's not situated strategically for a breakfast stop.  (I'm going to be nice and not call it the little pee-spot that some might consider it to be.)

See, what happened is, we had planned to lodge overnight in Farmington on the way down, but couldn't settle on an appropriate place to stay.  If you recall, our schedule was a tad bit compromised by having blinked at the Moab turnoff earlier in the day and we had already decided we would just "play it by ear" when it came to pulling in for sleep somewhere.  Free spirits, the lot of us! 

We people always, always and most usually, spend the night in Farmington when making that trip to Roswell from Ogden.  This night, however, we weren't sure so we hadn't made reservations.  That meant we had to drive around and see what was available.  Armstrong driving around is something for the books, trust me.  If you have four of us in a car, you're going to have at minimum five opinions about every decision (but Kaid is so easy-going this time it was five decisions divided among three people) with each opinion usually beginning like this:  "I don't care either way--you guys decide.  I'm just along for the ride." 

Condense the story and you have no vacancies, seedy vacancies, let's -just-check-the-one-across-the-street-and-come-back-here-if-we-don't-like-it vacancies that can quickly become no vacancies, and then strange places with strange people hanging around in the lobby and scary people pointing "gun-fingers" at us.  FOR NO REASON.  (I might need to get new glasses, because I thought they were just greeting us until Kaid asked why I waved at someone pretending to shoot a gun.)

We decided to make a break for Cuba instead.  At least we called ahead to check for rooms in the only place open there at that hour.  But not open for long--we got there on the nose before it was closed for the evening.  Got there through a rainstorm, might I just add.  Got there to share a couple of rooms with a couple of other life forms.  Well, not really life forms as they lay scattered and dead in the windowsills, but at least the ones in NM aren't as big as the ones in Texas. 

Hence and ergo--a very good breakfast in Cuba, New Mexico.  You can tell by the happily glowing faces in the picture that we weathered the little setback quite well.  Breakfast was on its way and we were hungry and in New Mexico where you just can't get a bad meal.   I think it has something to do with the soil where the peppers grow.

If you play your cards right, someday I might just post my mom's recipe for New Mexico stacked enchiladas.  Don't bother expecting a picture of them, though.  No time for cameras and picture-taking when Nancy's enchilada supper is being inhaled. 






 

Have It Ouray! (Speaking of Road Trips)

When my brother, sister and her grandson, and I took a trip to Roswell to see Mom, we accidently detoured through Red Mountain Pass in Colorado. Somebody blinked at the Moab, UT turnoff and by the time we figured that out, we decided not to turn back. The clerk at the filling station said it would be a beautiful drive through Red Mountain, just a little longer and we would surely enjoy the scenery. We drove through Ouray, CO, and I remarked that it reminded me of pictures I had seen of the Swiss Alps.

It took my breath away. Nevermind that I had traveled through there before--when I was a young child and we lived in that part of Colorado--it was surprisingly stunning. But, my brother the driver was not happy at having missed the shorter route and this new way seemed to never end. He was driven to get to Roswell and not waste any more time than we had to. I, on the other hand, wanted to stop and take pictures at every curve in the road. At one particularly striking pass, my sister looked back at me without saying a word aloud, but with a look that said, "Uh-oh--now THAT is a once-in-a-lifetime photo op that you're just going to have to do without." Then we got to Silverton and I wanted to take more pictures of yet another charming little mining town.

All I could do was pronounce, "I'm going to come here on vacation sometime." My brother answered, "You are on vacation and you are here."

Well, yeah...I guess.    We made it to my mom's, which was, after all, the point of the trip and had a wonderful time visiting with her and we even managed to work out travel details that allowed us another little detour to Santa Fe on the way home. That's another post with more pictures.

That was in the spring or early summer, and true to my impulsive nature, I announced that I was going to take a little trip back to Ouray, Colorado, the Switzerland of America just a few short months later. We had a four-day weekend and rented a van to make it easier and roomier for little ones. Katy and Jon, my neice Jillian and her two children, and I drove down in the van, my sister and her grandson came in their own car and we had a FANTABULOUS long weekend in October in Ouray and surrounding areas.

Had the run of a couple of suites in a Victorian hotel that was just getting ready to close for the season. A five-and-dime-type store was going out of business in town there, and I can't remember exactly what I purchased, but I do remember it was a great deal! Of course, we tried the local cuisine, including a candy store where they make cookies with left-over candy bits thrown in the dough. The regular hot springs were closed, but the clothing-optional hot springs were open. Actually, not really clothing-optional--that's just what we called them in California--here, it was just plain "nudist" because if you wanted to wear your clothes, you couldn't. We traveled to Telluride and Silverton and had a couple of other accidental detours on the way back through Gateway, Ut., which was another eye-opening experience for me.

The following pictures are a few of my favorites and are an example of the kinds of things I like to take pictures of on a road trip. The muddy-looking river is not muddy, but stained with iron tailings and my camera couldn't quite figure out how to get the true color. In real life that creek was very rust-colored.

Days Of Auld Lang Syne

Well, maybe not so long since.

