UFO sightings in Roswell, and Even Stranger Sights in Nature

Yesterday we made a trip through the flatlands of Texas to Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell doesn't have much to recommend itself. In fact, the whole area is pretty flat and a little forlorn. But in 1947 something either did or didn't happen there, which has given this town its very reason for being. It's not enough that there is a UFO museum. There are UFO references everywhere.

In fact, if a flying saucer didn't seem to have landed there once, it's hard to picture what this town would have going for it. It is  like a lot of towns at the intersection of two highways in the middle of some place. You have to go through there, and maybe you have to eat, and walk around too. Maybe, depending on where you have come from, you even have to sleep there. So, to keep a town going, they have to make people like you  pick their little corner,  as opposed to another one.

What Roswell has going for it is this big "controversy" about whether aliens landed there, and whether some people have been abducted by aliens and then returned to earth....and whether or not the US government has covered it all up. It's all a little bit more cheesy than scary, but it makes a good stop in the middle of a long road trip. For your enjoyment and edification, here are some images from the town.

This is what it looks like before you get there 

Window in a Mexican restaurant. I'm sure it's meant to make you want to eat there.

Bob with aliens

There are many kinds of  evidence of what REALLY happened

From Roswell we traveled to Alamogordo New Mexico, which is just outside White Sands National Monument, which just might be the coolest place on earth. Yes of course, this is the area of the  missile range, and the Trinity site where the nuclear bomb was "practiced," and I'm sure a lot of secretive and horrible stuff happened around here. But there is not a lot of that stuff for tourists to see,  and anyway, we came here to see one of the most amazing natural places on earth, the White Sands National Monument. I'm sure all that secretive stuff happened here because this place is seriously remote. It's pretty far from everywhere, and you can't even see most of it because it's government
land.  But what you can see is pretty damned amazing.

The mountains around here have a lot of gypsum in them. This is the stuff sheetrock and drywall are made of. Through a long and elaborate process that takes a very long time, but is very cool, the waters from rains that occur in something of a monsoon season here wash some gypsum crystals from the mountains, across the land, into some pools of water. There used to be big lakes here, but now the water dries up and leaves the crystals behind. Then the wind, which blows with some remarkable force and energy, blows the crystals across the land. They break up into tiny little grains which are finer, and much whiter, than the kinds of quartz crystals that we think of when we think of sand. Because there are these big mountains here, there is no place for this gypsum sand to go, so it just piles up in these amazing dunes. These amazing white sand fields and dunes just go on for miles and miles. Okay, this isn't very good geology, but you get what I mean.

White sand, blue sky 

It's impossible to show a sense of scale

Footprints. They won't be there long

It looks a lot like snow, in a very weird way. The roads at the National Monument are mostly hard packed sand, and not paved, because the sand keeps shifting and the road has to keep moving. There are areas along the road where the sand is piled up by plows and looks just like snow.  But this is one hot place for much of the year, and I am SO grateful we were here in March. I just can't imagine what it would be like to be here in summer. Even now, the whiteness is just blinding. This is the only spectacular natural place, besides the sea, that I have ever had the feeling that whatever I do doesn't matter, because soon it will be erased. I just love that feeling of being so small and inconsequential. It is why I love the ocean most of all. It is, well...BIG. And here is just a land in motion, like the sea is in motion, although this is much more quiet and subtle....and a tiny bit confusing. I fear for people who decide to backpack in there. Everything looks so much like everything else.

In addition to amazing dunes, that you can walk on, and over, for as far as your eye can see, they have created little places where you can pull over in your car and just stop and look at it. And there are picnic places which shelter you from the intense sun and the shifting sand. I think the picnic areas have to be portable, because the sand will keep moving. The picnic shelters look weirdly like sailboats, or like shells.  In addition to walking, there are areas where you can go sledding down the dunes. The Park Service doesn't discourage you, since whatever you do will be gone soon enough.

I love these funny shapes. They are quite functional, too.

This place is something really special. It's not possible to take a decent picture of it with my phone. The BIGNESS and the whiteness just doesn't come through.  You'll have to take my word for it. But the incredible whiteness of the sand, and the blueness of. the sky, is a sight I will never forget.

