The Ozarks

Before leaving Oklahoma City we’d decided to go to the Museum of Cowboy and Western History. It was a great idea. This is a gorgeous museum with all kinds of interesting exhibits of artwork, competitive Western art, rodeo artifacts, Western movie history, and a complete Western town in a separate wing that is interactive. The kids were beside themselves! There is also a buffet that serves Western heritage foods for $9. It was such a treat! The best part for me was seeing a triptych painting of Yellowstone. I was speechless! It was just like being there again. Here are some pictures from the museum.

Afterward we started off for Farmington, Arkansas to visit my cousin Denise, her husband Millard and their children Desiree, Jared, Madison, and Desiree’s beau Caleb, who would visit us as well (they have another daughter who lives in New York City). I set the GPS and began the journey east only I didn’t realize that there was a more direct route to get to her house and the GPS took me that way. At one point I had no idea where we were and then we passed a city that was bigger than Oklahoma City. It was Tulsa only I kept thinking it must be Muskogee. It was funny when I finally figured out what was happening an hour later! The scenery was slowly changing from “high plains” to hills and from hills to mountains. Arkansas is very much like Vermont only the trees are mostly thin oaks and the ground is super dry (which is unusual). This is a relatively newer state and so its buildings are mostly pioneer as opposed to the oldy-worldy feel of Vermont but other than that it was hard to remember that it was Arkansas!

My cousin Denise and I are very alike and she once homeschooled her children too. We are both organized and relatively fearless about exploring the world. She has four children who are all so friendly and our kids are great companions. We are always so thrilled to see them and Marley and Cole were only too happy to be around teenagers again. It was great to have a home-cooked meal and to just hang out around a kitchen table telling stories. I was so happy to be there!

The next morning, Denise and her youngest daughter Madison took us up to Branson, Missouri to see the famous entertainment strip. This is the “off season” as Southern students are back in school. We had a great time looking at all the entertainment venues. We went to a 1950’s musical café for lunch and were serenaded to by our waitresses. A waiter was trying to hustle his wife’s CD so he annoyed us but it was fun just to sit and chit chat and enjoy the music.

Denise was so generous and brought us to the Titantic Museum which is very interesting! My grandmother used to always tell me that her uncle bought a ticket on the Titantic but when he went to board he was turned away because he had “pink-eye”. I never believed her because I couldn’t imagine what a Lebanese man was doing in Southampton, England to get to America. But, now I believe she was telling the truth because about the third of the 3^rd Class passengers had Arabic last names!!! The funniest part of the Titantic Museum were the two “Dogs of the Titantic” who are King Charles Spaniels that live during the day at the museum and at night with the manager. They are in a display about the dogs that were aboard and they wear the blue diamond necklaces from the movie!!! I couldn’t stop laughing every time I saw their sweet faces wearing the necklaces. They are wheeled around in a pram with a little bell! It’s so outrageously cute!

We then went to the Chinese Acrobat show. This is my favorite cultural show. Although they are still children, they train their whole lives to perform and the show is stunning. They work so hard and I only hope they are compensated appropriately and are not like gymnastic slaves on loan from the Shanghai Circus. The kids got pictures with them after the show and mostly they looked scared and very culture shocked to have to shake hands and have their picture taken with enthusiastic Americans. Madison looked like she could have been one of them and an old man came up and shook her hand to thank her for the show!

We had another great dinner with the whole family and spent lots of time talking and laughing together. We are culturally from an opposite spectrum of the northern "attitude" and southern "charm", but we have a great relationship and ask each other lots of questions. This would be the best way to start this part of the journey in the American South because, for me, this would be the hard part in trying to find some common ground with other Americans. My experience with southern people has been very limited so I couldn’t be fair and say that I have scads of southern acquaintances. I have met lots of southerners on cruise ships and in traveling and almost always it has been a confusing experience upon further examination of our cultural differences.

