walkabout day 38 -- and done

Home Again. Home Again. Where the allergies grow.

After another grueling 7 hours of driving I'm back in S.Fe. Arizona does go on much longer than absolutely necessary and it is always a relief to see those red mesa-cliffs at the AZ/NM border. Through judicious use of my accelerator pedal I got 22.3 mpg at 68 mph (at 'normal' ++75 speeds it would be less than 16 mpg so I'm quite proud of my achievement) all the way from Flagstaff to Santa Fe. The last little bit of I-25 was the only section where the other drivers seemed to take this as an affront.

And speaking of Flagstaff. I do not recommend the Hotel Monte Vista on a date-night. Revels from the three bars on the lower floors drifted up to my second story room until about 3AM when the police cruisers with their flashing lights finally cleared the streets. I think my corner was the only one in greater Flagstaff to require such attention as the distribution of excitement falls precipitously if one strolls a block in any direction.

Standby for image updates to the last weeks' posts as I now have a real keyboard and internet connection with which to play..... processing .... processing .... done.

walkabout day almost over

Gdm tablet entry. On the plus side it's connected to something. Which is more than I can say for the hotel's !free wireless internet!

In Flag(half)staff's Monte Vista Hiptel. Sorta shabby-hip but with martinis and a full espresso bar. Thus Not to Shabby. Parking is an issue however. Almost home.........

Some snapshots from my Mojave-Flagstaff drive:

no potable water at the first I-40 rest-stop

apparently everyone felt like me at the second I-40 rest-stop

walkabout day 36

Made Mojave after gorgeous drive on hwy41 out of Yosemite.

walkabout day 35

Just another day in national park paradise.

I took a tourist-tour of the Valley. Here's a few typical vistas...

(photos when the internet clears it's obstructions):

photographers

a more cuter photographer

and yet more photographers, re-entering my tour bus

me, older, there, waiting to re-enter my tour bus, in the distance

I should note that our tour guide was also, wait for it, a poet/artist/photographer, who mentioned his website at the beginning of our drive-about...

Then I had dinner at the Ahwahnee Hotel which "shines as Yosemite National Park's distinctive AAA® Four-Diamond hotel. Known for its magnificent façade, and architecture..." Which it in fact is/does, although the food and service is approximately pedestrian for it's stature the setting closes the negotiations on an up note.

(more photos when the internet clears whatever it is doing this time)

sunset at the Awahanee Hotel

Then "home" to my more pedestrian Yosemite Lodge, to sleep it off until I drive to Mojave tomorrow.

walkabout day 34

Yo! Semite!

Made it here before dark even though I took the non-optimal route. It turns out that route 132, after one exits the environs of greater Molesto, is just fine. It just takes a bit longer to wind through the winding foothills and then the ultra-winding hills until you get to the loopatious mountains of route 120 and the entry to the cliff-defying road to Yosemite's valley of lodging preserves.

I wound around until just before sunset on winding roads to the Lodge (NOT the Awanhee, the exclusively preferred spot of the upper classes where I will try to have dinner tomorrow, but the more expansively preferred spot of the screamingly middle class hallway children) and settled in with a photo:

not half-dome, but what the heck, from my terrace

(Still having issues with full access to SillyValley's idea of the internet, so I will try to back-post more photos in the near future.)

Anyway the forest around route 120's north access is devastated by last year's fire and almost entirely completely dead. I first thought it was extensive beetle damage but the trunks of the trees are burned so the fire must have spread through the understory, killed the trees, and then left them for next year's holocaust. Remind me to stay out of California this summer...

walkabout day 33

Winding downnnnnnnnnn.....

Walk in Jasper Ridge then Indian food with Brooke and Deanna. To Yosemite tomorrow -- actually today, because I forgot to report last night....

Addendaisma:

Brooke and Deanna, typical pose

Brooke and Natasha, ritual tick removal from cat

Disappointingly, I missed the more typical Natasha pose of screaming bloody murder over having to witness the ritual removal procedure. At sixteen she's not exactly Florence Nightingale material...

walkabout day 33

Another day another set of nearly useless gdm tablet interactions. Too hard to describe while using the gdm tablet keyboard simulator...

I did manage to visit PaulD at Stanford and RobB in Montara, so all is not yet lost. Yet.

Another in home meal with Brooke and daughter. Planned return through Yosemite starts Weds.