Austin is Awesome

We had a terrific week in Austin. Bob lived there for five years in the early 1970s, and has always talked about it with warmth and affection. I had always wanted to go, but had been deterred by the fact that it is in the middle of Texas. This first visit showed me everything about why it is a wonderful place to visit, and a great place to live. It also confirmed my impression that is in the middle of Texas, which obviously has its downsides both geographic and political. But, boy, what a fun place to visit. We  found a perfect pace for our visit. We saw a lot of the city, from the glitzy and more sophisticated downtown to some of the edgier, and probably more interesting, neighborhoods that have a more hipster feel. We had a lot of down time, hanging with friends who live there, and  riding our bikes in the beautiful State Park where we stayed. We listened to music in several venues; and we just got a great relaxed feel for the city.

Austin from the bike path around Town Lake. Looks a little bit like Boston, doesn't it?

Among the highlights were walking around the UT campus with Bob as he reminisced about his graduate school days; visiting the LBJ library (isn't it amazing how different a President can start to seem a few decades later?); walking in Lady Bird's Wildflower Center and arboretum;  and going out to the hill country to Salt Lick BBQ, clearly the largest barbecue joint the world has ever seen.

Music happening in a big outdoor space while you wait...and wait...and wait... for a table at Salt Lick

We also visited  probably our favorite brewery of the trip so far, called Hops and Grains. They make some damn fine beer, but you've got to go to Austin to get it. This picture probably tells you everything you need to know.

With art like this, and great beer to boot, something tells me we will be back to Austin.

Our House is a Very Very Very Fine House

A number of people have asked me to explain what kind of trailer we are traveling with, and how our daily life is working when we live in a very small space. I thought I might give a few visual aids.

Our trailer is a 2012 Rockwood Roo. It is 23 feet long when we pull it. This kind of trailer is called a "hybrid," because it is a regular hard-sided travel trailer, but also has tent components. You can leave it unopened (and then it stays 23feet long), but for maximum space you can pull out beds that are covered with tent fabric (in this case a kind of vinyl-ized canvas with a screen layer). There are three of these beds (full size, but not king or queen); one in front, one in back, and one on the side. We sleep in the one that pulls out on the side. We have on occasion slept in the trailer without opening a bed, and that can best be described as "cozy."  We usually open two of the beds, one to sleep in and one just to have extra open space. The advantage of sleeping in them is it gives us a bit of a feeling of "camping" (even though in a warm indoor space like this we aren't really camping), because our bed is, or can be, in the open air. Of course when it is cold and rainy, we are mighty glad we can close the screens. There is also a heating system and an air conditioner, so we can control the temperature inside pretty well.  But on a dry warm or cool night, the feeling of sleeping in the outside air is great. The beds aren't bad at all, and because they are a few feet off the ground, it is a kind of inside/outside that is really nice.

Inside and outside

We have with us also a small "screen house" to put over the picnic table that is always part of each campsite, in case we are at a place with bugs.  This way, we can eat outside at night if we want to, and gives us a nice way to have coffee outside in the morning and feel a little bit of privacy.

Here you can see our bikes attached to the back of the trailer, our little screen room, our outside gas grill that Bob uses sometimes (we have a small Webber grill too that we store under our table inside when we are not using it), our outside chairs, and, of course,  our proud flag that announces both where we are from and the name of Our Team, should anyone wonder about either.


In the center of the trailer, in the part that doesn't change, we have a small kitchen. It has a three burner stove, a small oven, a microwave oven, a slightly larger than dorm sized fridge, and a small freezer. The appliances operate off propane, which is attached to the front of the trailer. But the fridge and freezer work off electricity when we are plugged in, which we usually are at a campground, and we have been happy to discover that the food stays frozen or cool when we are unplugged and driving from one place to another. This means we can keep food in there all the time, have lunches in the trailer when we are traveling, and make dinners at home when we arrive somewhere. In fact, we are eating most of our meals at home, and that, along with sleeping in the same bed at night, has really kept us from feeling too uprooted or tired of traveling. I have noticed we have both begun to refer to the trailer as "home" when discussing our plans for the day or week. Most of the time it just feels fine to be there, in spite of its size.

