It feels like we are now really entering the heart of the Great American Road Trip! Pistachio ice cream eating at Alamogordo Pistachio Land before noon ✅ Hiking around the dramatic and highly photogenic White Sands National Park ✅ Taking the natural entrance (a spiraling walk down one and a […]
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Who says the sky is safe? Dinah and I can tell you that the New Mexico sky is full of white trails going every which way. The one day with blue skies unsullied by white lines crisscrossing the sky, we ran into a woman in downtown Santa Fe who assured us that the government had […]
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(By: Dinah and Steve) Georgia Okeefe once said “If you ever go to New Mexico… it will itch you for the rest of your life”. New Mexico may be poor economically but we think it is one of the richest states in the country when it comes to landscape, culture, and people. And Santa Fe, […]
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Dinah and I went to Los Alamos, and it really gives you pause so I’m afraid it has made me serious for a moment. “Now we are all sons of bitches” is what test director Kenneth Bainbridge said, on July 16, 1945, when Trinity exploded with the force of 25 kilotons in the New Mexico […]
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We are rounding out our last days in Santa Fe, however, they are still full of wonder and intrigue. Here are a few of our recent amusements and explorations. 1. Willow Plant Spiritual Communication Class. How quintessential is it to take a class on the properties and medicinal benefits of willow in Santa Fe? I […]
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I have fallen in love with the brilliant, traditional, older pottery of New Mexico and the Southwest. Pottery has been part of the Native American culture for millennia. It was made for any number of uses such as making bread dough, cooking in, storing food or water, ceremonial purposes, etc. Different clays local to each […]
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A caption at the New Mexico History Museum reads, “In the late 1800’s, painters and writers, weary of the materialism and industrialization of the urban world, found new inspiration in New Mexico’s landscape, light, and traditional cultures.” Georgia O’Keeffe’s relocation to New Mexico in 1949 is a prominent example of the continuation of these motivations, […]
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Despite the unfortunate presentation of the “Reversing Manifest Destiny” painting above, it represents quite a powerful statement with the Native Americans, Spanish, and buffalo roaring back. There is an incredible mix of cultures in New Mexico that appear to co-exist in acceptance. According to the Economic Development Department of New Mexico, the current population of […]
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Yesterday, we left the United States for Chimayo. The journey started with some evil darkness when we couldn’t help but observe cross after cross after cross along the road passing through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains indicating someone had died. We also passed up people who seemed like pilgrims walking along the desolate highway far […]
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(By: Dinah and Steve) We’ve been told that New Mexico not only enchants, but that it also makes people not want to leave. Indeed, there are charms galore here that infiltrate all of one’s senses. The scale of Santa Fe is such that small, free, low-key music venues open up in places like El Rey. […]
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Our Santa Fe friend Sheri said “go to Tent Rocks National Monument.” So we did. Today we drove 45 minutes to the monument gate where we were summarily rejected. It ends up that since 2024, Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument is jointly managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Cochita tribe .. […]
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It is not particularly surprising that we feel enthusiastic about New Mexico, and about Santa Fe in particular–many people do. Aesthetically, Santa Fe is stunning. I can remember when the book, Santa Fe Style, came out in 1986 and how mesmerizing it was. A good part of this is about the natural environment–the crisp blue […]
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Sometimes when traveling, you’re just lucky. Today, Dinah and I were headed up I-25, needed lunch and literally stumbled across the San Marcos Cafe (thanks, Duck Duck Go), about 15 miles from Santa Fe. Walking through the door we were immediately immersed in perfect New Mexico atmosphere and a live guitarist. On a break, the […]
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One of our objectives for the road trip is to connect with friends and family who are spread out across the country—and there are a lot of them! Being able to have conversations with (or even stay with) people we adore has made everything richer so far. Sadly, there are a few folks that I […]
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Our friend Mary was worried about our sanity, when finding out we were spending the night in this rather pathetic city (sorry, Blythe people), even though we were literally only arriving late in the evening and leaving first thing the next morning. Maybe Mary was right, the one memorable thing about Blythe was that our […]
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(By: Dinah and Steve) We met Dinah’s Swedish friend, Lisa Liedgren, in Joshua Tree for coffee where she was in the midst of an artist residency at BOXO. (See more on this below.) After ~28 years in the USA, she is moving back to her homeland of Sweden. We asked her what she would enjoy […]
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Saturday, Dinah and I attended a gathering of college friends from my fraternity at UCLA, most of whom I’ve not seen in decades. Indeed, some since the 1980’s. It was incredible to catch up with those who I was so close to while we were all still forming … meaning many foolish things done while […]
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Morro Bay (Central Coast California) has a big rock, where evidently a hawk and a raven once destroyed a two-headed serpent-monster called Taliyekatapelta (say it aloud, I dare you) as he wrapped his body around the rock’s base. This, at least, according to Salinan tribal news. We non-native Americans are banned from the rock because […]
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What happens when three pregnant seals land on a quiet beach? In 1991, three elephant seals landed at Pierdras Blancas, on the central coast of California, for the first time and established a colony. A protected species, there are now 22,000 mating and birthing along an 8 miles stretch of coast. Males come back down […]
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Reluctantly giving in to the selfie, here’s Steve and me on the Big Sur coastline.
Why do we need this much plastic to grow these strawberries? To be honest, they didn’t even taste that great even though they looked quite beautiful. How is it that these days, even things that ARE real, sometimes still feel like a synthetic experience?
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We woke up at our inn in Trinidad and shared breakfast with a Texas couple on their 30th anniversary visiting the redwoods to see the big trees (“we don’t have those in Texas”). They were sixth generation ranchers from Mason County living on 800 acres that had been in the family since the 1850s (it […]
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Gone from Family and Eugene and off to California. We assumed Eugene used to be Old Growth country. Wrong. The Kalapuyan people used controlled burning to manage the area as a prairie with oak trees. Mainstay of their diet were roots such as Camus and Wapato (“Indian Potato) but there were literally dozens of plants […]
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I’m obsessed with the overstory in the redwoods, that there is a whole ecosystem living above what we can see in the top branches of these trees (300 feet up!)–where another set of plants and animals live–huckleberry bushes, rhododendrons, salamanders that never touch the earth, birds in soft mossy birdnests… These plants and animals are […]
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In this automated AI age it’s so nice to see physical/tactile industry. Also, somehow, I could see this scene remaining forever as a Dia art exhibition. In addition, Steve says that, sadly, these are most likely American trees headed to China signaling our status as a 3rd world nation.
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We’re out of here! Embarking on a trip across America to see if we can recapture our full love of America. We lived here in the US. Then we lived in Finland. We liked it. In many ways better. Now we’re back with our friends, family, and home country. There is much we like but […]
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