H.o.p. and the Very Large Array, 2008
You’ve no idea how much fun it was to introduce H.o.p. to the Very Large Array. And me too. I’ve wanted to visit it for years. Looking at the map, however, I’d thought it would be miles off course and that we’d miss it. Instead, it was right off the highway.
So, what we did on our trip.
Blazed through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico in 3 days in order to visit the Painted Desert on the morning of the 4th day.
Visited Yellow Horse again where I picked up a Mexican blanket for my desk chair to replace one that a friend brought back for me from Mexico about 15 years ago. As usual, we bought a couple of cheap tourist kachinas for H.o.p. These two were the cheapest we’ve purchased and didn’t survive the trip.
Rather than go up to the Grand Canyon, this time we toured the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest and the old Painted Desert Inn. We did not tour the Museum of the Americas as it was closed (drat). Of course we came away with a box (purchased) of guaranteed Arizona petrified wood, sold at one of the Fred Harvey stores at the Petrified Forest. There are two Fred Harvey stores and there are two museums at the park, one at each entrance. We visited both, watched a movie made for the visitors, purchased educational posters and talked at length with two rangers who seemed eager to talk and were informative. One of the rangers effused over the biodiversity of the area, that it is the most varied it seems in the continental U.S., but we saw no animals there this time around. Marty and I visited previously about 15 years ago and did see antelope then.
It was windy. Real windy. Blow you off a cliff style windy. I almost lost my new hat. As did H.o.p.
As of this trip, we both are now proud owners of western style leather crush ’em hats. We wore them continually and they kept our faces nice and shaded from the sun. I’m quite fond of my hat and will likely be wearing it around Atlanta all summer.
On the advice of a clerk at a Fred Harvey store, we drove the back way to Sedona, through Peyson, which was lovely, the mountains still shining white with ice in places. Met a large herd of elk after dusk. And I mean a large herd. Had we met one from that herd on the road, rather than all having just crossed and to the side of it, I would not be writing this now. There were at least a couple of dozen of the beasts standing arm’s length from the car. We also saw a lot of deer on the trip but the herd of elk was an experience.
If you want to open a golf course, there seem to be several back woods Arizona desert counties, with no visible water supply or tourist opportunities, that are eager to sell all their land for golf courses. We saw sign after sign hopeful of attracting purchasers of golf lots.
In Cottonwood, we visited a galleried show in which my mother was showing three pieces of art.
Did the Out of Africa Safari, where we saw a snake show and a show of tigers swimming with humans and hugging them. Yes. They seemed to be very intelligent humans, quite trusting in their ability to tell when a tiger needed alone time and we hope that no one makes the news in an unpleasant way. None of us in our party had expected the “Tiger Splash” to be anything but tigers frolicking in water and would have been every bit as pleased with that. We don’t require human sacrifice to have a good time.
Did the museum at Jerome, which is the old Douglas Mansion. H.o.p. loved the toy model train exhibit that replicated old Jerome and its copper mines and did many pics of his own of that. Of course we bought a couple of rocks with copper in them.
Spent an afternoon in some of the art museums in Sedona just to see what passes for art there. I don’t care for $21,000 New Age Mystic art (I do find it fascinating that people will pay $21,000 for New Age mystic art) but I liked the shop in Old Cottonwood selling hippy clothes where I picked up some great hippy shirts. They still smell strongly of incense.
In Phoenix we did Taliesin West again, which was quite a different tour from the one we did a couple of years ago, this one conducted by an architect and Taliesin graduate with a good sense of humor.
Did the Heard Museum again where this time they had a great (and quite large) student art show which H.o.p. enjoyed. There was this time a nice large gallery of modern “Inuit” art and a gallery of art produced by individuals of mixed heritage reflecting their experience.
In Scottsdale we also visited the Stillwater Railroad Park where we toured the Roald Amundsen Pullman Car that served presidents from Herbert Hoover to Dwight Eisenhower. We rode the miniature train as well and ate chocolate ice cream.
The last night in Phoenix was a relaxed dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and a visit to a nearby bookstore in the open air mall.
We drove through the Superstition mountains on our way back into New Mexico and visited the Very Large Array just before sunset, fortunate enough to arrive before the visitor’s center was closed. We were the only tourists there and couldn’t walk two feet without several jack rabbits leaping out of the nearby brush and staring at us. Literally hundreds of jack rabbits. There were also antelope and deer. And cows. The cows congregated in the road for a bit deliberating on whether or not to let us through to The Very Large Array.
I made a point that we view the night stars near Trinity, site of the first atomic bomb detonation. For miles upon miles upon miles there were no visible lights except for as vivid a milky way as H.o.p. has ever seen. He was overwhelmed.
Our last stop before heading back was the International U.F.O. Museum in Roswell, which we first visited just over a year ago. H.o.p. had just as good a time now as then, though the Cover Up Cafe was now shuttered.
I did my yoga throughout the trip, despite the heavy driving, usually managing to fit in my usual hour and a half a day. At the beginning, when not confident I’d be able to do the full hour and a half in the evening, I sometimes began with 30 minutes in the morning, meaning there were a few days when I did two hours a day. A couple of days toward the end of the trip I was only able to do a half hour late at night, but I managed to not miss a single day. Even if I was exhausted and ready to fall over, once I got on the mat and began the yoga I’d feel a relaxed restoration of energy yet would have no trouble getting to sleep after the routine.
It could be weird, however, doing the yoga in all these different hotel rooms because once down on the mat I’d sometimes find the floor was off level, and every room had a different thickness and spring to the carpet underneath which also affected my practice.
At a month and five days, yoga seems to be on its way to becoming a comfortable habit, a routine that I don’t want to miss a day of because I wonder what I will be learning from it in a week, five weeks, five months, and because I simply enjoy the daily meditation with its physical component. At this point it’s a little like watching shifting sand. The sand is going to shift daily of its own accord (of course) and intermixing with it now is the yoga which will have some effect, but what exactly will be that effect I’m not certain. It’s like witnessing yoga as an influencer and follower on subtle levels, it inviting attention for now on the minuscule rather than on any larger picture.
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