There is a narrow pantry closet next to the sink, where we keep dishes, utensils, spices, etc.   The door to the right of that is the bathroom. There is a  sink,  a very small shower, which we don't use, because in every case the shower in the campground has been better, and a chemical toilet that either is hooked up to sewer if that is provided by a campground, or which flushes to a holding tank underneath the trailer, as do the two sinks, and then must be flushed out at what is called a "dump station," which is available at every campground. This isn't as gross as it sounds, because it is all hoses. Still, I'm pretty happy that Bob takes care of this.

Here you can see how our bed is between the fridge and the closet. There is a true closet there, but  not a very big one, behind those hanging clothes. The broom, mop and ladder are in there too, so basically all of our clothes are folded and pretty much stuffed into cabinets. No ironing available, so no matter what it looks like when you pull it out of a squished pile, you wear it. Luckily many campgrounds have laundry facilities, so we manage to stay more or less presentable.

We have a couch, but it is mostly a place to put stuff, unless we need to open it out to sleep on it. Above it is a cupboard where we keep our food. Lots of trailer-related stuff underneath.

The blue bag, which I apparently forgot to move before taking the picture, has two iPads (yay Mala),  Bob's laptop, and all the assorted cords and plugs. Just to the left you can see another open bed.

This is our inside eating and sitting space (I am sitting there now as I write this). The small Webber grill is hiding there. This can be made into a bed also when for some reason you don't want to open the regular beds. The cupboard above there has towels and clothes, and there are drawers underneath. This eating area has what is called a "slide out." That means when the trailer is closed up, it is flush with that side. But it opens up four feet, so when we are parked somewhere, we have a lot more room.

This is how it looks when a bed is open. You can see the propane tank here on the hitch, and the car we pull it with, which is a 2008 Nissan Pathfinder, a behemoth of a car, but very comfortable inside and well up to the task of pulling this trailer. We will need all that power when we get to the Rocky 

Mountains and have serious need for muscle.

Well, now you can see how we make this work. It is a small space. But by following the weather and mostly trying to be someplace neither too cold nor too hot, we also have an outside life, which makes the small space livable. You can also see what you would be in for if you come stay with us! Takes a certain sense of humor, but it also is fun, and there is always something interesting or beautiful outside. We also have a tent with us, so there is no excuse not to meet us somewhere!

The Crescent City

Sometimes a place just touches your heart. Not in a "gee this is nice" kind of way, but in a down in your SOUL kind of way. For me, New Orleans is complicated and mysterious and unknowable...but it calls to me, in a way that is hard to explain, but that feels a lot like love.

I love this concept of street art. And I love that he's reading a book.

First of all, the idea that you can hear amazing live music at any time of day or night,  just by walking down the street, is almost unbelievable to me. And the quality of the music you hear from the buskers on the street is unlike any other place I've ever been. And of course, they are actually not just ON the street, but IN the street. In the middle of the street.  And, for a more formal experience, you can see
tremendously good performers by showing up at a club a half an hour before the show starts, paying a paltry sum like fifteen bucks, and just walking in. No real advance planning required! We saw great shows by amazing performers and got a great, if too brief, view of what living in that city could be for a music lover like me. To get a brief overview of a week on Frenchmen Street, where some of the best clubs are, we went to clubs there three different nights. We saw Kermit Ruffins, who is practically the mayor of local music there, and it was terrific.

Kermit Ruffins

We saw Charmaine Neville, who put on a great show, and we saw Delfeayo Marsalis and his Uptown Jazz Orchestra. He, and his band, were astonishingly good, and one of the best parts was that in his 13 piece band he had some kids who didn't look older than 20. It made me feel hopeful and happy and all full of optimism about the future of jazz.

Eating fabulous food is a part of being there, and their cuisine is so specific to that place, in a way that feels less true of other cities. The people  are so warm and friendly, and what the people are like is part of why it feels like a weird and wonderful and unique culture, like nowhere else in this country. Actually like nowhere else on earth. There is really nothing to compare it to.

