Aboard The Southbound Polar Express

When the High Plains Drifters set out on our Winter Road Trip early Thanksgiving morning, I’d silently decided we were taking a holiday from the holidays (like that John Grisham book/movie a few years ago about a vacation from Christmas).

As the Pacific Northwest forests gave way to the barren Southwest high plains, I ticked off the list the things I wouldn’t be doing: seasonal decorating, shopping and cooking, cards and gifts, ahh, yes. . .no holidays for us this year!

What I didn’t realize at the time was that we weren’t escaping from the holidays; we were hurtling toward them aboard our own  Polar Express, (it’s the other book/movie that convinces the Scrooge in all of us that the magic of Christmas is alive and well).

We were headed to Arizona - Christmas Central -  the best place in the world to experience this season, …well,. . . with perhaps the exception of the North Pole.

The Sugar Plum Stations along our route left holiday visions dancing in our heads . . . visions like those in. . .











Prescott



Christmas Spirit enveloped us within hours of our arrival in Prescott, “Arizona’s Christmas City”.  This is its Courthouse, a centerpiece in the downtown, which by now is lit up each night just like the Christmas Tree next to it.

Phoenix



We had a week-long stay in Marriott’s Desert Canyon Villas, five-minutes from the J.W. Marriott Hotel where Christmas decorations began appearing the same weekend we arrived.

With each day the decorations seemed to expand throughout the hotel’s massive lobby. Poinsettias lined the stairways, festive green and red decorations seemed to sprout – as if magically – during the night.

I didn’t think the Land of Oz could be made any more wonderful than the Emerald City that welcomed Dorothy and her friends. But thanks to the Marriott’s culinary team this land of Oz was a Confectionery Convention Center where gingerbread pavers lined the Yellow Brick Road.

We spent three nights – thanks to a Cyber Monday deal – at the Fairmont Princess Hotel in Phoenix –a place that in December could be mistaken for the North Pole.

Scrooge would have had a difficult time here but not those who are still kids-at-heart. 

Much time was spent watching their four-story tall Christmas Tree change colors; the changes synchronized to the Christmas Carole’s that ring out over the hotel’s plaza, located just outside its elaborately decorated lobby. 



Then, down a path to the skating rink. . .yes, real ice, six-inches deep, in the heart of the desert. A large truck/generator  hidden behind one of the buildings brings this frozen wonderland scene to life.  (The rink is open to the entire community, not just hotel guests.)
They rent skates at the hotel.










After a bit of time at the rink it was time to follow a luminaria-lit path through a fairy land of lights and scenes that appear each evening. Any other time of year, the same pathway leads through a beautiful – but not particularly magical – lagoon area.

And if the kid within you allows you to do it, you can hop aboard a miniature train to tour this enchanted land.

In Arizona where everything seems big – even the Christmas decorations are enormous.  The tree below at  the Desert Ridge Shopping Center towered over the palm trees around it.



Scottsdale

At Scottsdale’s iconic Pinnacle Peak Patio restaurant we found Santa’s sleigh being hauled by cattle.



And just down the road this big ol’ bronze mountain lion was decked out for the season as well.

Each evening at the Troon North Four Seasons the pathway between the Hotel and Residence Club wound through a daytime-desert that each evening gave way to a seasonal showcase.


By the time we reached the Four Seasons I was much like the kids on the Polar Express – I was a believer again.  We may have left the holiday hustle behind, but we’d re-discovered the Magic of Christmas!
 
Have you visited any magical places this year? What made them magical?

Where ever your travels take you this holiday season we hope you’ll also find some Christmas Magic ~ it’s Travel Photo Thursday – don’t forget to visit Budget Travelers Sandbox for more armchair travel.  I’ll resume the High Plains Drifters tales this weekend with a stop in Ely, Nevada . . .

Raindrops and Rainbows~ Sunshine and Snowflakes

I sat reading a book Thursday evening in front of the fireplace as rain lashed the windows and the wind howled outside our adobe casita  - winter was announcing its arrival in Scottsdale, Arizona.


It was time for High Plains Drifters to head north.  We’d lucked out on the weather since our arrival the weekend after Thanksgiving as most of our days had been sunny and unseasonably warm in Arizona. As we headed out of town Friday morning  Black Mountain near Carefree was hidden behind a thick cloud cover.

