Well. What more can you say. Osama is killed under Obama. There is some poetic justice or at least some poetry in that, I suppose. Finally and final enough.
I write this while sitty in bed in Jerome, Arizona. A haunted hotel of dubious past is where we chose to spend the night last night. It is perched high on the side of hill that might overlook the tailings of a copper mine. And it is a big hangout for bikers. The picture above is the saloon with our hotel on top!!
When we checked in yesterday, the streets were full of motorcycles and a band that sang out of tune was downstairs at the corner bar (located below our hotel) wailing away. Oh, dear. Luckily we had a dinner date with a friend from Paso that I last saw in 1963 who now lives in Cornville. Had a great evening with her reminding me of everything I had forgotten. Scary. Fun. At the end of the evening, her husband, Craig, asked if we remembered where we were when JFK was assassinated. We spent some time talking about those type of events. Then we hugged good bye and Ray and I headed for the car.
A humdinger of a motorcycle!!
When I checked the iphone, I had a notification from HuffPost that Osama was dead. Wow. How prescient was that conversation. We will never forget where we were and what we were doing when it was announced.
So, then we had breakfast at Alice’s Restaurant in Jerome. It was fabulous. Look, I’ll show you!!
Charming and wonderful. We highly recommend it.
Then after breakfast, we checked out and headed for Canyon de Chelly in northern AZ on the Navajo Indian reservation. We let Glenda, our GPS unit, find our way. And we drove on two lane roads most of the way. Beautiful scenery punctuated by very poor neighborhoods and run down properties. Very sad to think about how the Indians have suffered and continue to do so to this very day in some locations.
So, here we are. Tomorrow we take a private tour with an Indian guide for three hours. It should be spectacular.
Well, the day wasn’t quite done. We walked over to Garcia’s Restaurant which is within the hotel lobby area. After perusing the menu, I talked Ray into splitting the fajitas. We had a server that looked like a linebacker with a moonstone face. Not sure what her name was. She was very efficient. When we ordered a glass of wine, she was sure to tell us it was non-alcoholic. No booze allowed on the reservation. We ordered it anyway. Uhm, chardonnay that tasted like a cross between apple juice and skunk perhaps. First time Ray has left any wine in his glass. The second thing was, when she brought the fajitas, they were hot off the grill, spitting and sizzling as she glided across the room to deliver them. Then the fire alarm went off…howling at about 250 decibels (I’m pretty sure it woke up the people in room 275 who were taking a nap after driving 450 miles to get to this place). And did I mention the billowing smoke.? That added just the touch that we needed to complete the scene.
But I digress. All eyes were on us and the smoking cast iron pan of chicken, onions, and peppers. People kept staring at us (siren still screeching ) until finally, the rear door to the restaurant was flung open and the alarm fell into sudden silence. Totally embarrassed, Ray sang out, “ Why are you all still here?”. Laughter erupted. Then there was a mass exodus (a slight exaggeration, perhaps) as all the oldsters grabbed their jackets and vamanosed!! We howled. And then Ray said, “don’t forget to add this to your blog!!”.
Really, you can’t make this stuff up.
Oh, and did I mention yesterday?
When we left Borrego Springs, I hit a dove. Well, actually, in my own self-defense…the dove hit me. Looking in the rear view mirror, all I saw was feathers. Oh, dear. It was terrible. I imagined a bird stuck to the front of the car (sort of in a cross shape, guilt, guilt). But, alas, we pulled over and looked but the dove was gone…evidently it had flown to birdie heaven.
Rather than backtrack to I-10, we took back roads and got to see the sand dunes just past Brawley. A must-see in our opinion. And the road which connects Brawley to Blythe (now there is a descriptive name) has about 100 dips in it. The only thing lacking were Berma Shave signs. And cars. There were hardly any cars so as we took on the dips going faster than we should, a few “yippees” and “oh, my gods” could be shouted in a full-throated sort of manner for full and total enjoyment of the occupants of our car!!
Windy, wild, forlorn. Makes our dunes look small in comparison.
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