Actually IN the street

Some parts of the city are quite beautiful. Some parts just look desperate. The level of poverty there
is shocking. It's hard to tell exactly, because some places that look really rundown are quite beautiful inside. A lot of effort--or a quite purposeful lack of effort--goes into making sure you can't tell from the outside that it's really nice inside. But of course, a lot of what looks incredibly rundown and edgy is just incredibly rundown and edgy. The city's neighborhoods feel fine during the daytime, but even in some of the nicer neighborhoods we were told not to walk around when it gets dark. There is still a stubbornly high crime rate in much of the city. I don't think people feel safe there even in the best of circumstances, and in a lot of the city, these are not the best of circumstances. The city seems somewhat improved from when we were there last, a couple of years after the storm, but it is still a rough life for an awful lot of the people there. I think it is not particularly an easy place to live.

But.... besides the music, and the food,  and the interesting Cajun/Creole history, the thing that seems to make it feel so different is just the fierceness of the people's love of the city. You just feel it everywhere you go. A lot of the songs you hear in the streets and in the clubs are about the city. The songs often tell of staying in the city until the day I die. When you talk to people they say "welcome to New Orleans" repeatedly, and it's clear that they are proud to call their city home. And what do they call their city? We heard it a handful of ways. I wish I could put a little audio link here! We heard "New Oh leens," and New Ah lins," and "Naw lins," and No lins," and "New Orlins," and all together, like "NewOrlins." I wish I knew what each pronunciation said about where each person was from, but I will never know.

We had lovely bike rides in two huge public parks, City Park and Audubon Park, both of which had been plantations. Both parks were spectacular, and City Park in particular was so well used by so many people--and different kinds and ages of people--that it was clearly a tremendous resource in the city. There are clearly places where everyone feels safe, at least in the daytime, and that was tremendously reassuring, because this city has some seriously sad and rough edges.

We heard that the slaves in the city had had a somewhat better situation than those out in rural areas, and being given a day off every week, used to gather in what is now known as Congo Square,

inside Louis Armstrong Park, and that the music made there was the beginning of  jazz, as well as of rhythm and blues and rock and roll. We took a very interesting guided tour of St Louis Cemetery Number 1, which is the oldest Catholic cemetery there, going back to the early 1700's, and we learned a lot of interesting stuff about burial and funeral practices in the city, which is a place where burials must happen above ground. We also learned a bit about the practice of voodoo, because the high priestess Marie Laveau is buried there. What a magnificent hodgepodge this place is!

There is a magnificent museum about World War II in the city. In fact it is the national WWII museum, and it was amazing. We drank great local beer, including a tremendous trip across the (stunning) Lake Ponchartrain on a 26 mile bridge, which is surely one of the engineering wonders of the world, to visit Abita Brewing Company, in the charming little town of Abita Springs. We sat on the big broad porch of a hotel in the Garden District and watched the sun go down. We walked the campuses of Loyola and Tulane with a kid we've known since he was born, who isn't a kid any more. We spent time with some people we know who moved there from Boston, and had some lovely conversations about why it is such an amazing place to live. Among those conversations were discussions of the weirdness of living in a city which has never gone along with many attempts to "civilize" it, going all the way back to the British, and the early Americans, and where even now, the politics are liberal and the lifestyle is free and easy, and we-don't-mind, including being able to walk down the street with a drink in your hand. There are even DRIVE-THROUGH daiquiri stands. REALLY. You drive through, and they give you an alcoholic drink to take with you. IN YOUR CAR. And all of this, inside what is surely one of the very most conservative, and in a lot of ways, backwards, states in the union. It's like New Orleans is a country all on its own. Our friends told us it's kind of like living in a third world country. And in terms of public services, public health, the environment, bureaucracy, education, and efficiency, it certainly is. And yet..there is a joie de vivre that seems unmatched to me anywhere else.

Bob wasn't as taken with it as I have been. That has been true the other times we have been there, as well. I think he sees Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard and the sadness of decay and corruption. I see that too, but mostly it feels like a kind of musical heaven, wrapped up an an enigma of a place with fabulous architecture and great food.

If I have anything to say about it, we'll be back. The last time we were there I tried to make a vow to go every year. I think that was about eight years ago. So I guess it might be awhile. But if we had the money, I'd go for a couple of weeks every year and just soak up all that music and food, and live off that fuel until I could go again.

Not Born on the Bayou....but trying to figure it out

I'm so far behind, and don't want to forget anything! But it still feels too early to write about New Orleans. It is so wonderful, intense, contradictory, ironic, desperate, beautiful, amazing and quirky that I think I will need to sit with it for another day or two before I can process it. Of course I couldn't take the time to write things down while I was there; but before I write about that not-like-anywhere-else-on-earth place,  I want to just think about bayou life and New England life,  and what are some of the ways in which it is amazing that this is all the same country......more or less.