Scottsdale roadways were covered in places with water and desert sand that had washed across the asphalt.

We would follow a route  that took through the small hamlet of Wikiup, past Hoover Dam and loop us around Las Vegas  as we headed to Highway 318 which would take us. . .

on a near magical journey through Nevada’s Great Basin.  If you’ve never visited this stretch of country we highly recommend adding it to your bucket list. 

One of its many highlights is about 90 miles north of Las Vegas,  the  8,400+square-mile Paharanagat National Wildlife Refuge, which was created in 1963, to provide habitat for migratory birds, especially waterfowl. The lakes and marshes are a rare sight in this part of Nevada.



Our plan was to reduce our travel time from four nights on the road to three – if road conditions permitted.  So far, so good, we thought.



From expansive vistas to winding our way through towering cavernous walls we sped north. . .


We planned to spend our first night in Ely, Nevada, a small community where mining provides the economic foundation, where the third generation pharmacist works in the independent pharmacy that opened in the 1940’s and where the County Courthouse that belongs in a Norman Rockwell painting, serves three of the sparsely populated counties around it.


It wasn’t until we were within minutes of  Ely, that rainbows and raindrops and sunshine gave way to snowflakes.  As we crossed Murray Summit, elevation 7,312-feet (more than twice as high as Washington’s Snoqualmie Pass) we encountered the first snow of the trip. Luckily Ely was only minutes away. . .

Eight hours, 609 miles later we concluded Day One’s in Ely –  I'll take you there later this week and then we’ll set a course north through Oregon as we wind down the Winter Western Roadtrip. 

On a Mission South of Tucson. . .

The High Plains Drifters and our friends set out on a day trip south of Tucson last week to look at the artsy crafty treasures to be found in the town of Tubac, “Where History and Art Meet”, located about half way between Tucson and the Mexican/U.S. border town Nogales.

The real treasure we found – where art and history really do meet -- was in the Mission San Xavier Del Bac on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation, not far from Tucson.  The Tohono O’odham, meaning ‘desert people’ is the name of the Native Americans who populate the Sonoran Desert in southeast Arizona and northwest Mexico.


The present structure was built between 1783 and 1797, long before the area was to come under U.S. control as a result of the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.



The Mission was founded by Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco Kino nearly a century before this structure was started. Kino, born in what is now Italy, joined the Spanish order and was assigned to Spain’s Colony in Mexico. History considers him both priest and explorer, as he made some 40 expeditions into the area now known as Arizona and others up the Baja before his death in 1711 in Sonora.



The missionaries were forced to leave San Xavier in 1828 but returned in 1911- a year before Arizona attained its statehood.




This Kino Mission is the only one in the nation still active in preaching to the Tohono O’odham.


The mission’s Spanish mission architecture – the domes, carvings, flying buttresses distinguish it from other Spanish missions. It is called “The White Dove of the Desert”.

If You Go:

The Mission is 9 miles south of Tucson, off Interstate 19, exit 92 on San Xavier Road. Hours: Daily 7 – 5 Mission (no photos allowed during services) Museum daily 8 – 4:30 p.m. No admission fee for either; donations welcomed.

And Down the Road. . .

Just south of Tubac (exit 29 off Interstate 19) is Tumacacori National Historical Park where you’ll find the abandoned Mission San Jose de Tumacacori – visited by Kino in 1691. It was after the King of Spain expelled the Jesuits, replacing them with Franciscans that the work was started on the massive adobe church that was never completed and ultimately abandoned in 1848. It is also worth a visit.



It is Travel Photo Thursday so hope you’ll head over to Budget Travelers Sandbox for more armchair adventures! If you’ve not yet signed up to receive these posts in your inbox, you can do so using the box to the right.  Or add your photo to our growing group of Google friends also found in the right hand column.

Arizona Gems: Tubac and Tumacacori

Road trips never let us down.  There is always some wonderful place to be discovered when setting out; sometimes by pure happenstance and other times by recommendations of friends.  The latter is what took us to Tubac and Tumacacori, Arizona.

Our Tucson friends, Jeanie and Hal, graciously loaded us up and headed out on a spectacular day of discovery (for us) last week. And while you are trying to get your tongues twisted around those names let me tell you where you can find them. . .