Let me take this time right here and now to say for anyone who doesn't already know, I DO NOT MAKE NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS and I don't often keep track of my life in increments from January 1st to Dec. 31st, so naturally, I don't think I've ever spoken or written, or caused to be spoken or written, any semblance of "the year in retrospect." Usually for me, the occurance of certain remarkable events tend to order my memories and relfections until the whole lot of them become so jumbled in the passing of time, I often don't even remember how old I am. Sometimes, periods that I call various seasons of me or seasons of some aspect or other of me, can take quite some time to fade into days of "old long since."

For example, I moved to Alaska smack dab in the middle of...last summer was it? and that event has been lasting until now, which is this winter. This, though, I so cleverly began to call my Season of This is Big. And it keeps getting bigger. 

Howsomever, on the 1st day of 2012 in the Year of Our Lord, here I am indulging in a look back at the previous year! Oh well, another thing those who know me know is that I succumb to at least a few contradictions of thought, expression and behavior.

First thing that comes to mind is the first road trip of 2011 when my kids (kid and kid-in-law) accompanied my mother and me on a trip from Ogden, UT to Roswell, NM via Ft. Collins, CO. My mother had come up to visit children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, as she sometimes does. My brother drove to her home in NM and the two of them had their own road trip up to Ogden, but that's their story and I can't tell it, not having been there. I can imagine it, as we take that trip a lot, but I think mother and son had some unusual alone time that they really enjoyed. When it was time for her to go back, the three of us took her home, stopping at another of her children's home in CO.

Katy and Jon with Mom on her porch in Roswell, NM

Not the first New Mexico road trip for any of us.  And certainly, Katy and I have travelled --well, --- plenty, I must say. 
Then, because of a very ugly, mean, appalling, damaging and did I say mean? political upheaval at work, I began looking for a new job.  Now I have this job.  In a whirl, Katy, Jon and I were on the road again, trekking across Canada for another almost week-long road trip to Anchorage, AK.  You've seen those posts too.  In Canada, I met up with a friend I hadn't seen since the early 1980s, if we're going to count in years, and I did manage to spend at least a couple of weeks in Helena, MT where I used to work summers, but won't be able to do that anymore, for a while.

I have imagined myself living/working/being changed in a number of regions of the country, maybe even in another country, such as Korea again, but somehow Alaska never really entered the picture.  When Katy would talk about wanting to travel to Alaska, I could let myself imagine how fun that might be -- for her.  When people would tell me how much they enjoyed Alaskan cruises, I thought it was great -- for them.

Also, living in Ogden, I was beginning to feel settled, rooted, if you will, for about the second time in my life as an adult, the first being our decade stint in San Francisco before another out-of-the-blue event sent us wheeling across Nevada headed for Utah.

Having experienced not just a few significant events in my life, facing many unexpected changes, challenges and pounding-on-the-door types of opportunities, it must speak volumes, as they say, that this coming-to-Alaska season is the one I choose to call "This is Big."   Maybe one reason is that I'm not as young as I used to be when I relished and felt strong and capable enough to handle the interjection of surprising and demanding changes in my life, and another reason could be that I don't think I was all that sure about leaving my only-child daughter so far away, however grown and happily married she may be. Still not overly thrilled with the separation, to be honest.  I do not remember a time in our lives together that I wished for her to hurry and grow up and leave me rattling and echoing around in that proverbial empty nest.

Other loved ones are also a lot further away, and if you'll notice, I spent the holidays away from family this year!

Part of this job now is to travel to rural, bush, village Alaska to provide low-vision services across the state, and you can read in previous posts about the other road trips and air trips I have taken so far.  I've taken other trips, too, just on my own to make sure I get to see something I think I want to see. 

What I would really like to be able to do in this blog is write about people I meet, but because of professional confidentiality, I can't so that so much. 

This month I am headed out to the Eastern Aleutian Islands--Sand Point, King Cove, Dutch Harbor and Unalaska.  Maybe I'll even be able to tour the Peter Pan Cannery.  Take some pictures, maybe get weathered-in and have to spend some extra time.  I've been told that it is not uncommon for people to not be able to get out of the area once they make it in.  Wind.  It has a tendency to make and keep flying unpredictable.  They have cautioned me to take some books to read, just in case.

Sometime "this year," I will also take a trip to the Pribilofs (used to be called Northern Fur Seal Islands.) 

I think I am going shopping for a warmer coat and maybe some other warmer articles of clothing, although last night at the New Year's downtown celebration, standing in the cold on the snow watching the fireworks, the only part of my body that didn't stay warm was my face. (Well, and my knuckles because I couldn't take pictures with my mittens on.)  A ski mask?

All in the name of having experiences.

Great Health And Every Good Blessing To You!

Happy New Year!

I have to say it, and love doing so, even though I think it seems a bit counter-intuitive to celebrate new beginnings in the dead of winter like this. And how is it that we treat the passing of a year like it's a thing rather than a concept? As though the year itself brought good things and bad into our lives.

Nevertheless, as we set our hopeful faces toward 2012: 

"... there's a hand my trusty friend,
And give us a hand o' thine."