I have always known that the East Coast is a fast-paced and intense place. That underlying energy and intensity are a big part of the reason Boston appealed to me when I moved there so many years ago from my beloved and laid-back Santa Cruz. I remember once reading a study about the fastest- paced places in the country (observed, as I recall, by people who, among other methods, looked down upon a street and timed how long it took walkers to walk a city block, and how often they looked at a watch), and New York and Boston were champions. In some ways I love that intensity, and it has been a fuel for me all these years. But after more than two months on the road, in the South, I am starting to see the error of my ways. Some of this is retirement, which does slow a body down. But if I was feeling a slowing down while we were in Florida, then Alabama and New Orleans have invaded my hurry-up and overtaken my move-along like never before.

I'm finding that my general pace of activity has slowed down quite a bit. I am feeling noticeably more relaxed and less worried. I instinctively start thinking I need to speed things up, and then I realize it's okay. I've gotten more relaxed about how long it takes to get service somewhere, or how the line I have chosen at the grocery store turns out to be the slowest line. Instead of moving to another line, I've just been saying "so what?"  I know for sure that this has GOT to be good for me. I think Southerners know something about things happening at their own pace, and I am learning something valuable. A downside, perhaps, is that maybe the South has been slower to change some things that could use a bit of an update. But it's happening. It just feels about ten years behind in some ways. (Some of that, I think,  is that I haven't learned the way things work in this culture,  and I can't really see how things are from the outside.) But in the meantime, the most obvious difference is the incredible friendliness and genuine kindness that we have seen everywhere. New Englanders are so reserved! I've gotten so used to it that I have stopped noticing it. But the friendliness of people here is astonishing. It has been a joyful thing to experience.

We had a wonderful time in the Mobile area and learned a lot of things. For one thing, we learned that Mobile Bay is the place where five rivers drain into the Gulf,  and as the second largest delta, it is an environment with the  richest aquatic diversity in North America, and one of the richest in the world. They call it North America's Amazon. Some crazy high percentage of all the birds in North America are there, and apparently the Mobile-Tensaw delta is one of our planet's most diverse and interesting ecologies, and also one of the most threatened. It is being majorly ruined by lack of oversight of industry and by  utter disregard by the state of Alabama. They know about what is happening to the ecosystem, but they have made the decision to place environmental concerns at the bottom of their priorities. It's pretty sad, and it marks another kind of difference from what it's like in the South and where I am used to being.

While we were in Mobile we celebrated Mardi Gras  in Gulf Shores. Our friends in Mobile made sure we knew that the Mardi Gras tradition really started in Mobile, so we weren't getting some second rate celebration! It was lots of fun. It's crazy when the floats are going by in the parade, how much you want to catch the beads, and how proud you are to get them. It's funny too how the next day, you look at them and they seems less like True Pirate Treasure, and more like a pile of plastic beads that you don't know what to do with! During Mardi Gras we went to a famous and incredibly festive restaurant, Lulu's,  and saw the Mardi Gras boat parade there, which was lots of fun. And more beads, too, but thrown from boats. Here, for all history, is our pile of beads. Doesn't it look Glamorous?

Our Mardi Gras haul

We had a wonderful visit with our friends Sharon and Paul there, and seeing for a few days what it is like to live in a place so very different from Boston was illuminating and instructive. I live in a place where a lot of people see the world in a way that is very similar to my own. Our friends live in a place where they are quite different from most of their neighbors. The way people in the South (or any place, for that matter), who might disagree with many of the policies of their state and local governments, and with the attitudes of most of their their neighbors, still deeply love their place, and still feel at home, was very educational for me, and a big step in my expanding understanding of this very diverse and interesting country.

Why is Perfect Kind of Creepy?

March 2. We are in the panhandle of Florida, near the Alabama border. Tomorrow we will leave Florida after six weeks. I have been so grateful to have missed these last two months of winter weather in Boston, that when I think back on this part of the trip I will always be thinking of where I WASN'T, in addition to where I was.