The two are only about three miles apart, an hour south of Tucson along Interstate 19  not far from the Mexico/US border.  They are bordered to the east by Madera Canyon.

Tubac, established in 1752, is today “Where Art and History Meet” according to its promotional materials. The town’s Presidio of San Ignacia de Tubac was the first military base in Arizona and  first European settlement.  In 1860 it was the largest town in Arizona.

Today the small town is an art-lovers paradise.   Galleries and showrooms, studios and retail shops fill the old adobe and wood-frame buildings. Fine art to Mexican made trinkets are to be found as you wander through the streets and plazas.


The streets and shops were pretty empty on the morning of our visit – quite a change from when they swell with the crowds who flock to its many special annual events like October’s Anza Days, December’s Luminaria Nights, February’s Car Nuts Show and also in February, the Tubac Festival of the Arts – one of the oldest art fairs in the southwest, featuring musicians and artists from throughout the United States and Canada.


For history buffs, the town’s Presidio State Historic Park, site of the oldest Spanish military outpost in Arizona,  includes the 1885 School, a visitors center and museum, picnic grounds and the Juan Bautista de Ana National Historic Trail.

While the town has numerous eateries as well, it was a place ‘just down the road’ that Jeanie and Hal recommended and are we ever glad they did!

Wisdom’s Café opened its doors along the old Nogales Highway back in 1944. Like so many mom-and-pop businesses, it closed  those  doors in 1979 when the newly opened Interstate 19 diverted traffic.  By 1980 it had come back to life with the help of owners’ Howard and Petra Wisdom’s adult children. . .it’s now a ‘destination’ place and has been written up in the New York Times.  (I couldn’t resist snapping a photo of the chicken in the parking lot.)

Next time we’ll eat dessert first, here because we had no room for Wisdom’s World Famous Fruit Burro, a crispy burrito filled with your choice of fruit and topped with vanilla ice cream.

Then it was a bit further south for a stop at the Santa Cruz Chili and Spice Co. and Ranch Museum where we stocked up on packages, jars and boxes of every kind of spice imaginable – especially the chili’s.

We didn’t have time to visit  Abe’s Old Tumacacori Bar, where octogenarian Abe Trujillo has been pouring cool ones for more than 60 years at his family’s bar.  We missed the moose head and some 1,000 empty whiskey bottles that are on display but we know there’ll be another visit to this area  one day and hopefully Abe will still be pouring. . .

IF YOU GO:

Tubac: Tubac Chamber of Commerce, 50 Bridge Road, 85646, phone 520-398-2704, www.TubacAZ.com

Wisdom’s Café, 1931 E. Frontage Rd., Tumacacori, AZ 85640, 520-398-2397 (1/2 mile north of the Tumacacori Mission and three miles south of Tubac).  www.wisdomscafe.com

Wisdom’s also has a vacation rental casita across the street from the restaurant.  We took a look and it is beautifully decorated in Southwest style. Rates: $79 – $99 per night, two-night minimum. For information:  520-991-9652 or email: celeste@wisdomscafe.com

Santa Cruz Chili and Spice Co., 1868 E. Frontage Road, Tumacacori, Arizona, 86640, 520-398-2591, www.santacruzchili.com for hours.

Abe’s Old Tumacacori Bar, 1900 E. Frontage Road, 520-398-1227, open daily from 2 p.m. – 2 a.m.

No Place Like Home for the Holidays

Setting out on a Winter Road Trip that would take the High Plains Drifters away from our Pacific Northwest home between Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed pretty peculiar to a number of our acquaintances there.

We’d be missing those weeks of rushing around to replace Thanksgiving decorations with Christmas-appropriate décor, writing the annual Christmas letter, shopping for, and delivering, presents and of course,cooking.

We’d also be missing winter weather (the likes of which we left behind on Thanksgiving morning – this scene on Snoqualmie Pass, WA).


And, worse, friends exclaimed, we wouldn’t be ‘home’ for the holidays’.  But, oh, contraire!



We are home.  We are settled quite comfortably into our ‘interval world’  home, this one an adobe casita which is part of our Four Seasons Resident Club in Scottsdale, Arizona. Here we own a fractional piece of deeded property which can be used or traded for another locale.  The best kind of second home for our nomadic lifestyle.