One thing for sure though is that it's hard for me to see the Dixie flag being hung on cars, windows, and some private businesses. It may be a matter of southern pride but the history of the flag is simply that it was flown by men wanting to keep their African-American slaves. This is the hardest thing to look at in the south and try and understand what the flag flyer is trying to convey. I couldn't imagine being a descendant of slaves and seeing this "Southern Heritage" flag everywhere.

We left my cousins after being stuffed full of delicious foods and headed south through the Boston and Ouachita Mountains. Like the Appalachians, the Ouachita are home to many very poverty stricken people. The entire drive along Routes 71 and 270 was very sad. So many struggling businesses were closed up and there were no economically successful towns. I would think that these places have a hard time as it is. Most people keep all kinds of "yard sale" type items on their front porch and lawn that are for sale. This is also the quartz crystal capitol of the country and they are often for sale in yards.

We arrived at Hot Springs, Arkansas about three and a half hours later and enjoyed the most ridiculously rickety and troublesome wax museum ever! It was so funny that we couldn’t stop laughing. The figures were frightening and didn’t look like the person they were portraying in most cases. There was an escalator with Mae West, Louis Armstrong, Liz Taylor and Pope John Paul II all waving at us from their steps. At the very top was a poorly proportional Jesus hanging from a cross. Behind that was ‘The Last Supper’ but there were business styled name plates in front of them as if they were attending a convention! It was weird and almost sacrilegious! Just next to ‘The Last Supper’ was the ‘Room of Horrors’!!! It was such a strange old place that had 1950’s kind of reverence and obsession with horror at the same time. It was bizarre! We went to the basement to see ‘Fairytale Land’ which was fodder for children’s nightmares! This is also President Clinton’s boyhood town and he has a wax figure that "somewhat" looks like him. All I know is that I would never want to be locked-in the Hot Springs Wax Museum overnight!!!

We walked along Central Street to see the hot springs and the bath-houses. At the turn of last century, Hot Springs was a hopping place as it was believed that these mineral waters would cure what ailed you. Even President Roosevelt came here to help with his polio and then didn't want to leave having purchased a cottage with his mistress Lucy. The beautiful bath-houses are all but forgotten now but there is a considerable effort to bring them back to their former glory. It is a lovely town with all kinds of natural fountains and waterfalls pouring forth the hottest water I have ever touched without having to heat it first! Even the town fountains are blisteringly hot!

To the right is a picture of one of the springs cascading into a public park. There is a small concrete pool at the bottom of the cascade and when I touched it, it felt hotter than a cup of tea! If you were to fall into the spring by accident you'd be scalded for sure.

Interestingly, the sound of the southern accent has faded from it’s newness and now I don’t even hear it! We would have long week in Louisiana coming up and I was excited to go further south into Cajun Country! I was finally in the American South!

The Flatlands

Traveling east on the Route 66, we overlapped this historic road with the current route 40. The New Mexican highlands were slowly descending back to the Great Plains. We were now on the same longitude as Sioux Falls, South Dakota and the scenery started to seem more and more familiar and equally as HOT! Coming in to the flatlands the temperature rose by 20 degrees from Albuquerque.

We stopped in Santa Rosa, New Mexico to the site where Coronado crossed a river traveling west. It is marked with a historic bridge. Nearby I stopped so the kids could take swim in Park Lake near the highway. This is a naturally occurring lake that is very deep but not very wide. They started swimming in the cold spring water but became a bit freaked out when they noticed they were swimming with fish that were almost as large as they were! The “lake” was as big as a pond back home so these fish are extremely closed in like it was an aquarium. Many years ago this was a fish hatchery so these forgotten descendants have been enjoying the peace and quiet in their deep pool.

We drove a half-mile to see Blue Hole. The “hole” is a spring that is 81 feet deep and 30 feet wide! The water temperature is always 61 degrees as it overflows from the water table into a stream. I have never seen anything like it even in Florida. This was remarkably deep and unexpected. Southwesterners who are looking for scuba certification must use the Blue Hole for training. I couldn’t imagine descending into that deep, cold, dark hole. I would have lost my mind after about three feet down. The white squares under the water are the scuba platforms that are measured for certification.