These last couple of days have been big travel days, leaving Fort Myers on the path north and west towards Mobile. Yesterday we visited the Stephen Foster Folk Art and Cultural Center. The state park was beautiful, one of the nicest campgrounds we have stayed in. The Florida State Park system has just been amazing. And this one was quite an interesting place. Again, very mixed feelings....Stephen Foster wrote some great songs, and they are completely embedded in my brain. "Oh Susannah" is even now running in my head, and as soon as we realized we actually were way down upon the Suwanee River, that song was stuck in my head like an ear worm. But there is also a certain glorification, or at least apparent nostalgia, about the plantation way of life. It all looks so genteel and beautiful, but the undercurrent is there, and it complicates my enjoyment of it.

At the Stephen Foster Folk Art and Cultural Center

After that,  we went along a really beautiful part of Florida that I had no real awareness of, the
beaches of the Florida panhandle. We stayed overnight in a state park that is right on a huge and pristine white sand beach on the gulf. It was spectacularly beautiful.

Both of these nights,  which were the end of long travel days, we made the decision to leave the trailer hooked up to the car, and just sleep in it without really taking it apart and setting up, to save time.  What this means is not going anywhere with the car after arriving at the campground, and exploring by bike. On Sunday, which was the Gulf beach camping day, we just took off on our bikes and picked a direction. Then something pretty amazing happened. We found a kind of paradise by accident.

Not far down the highway (but traveling on a lovely bike path), we found what seemed to be a really
big resort on the beach. We couldn't figure out the name of the resort, and it just kept going on and
on. Eventually we figured out it is a town. It is a "planned community," which means that everything is set up as if you were designing a perfect town....because it was, in fact, designed to be the perfect
town.  All the houses are beautiful. There are many different styles of architecture, so even though all the colors are lovely together and perfectly painted, there isn't a kind of "cookie cutter" feel. There is a town center, where there are many restaurants and shops, all beautiful. There is a little row of perfect permanent food trucks, operating out of perfectly cared-for vintage Airstream trailers.

Individual Airstream

  

Shelves in the perfect store

Airstreams all in a row

The sidewalks have beautiful flower boxes. There are bike racks everywhere (the bikes are all kind of the same, and in several very nice colors), but you can also walk everywhere. There is a grocery
store, where all the food is beautifully displayed, and very high quality. There is the most perfect white sand beach, and the umbrellas were all a beautiful blue. Every business was beautiful. Ice cream store, restaurant, oyster bar, bookstore, cocktail bar high above everything, with a stunning view of the water.....it seemed like you just had to think of it, and there it was (although I did NOT see the public library, and don't know if it was there or not). The post office looked like it should be in Disneyland. I know this sounds ridiculous, but EVERYONE we saw seemed unusually attractive.

Perfect beach, not too crowded

We bought a quite expensive, but lovely, fresh bread, which we needed for dinner, and before we rode back to our campsite,  we had a cold drink and sat in a gazebo and looked out over the fabulous blue-green water. On the ride back I was asking myself....why does this give me the willies? Everything I like about where I choose to live is what seems perfect about this town: I can walk everywhere, and everything I need is close by;  all the housing is built around a town center; the architecture is varied. What's different?

Picket fences on a quiet street

Well, for one thing, everything in this place is the same age. I looked up this place (Seaside, Florida),
on the web, and discovered that it was designed and built by the fellow that owned all the land, and it was built from the 1980's onward. It is still being built. Because it was built to a particular design, and is sold by one realty, it feels like a "company town." And, no big surprise here, it would seem that everyone has money. There was a board in the town center, where all the perfect activities coming up were listed, and the real estate listings indicated houses from smaller cottages to bigger houses, all around 1.5 to 2.9 million dollars. I guess this explains something, right? But I haven't been able to quite get this place out of my mind. Buying a house in Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket would be no different, and in terms of quaint and beautiful, equally breathtaking. But they are REAL. I'm left scratching my head. What if you don't happen to have had a couple hundred years to create a place? And isn't this better than a brand new cookie cutter subdivision of McMansions?

So....I'm thinking big thoughts about urban architecture, vacation homes, and what makes for a good life.

While I'm thinking Big Thoughts, it's on to Mobile for Mardi Gras, and then to New Orleans for after Mardi Gras. Something tells me I'll get a different perspective. Or two.