I should note these photos were taken before we cluttered it with ‘our stuff’ which certainly does make it feel – and look -- like home.


We’ve been hooked on this type of second-home lifestyle for several years now; having first taken the plunge with Hawaiian ownership.

It really is like home:  we cook (there’s a full kitchen) , do laundry and go grocery shopping – just like at the other home back in Washington. However, here we can walk to the gym a few yards from our casita and later sun at poolside, with attendants setting up the lounges and bringing us beverages while back in the room, the maid is bringing new towels and making the bed (you get the idea).

Oh, but what about Christmas and all the decorations and celebrations? 

Well, let me show you:

I chose to feature  the Residence Club and the nearby Four Season’s Hotel lobby – in later posts I’ll show you more from Phoenix and Scottsdale.

Last night we strolled the paved walkway that links the residences to the hotel for a Happy Hour Margarita and were greeted at the hotel’s entrance by these young musicians who played Christmas caroles – their music setting a seasonal tone throughout the development.



Here it seems everything is decorated for the season; even our cacti and the best part is that we didn’t have to raise a finger getting them so:



Arizona’s weather, we are told, is unseasonably warm this year. It’s been in the mid- to high-70’s but a colder spell is on the way.  Supposed to drop to 61-degrees on Friday. With that kind of weather on the way, the High Plains Drifters will be heading back to the Pacific Northwest.
Oh, but what a holiday at home we have had!

And the “Celebrity (cruise) Guest Chef” is. . .

None other than. . .Joel Smith, The Scout and editor of TravelnWrite.com!   Don’t believe it? Well, I’ve got the photos below to prove it. Even better, any one of you reading this who takes a cruise on the new Celebrity ships could be a ‘guest chef’ as well.


Our fall cruise was on the Silhouette, one of the newest ships in Celebrity’s flotilla of luxury. It’s one of the Solstice class ships that offers those expansive green lawns on the uppermost deck.

They now offer picnic packages for the lawn, so why not have a barbeque as well? They’ve got just that in their specialty restaurant, the Lawn Club Grill, an interactive place where cooking is almost as much fun as eating. 

(Easy for me to say, as I was the photographer – not the guest chef!)

After Joel was introduced to fellow diners and the applause ended, Lawn Club Chef Steven Diaz, had  Joel suit up and wash up, and work began. The cooking island is center stage in this restaurant and to make sure everyone can watch, two large screen televisions broadcast to the far reaches of the eatery.







Chef Diaz has an extensive professional culinary resume which includes recently opening the restaurant at the luxury beach resort Balcones del Atlantico, A RockResort, in Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic before turning his career sights to the sea.  However, he’d met his culinary challenge with Celebrity-Chef-in-Training Joel.

(Joel’s pizza is on the left, Chef Dias on the right).

Did I mention this was a comedy floor show? Especially when it came time to toss the pizza dough. But with Chef Diaz’s guidance, this was the end-result of the session; the first course served at our table:


Ah, but the best was yet to come. . .the grilling! Notice Celebrity-Chef-in-Training Joel had earned his chef hat by now.


In all seriousness, Joel said he did learn a lot about grilling steaks – one of his favorite at-home past times.  Chef Diaz, who had been aboard the ship for just a month of his first six-month contract, answered questions and offered cooking tips throughout the session.

I mean, how often do you get one-to-one tutoring from a professional chef?

For Celebrity Guest Chef Joel, it was time to eat.  But not for Chef Diaz. . . the next group of chefs had arrived.


If You Go:
The Lawn Club Grill is a specialty restaurant, meaning you will pay extra to dine there. In addition to the pizza, the meal includes an enormous salad bar and the dessert list is extensive. Chicken, fish and meat are among the grill items – you can eat some of each or a lot of a single selection if you have the capacity.  Disclosure: Our meal was hosted by the cruise line.

The interactive part is optional; if you prefer to have your meal cooked and served by the professionals – it will be.

For cruise information:  Celebrity Cruises
For information on the resort mentioned above: Balcones del Atlantico, A RockResort 

That’s it for this week’s Travel Photo Thursday. Thanks for visiting; hope you’ll head over to Budget Traveler’s Sandbox for more travel adventures.