Marley and Cole slowly got used to the water and took underwater pictures with our camera of the deep blue. The water took their breath away and Marley said it was so numbing that her body began to bloat to keep herself warm. They swam around the Blue Hole though and for that they could be proud of themselves! It would be here at the Blue Hole that I would hear the first of the Texas/Southern accent in the people around me. New Mexicans have a strong accent but it’s more like a Navajo/Mexican accent. It doesn’t sound “southern” at all. Texans have an accent that is different from the rest of the south so I wouldn’t qualify it strictly as “southern”. I told the kids, “Better get used to that accent. It’s going to be with us until we reach Pennsylvania again.” It’s remarkable how delineated this way of speaking the English language is. It’s almost as if you could mark the states who practiced slavery and say, “They will have a southern accent” and all the states that didn’t practice slavery will have more varied accents like New Yorkers, Bostonians, Pennsylvanians (my husband), Minnesotans, etc. Southern accents are regional too but they still all have a “twang”. Sometimes I don’t mind the accent and sometimes I do. I guess I have to be “in the mood” to hear it.

We continued east into Texas. Now, my sister says that Texas is the worst state in the country because they constantly think they are too good for the rest of America. Texas recently even tried to pass a referendum to “Secede from the Union”. (Do we really want to go back to 1841?) Texans have tried to be their own country many times. It’s the Texas shtick to threaten to become their own country and in fact, the Texas flag is flown larger and higher than the American flags I have seen here. I say, let them secede and charge them for American imports. If I wouldn’t be so worried about how human rights issues might dissolve in Texas I might be inclined to help them out of the states!!! This would be a great state for Tea-Partiers to completely take over and then MOVE THERE after we help “American” refugees out!

The Texas Panhandle is unbelievably flat in a way I couldn’t even imagine. For example, as I was driving past a long flat stretch there was a tree on the farthest horizon that seemed to be moving! This was because it was SO far away and tall that I could see it for a long distance like the way the moon seems to follow you. The dust from the fields would kick up into the atmosphere and turn the sky rusty. This is one of the places where the Dust Bowl would begin in the 1930’s. This is August in a particularly wet year and still it is a dusty place.

Amarillo is the only large city in the Panhandle and it is only 200,000 people strong. It also has my vote for the most “corporate American restaurants” per square mile than anywhere else in the country. I have never seen anything like it. Within a five-minute drive you can find a dizzying glut of IHOPs, Olive Garden, Texas Roadhouse, Cracker Barrel, Denny’s, Famous Dave’s, Dairy Queen, and any other “freezer to table” cuisine you can think of. There were no local places at all along I-40 as far as I could tell. The reason is because Amarillo attracts rural people as far away as Kansas who come in to town to do some celebrating, dining, and getting away from their remote existences. The excitement of hundreds of neon signs calling them from the plains must be a major sensory overload. I could see how exciting it might look to someone who has nothing but sky and sand to look at.

The best part of being here was seeing my three cousins Lisa, Damien, and Steve. Damien and his wife Mary were so kind to invite us to their home for a barbeque dinner. Damien loves to use his smoker in the backyard and we feasted on tender and savory chicken. Lisa is sweet and nice and her daughter Mary Sue was happy to visit with us. Steve is planning a big European trip so we all had a lot to talk about. My cousins are the most Native American looking of the family and I love having my picture taken with them. In a few days I would be visiting with their sister Denise in Arkansas! They always have open arms and I am grateful that they are so welcoming. (Damien also has a lovely grassy backyard and it occurred to me that I haven’t seen a lawn since Minnesota!)

The next day we went to the American Quarter Horse Museum. This is a remarkably beautiful place especially if you like horses. Marley felt like she was viewing a chapter from her life looking at all the introductory films about horsing and disciplines. It was a nice way to pass the early morning. It made me very interested in seeing American Quarter Horses in action back at Radnor Hunt. I don't think I ever understood the differences in them from Thoroughbreds. American Quarter Horses are a distinctively "American" breed.

We started out for Oklahoma and I was again fairly amazed at the flat landscape. It was remarkable how FLAT it was! I have never seen land behave this way, not even in Minnesota and I considered that flat. This went on longer than I felt was possible. My cousins told me that Kansas is FLATTER! How is that possible to be flatter than flat? Here are 3 pictures taken about a half hour apart. You have to stay very alert driving on this kind of road because it's easy to be distracted with nothing to keep your interest! At one point Cole said, "Mom, I think I see Dallas!" I couldn't help laughing. Because even small things that are far away are visible for long distances, he saw a grain silo! He said it couldn't possibly be a grain silo but, alas, it was. Grain silos get your hopes up. Interestingly, the sky on the horizon in all of Texas and Oklahoma is slate gray.

We stopped to make a picnic lunch south of Pampa and we sat at some godforsaken picnic table in the middle of the high plains. The sun is strong and the winds are relentless. There are enormous grasshoppers that were all around us and the tin roof of the “shelter” was squeaking furiously. This reminded me of (again) of poor Laura Ingalls Wilder and her remembrances of living in Kansas. Her shelter was no better than my picnic hovel. We were adjacent to the McClellan National Grasslands and there were features to the land that made it more interesting with gullies and water sources.

We passed into Oklahoma and the soil became so red and vibrant that I was surprised at the incredible difference. Oklahoma is also green (but of course in this El Nino year it is different than what’s normal) and there are small trees everywhere. This is a significant change from Texas and I could see how we were beginning the change from the Southwest to the South proper. We stopped at a very disgustingly dirty Studio 6 in what I would learn later was called Barrio Eighteen. A Barrio is a Spanish word for “slum”. This was a ghetto for sure. The people have adopted a “gangster” kind of persona that is understandable. This kind of place is where teenage girls get pregnant (furthering their poverty), young children are raised by psychological children who do not know how to discipline correctly, and the streets are unsafe and occupied by people bordering on mental illness. (A man in a bathing suit kept circling me asking me if I had “a light” for his cigarette). We had to do laundry and we were nervous about the neighborhood when night was falling. Apparently so was the Asian lady who owned ‘the shop with mostly broken machines’ who kept locking the doors, locking herself in to a room and wouldn’t come out unless we knocked, and who got disgruntled with the smallest request. She didn’t speak English so she was even doubly infuriated because she had no idea what I was saying. It wouldn’t be wise to learn English either because everyone in the laundry was Spanish!

Before we did laundry however we did see the beauty of Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City will always be a place of tragedy until the memory of the bombing fades with time. If you remember it, the word Oklahoma City will always be linked with the bombing by White Supremacist, Timothy McVeigh. We stopped first at the Memorial to the victims of the bombing. This was a very spiritual National Memorial. The Park Ranger was very helpful and explained the empty chairs, the reflecting pool and the monolithic entrances. There is also a museum (that was closing) just next to the memorial and a Survivor’s Tree (that survived the blast). Ten years after the blast and the Memorial is a beautiful testament to the victims and the American people. It is such a shame that the 9/11 site is not remotely near completion (or even an agreement of what should be done with it).

I felt so much anger at Timothy McVeigh that it surprised me. Here was a “Survivalist” who believed that the government was taking away his liberty because they resorted to firing after a 51-day standoff with the delusional Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. He believed that killing innocent people in the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City would be a way to exact revenge on the government (killing many children who were in day care at the time). He was a compassionless, self-righteous, White Supremacist Arizonan who bombed his own country. The best news is that after that act of violence, American security has become much better and 60 similar plots have been quelled since.

We spent the early evening in “Bricktown” which was a lovely venue of restaurants and entertainment. There is a small winding man-made river that offers rides along the canal, a movie complex, and very international offerings of food. We ate at a lovely Spanish Tapas restaurant overlooking the river. Bricktown is a great idea for a city that might not have other things to draw people downtown. One point of interest is that Oklahomans in the city do not have southern accents. This is surprising. I am sure it’s not like this all over Oklahoma. The other interesting thing (and forgive me for this) is that the good people of Oklahoma City are the 'Worst Dressed' people that I have met throughout the whole trip. I am not a fashion plate by any stretch of the imagination but I can say without hesitation that these people make me look like a fashion diva! There are outfits that couldn’t be imagined together unless you couldn’t see color and pattern. It wasn’t a “funky” decision either to put two unlike things together, it was a conservative choice. It was weird to say the least. Even 12 year old Cole noticed it so it wasn’t something just in my head! Some people come to Oklahoma City from the country of course and the rural-ness of Oklahoma might be the reason for the fashion choices. It was almost like the women were trying too hard (too tiny zebra/leopard print dress and rhinestone pumps with a pale green chiffon scarf and pale pink hat to go to the movies?) and the men just had no idea in their cut up t-shirts, raggedy shoes, and belted jean shorts wearing wrestling caps! No one looked like they belonged together. They were all super nice though and so that's all that mattered to us in the end.

We had a great time though in Oklahoma City but it was time to get moving and get to the South – Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Virginia. We still had two weeks to go!

The Land of Enchantment

Arriving in New Mexico, I would finally feel like I could rest a bit and wander locally from one hotel and to spend some time with family. My sister Morgan and I miss each other but make the most of being together at my house or hers whenever we can. Although she needed to work when I arrived, I spent time with her husband John and their six combined children. They have already gone back to school so we waited for them to come home and I cooked dinner which was such a big deal for me!

You don't realize how much you miss homey activities until you don't have a home. I was happy to clean my sister's sink, serve the kids, and to be "kitchen mom" again. This was good therapy for me mid-trip. Her home is a typical New Mexican home. This picture is of the front of the house. The climate is Mediterranean and has a warmish but dry feel most days.

My littlest niece, Rylan, loved her spaghetti so much that she decided to share it with the dogs. She is such a little sweetie, hardly ever cries, and is perfectly content for long periods of time to hang out and be friendly. I have never met a baby like her. I was so contented to be with family and so were the kids. It was great to be around other people who knew you and loved you! Cole would sleep the night there and Marley would have her special time the following night. We all needed this time.

I think that if I were to ever to give advice on how to do a long trip, I would recommend either meeting up with people you know at one of your destinations or visiting someone along the way. It breaks up the monotony of having to be with each other every day and helps to improve your sense of how far you've come. I still can't believe that I drove all the way to my sister's house which is a very long way from home. I didn't even remotely appreciate how far I'd driven until I came to a place I knew well and have only been to by a very long airplane ride! I was mystified in a way I cannot explain but it was surreal to pull up to her house in MY CAR from Pennsylvania.

We decided to leave their house for the hotel just after a huge monsoonal storm hit the valley that also dumped an inch of pea sized hail all over their back yard. The temperature had dropped from 93 degrees to 62 in a matter of minutes. Marley and I headed for the car in the freezing rain to leave the neighborhood only there was no way out! There was a "flash flood" and these can be very dangerous in the desert.

This is a picture to the left that I took of an adobe retaining wall outside the car window! The water is gushing out of the adobe in a torrent. The noise and the color of the sky and mud was very frightening. Marley and I were completely overwhelmed. The road behind us had become swallowed up and there were two cars full of teenage girls that had become stranded and the water was racing up over their headlights. I was terrified. A man on a four wheeler went out to help them (that didn't look like a good idea either!) and when he couldn't get the door open he hustled up the hill and got friends who had pick-up trucks. They helped the girls on to the back and got them out of harm's way. It was very dramatic and scary. The best part of this story is that almost everyone owns a 4X4 pick-up truck in New Mexico so there wasn't a shortage of rescuers as we would see as we inched along!

We had to drive very far to avoid any roads that were in a gully or depression. It took an hour and a half to make a ten minute drive. We couldn't believe the vastness and violence of the storm. We tried going down one street but the water was moving so dangerously and deep that I didn't trust that we wouldn't be swept away. We got out of there as quickly as we could and tried other routes.

Above is a picture looking east in a break in the storm. The river is really a street. There are no tricks to this picture; this is just a point and click Fuji camera with no special settings. My niece Kyra kept asking me, "Auntie, why is the sky so orange?" My best guess was that it was sunset but I have to tell you that I have no idea. This was the weirdest storm I have ever seen.

To the right is a picture an hour later I took as I was pulling in to the hotel. This is a sky to ground lightening bolt. In New Mexico, the electrical storms are very powerful in the vast landscape. These lightening bolts were so large and ferocious that I felt like my nerves were going to fry and I jumped a hundred times in the car! They also lasted long enough to snap pictures of them as they went from sky to ground to sky again in an almost double helix. One bolt hit my sister's house earlier and the kids looked like they would come out of their skins they were so afraid!

Seeing my sister the next morning, I was thrilled to be drinking coffee in her bedroom as we talked and she got ready. She is easy to be with and we enjoy just hanging out and having fun. My sister is also a very loving aunt and my children always feel special around her. She makes no judgements, is super supportive of their talents as children, and knows their bad sides and thinks it's funny. This is common of most people in New Mexico and in that sense, she's a native. There are many women like her and that always makes me feel like I am at home in New Mexico when I am here. Her husband only adds to the positive experience of seeing her. He's the sweetest husband and has the funniest attitude about raising 6 children in a three bedroom house. We should all have a sense of humor about what makes us crazy! He treats me like a sister and for that I will always be eternally grateful.

The other personal interesting thing about New Mexico is that I look like everyone here. That's not a sweeping generalization either. New Mexicans treat me like I am one of them and always have. When I was talking to a Navajo man in the north, he spoke of local towns (that I happen to know) like I lived here. That never happens anywhere else in the country. New Mexicans came from New Spain (Mexico) in 1598. Some were wealthy people who colonized the northern territories of the "Kingdom of Spain" (New Mexico) with their own money. They speak "Spanish" but in a Navajo accent. They are tall, have black hair, round faces, robust torsos, and skinny legs. I am definitely one of them! The people are also private, polite but not too friendly, humorous, and absolutely love an evening cocktail. They are the "down home" types that never put on aires and keep their deepest friendships within their families. But, never ever make the mistake of calling them Mexicans! They hate that and they are truly a culture of their own. I am a direct descendant of these people and in New Mexico today, there are about 40,000 people who are descendants of the original colonists who also had relationships with the Natives living here thus mixing this gene pool.

The Spanish spoken in Northern New Mexico is considered archaic Spanish and is about 400 years old. It's as if there were a group of people in Boston were to speak Medieval English! The New Mexicans were isolated from the rest of Mexico. They have a fondness for Coronado, Cortez, and St. Francis. You can find pictures and statues of them everywhere in New Mexico. There is a lot of pride in the Spanish heritage of New Mexico by the natives here.

One of the things I love about New Mexico is the architecture. This is something that is very specific to New Mexico and there are no structures like this even in Mexico. Adobe buildings in New Mexico incorporate wood in the supporting structures that aren't used in building similar structures in Mexico. These buildings are so soft and rounded that they look very friendly and warm. They are also very common and are in all the older architecture of New Mexico.

The kids and I went into Old Town Albuquerque for the afternoon. It was such fun to sit in the Church Street Cafe in the courtyard (all traditional old New Mexican places have courtyards). There are usually fountains, flowers, arbors, and oftentimes there is also music. These places are so lovely and old world. There is nothing nicer than sitting in a courtyard for an afternoon lunch. The old part of town has a typical Catholic church and a plaza in the center of town. New Mexico, unlike any of the surrounding states is a very Catholic place (it's also a very "blue" state compared to its neighbors, Arizona, Colorado and Texas). Here are some pictures from Old Town, Albuquerque: Top: A Zuni Native (they are the natives that use a lot of black and white stripes in their artwork):

There are at least two unique features of Albuquerque that are worth noting. One are the Sandia mountains which rise up on the eastern horizon. Albuquerque is nestled at the base of these mountains and receive the warm western sunset while also enjoying the lively Rio Grande which turns the valley green. Albuquerque's altitude is at 5,000 ft and the top of the Sandia are about 12,000 ft. The Sandias are so looming and are a beloved part of the city.

The other cool geologic feature is the five burnt out volcanoes that occupy the western edge of the city. They remind me of backgrounds from the animated show The Flintstones. We once went up to the base of them. They begin the desert on the western edge of the city and are visible for from the local highways. There are petroglyphs nearby and new construction is constantly being built closer and closer to their bases. You can see them clearly on Google Earth and then you can see the last eruption marks. Look to the west of the city of Albuquerque.

My brother-in-law is an Albuquerque police officer and he invited me to go on a "ride along" to learn more about what he does. I jumped at the chance! His shift begins at 10 pm and I drove to southeast Albuquerque to the police station. He has a computer in his car that tells him where activity is taking place and he signs in if he thinks he can handle that call alone as he doesn't have a partner. The first stop was to a elderly brother and sister who were worried about an Aryan Nation hothead that was threatening to kill everyone in his apartment complex. He listened intently and said he'd keep an eye out but said there was nothing he could do unless the person the man threatened came forward. Then we took a ride through the rough part of the neighborhood once called the "War-Zone" and is now called "The International District". He shined his light on people wandering the streets at around 11 pm and said that he'd make them scatter like cockroaches and true enough, when he moved his spotlight over them they ran into the shadows. I could see how easy it would be to feel contempt for people who always seem to be hiding something from the police.

He then got a call from a man who owned a karate place and was upset that a Native couple had camped out in his alley to sleep every night. My brother-in-law felt a lot of compassion for the homeless couple because it was late and they were asleep. He had to wake them up and make them move. He asked them why they didn't go to the shelter. When I saw how pretty the woman was I guessed that she was afraid to go there and to be accosted by one of the men living there (a common problem in shelters). Also, the bedbug problem is so bad at shelters that it must be difficult to decide to go and risk getting bitten all over your body.

Next he got a call that we had to run out to the car to attend to. A man who had raped a young girl was found in an apartment complex. Several police cars arrived at the same time and they turned off their lights. We had driven up so fast going about 80 mph in a 30 mph zone with sirens and lights! John held up his gun in the dark and followed the others. "What do you want me to do if you get shot?" I asked and he said, "Run! I'm no hero and I will be running with you if I can!" What??? "Either that or take my gun out of the holster and shoot him." What??? I sat in the dark police car praying he'd come back. He did thank God AND he got the perpetrator!!! To the left is a weird picture I took along the ride. There was full moon in the sky.

After that things got a little slow so I asked if we could stop for a milkshake. We were waiting in a car line when he noticed that the car in front of us had a license plate that had expired. "Let's get 'em!" I chanted. He pulled up behind him in traffic and went after him. It turned out that he was intoxicated and he was wanted in three states for larceny. Hooray! We found a "bad guy" and were going to make the streets a little safer that night! He was arrested and put into the car. He was the quietest drunk driver ever. As it turned out, he is an attorney and was watching his mouth on purpose. I got back to the hotel at 1:30 am completely spent. It was really exciting!

The next morning I was tired but got up and met John, Morgan, and their baby at their house and we packed up to go to the Jemez (pronounced Hey-Mezz) Mountains to a high river to take a hike to a waterfall. We stopped at Los Ojos after the Navajo Reservation and had a fine lunch of fried green chilis (mmmmmm!!!!) with beans and rice. We were so happy and contented! An hour later in up in the high redwood hills we parked with the dogs and walked into the hills for about a mile and half to the waterfalls. This is a beautiful hike as you have to cross the river about 10 times to get on the trail. It was bathed in brilliant sunshine, quiet, and full of happy hikers coming to and from the falls. Some Native Zuni teens were playing in the water with a few children and people were jumping from the cliff to the water below. It was a glorious day in the New Mexican hills with my sister's family. We would leave the next day but we ended this part of our trip with her family in such a lovely way. We felt rested and loved thanks to our family. The next day we'd start our journey east again toward Texas. Here are some pictures of the Jemez Wilderness.