I’ll take a short break from my trip recaps to tell you how I’m doing right now. (Don’t worry, I’ve been going through photos and figuring out what to write about, and I will likely do another post tomorrow.)
It’s been the first week of summer teaching and it’s been great. I absolutely adore teaching at home in my new home, and I’ve enjoyed seeing my students again. I have a few new ones, and a few only over the summer, so things have been fairly busy. I am much more relaxed with my teaching rules over the summer and students are only required to take a certain number, but many take more than the required number. It’s nice to spread people out more over the day as well, and I’ve managed to only schedule 4 days a week as well!
Today is my last teaching day of the week and I only have a few hours. Then I have a relaxing afternoon (plus grocery shopping) and Louie and I are going out tonight for dinner to celebrate my birthday, which was last week. I told him it was okay to count the trip as my birthday celebrations but he disagreed. We also went to see the opera Susannah last night, and enjoyed a “Young Friends” buffet beforehand. We are just pushing the boundary of Young Friends, but I assure you we are still young for the opera!
I went for a run yesterday: I decided to get back into running so I have started a beginning running training plan through Runkeeper. It gives you 3 a week–I had meant to start on Monday but woke up with a headache so I pushed it back. My knee is doing mostly okay but my hip was hurting last night, but I think not bad enough to skip my planned run tomorrow. It really is mostly walking anyway, so I think I can listen to my body and do what works. I’m not sure if I also hurt my hip when I hurt my knee about a month ago, but I think it’s related. It’s nothing too bad though.
The weather has so far been warm but not humid so it’s been incredibly pleasant here. I will be grateful while I can! The cats were glad to see us when we returned: we had people stopping by often but it’s not the same as constant companionship. Muriel wasn’t so sure about violin however, and I think she would be happy never to hear the instrument again (sorry Muriel, not going to happen!). Miles is growing slightly less shy, and the students get to see a bit more of him, at least from a distant.
I feel like there isn’t too much to do here, which is somewhat true, if you ignore that we still need to finish decorating the house here, probably some yard work as well, but more importantly, there’s the other house. But it’s important to have down time and try to strike a balance, and the other house is a longer term project. We will likely go over there on Sunday and do some work.
So that’s me right now! How is your summer going? Do you have a lighter work schedule or keep doing the same?
We left off on Day 4 in White Rock, but I have a few editorial comments before I continue with the recap.
I was reading through some old trip recaps, and I realized that Louie and I HAD spent a night in Oklahoma before: evidently we stayed a night in Tulsa on our trip home from New Mexico on a previous trip. Now, obviously it was uneventful as I have no recollection of it, but I thought it was worth mentioning for total accuracy reasons.
So that brings us to White Rock, New Mexico on Day 4 of the trip.
We slept well in the Yurt, and woke up early. We weren’t sure how crowded Bandelier National Monument would get, but it’s always a good idea to try to beat the crowds. We were among the first in the parking lot (yes!) and got loaded up to hike into Frijoles Canyon, the most popular part of the park.
It was really nice to have the place basically to ourselves for awhile. It was a beautiful day, and the views were terrific.
The Native Americans built various buildings into the side of the mountains, tucked into alcoves, down low and up high. There are lots of parts of the buildings left to see, as well as ladders to climb (that the park service added in for us to climb, but likely was a way that the ancestral pueblo people got around.)
As always on these trips, there is tons to learn and forget. We read signs about history, about plants and animals, rocks and other geology, climate, etc, and then promptly forgot most of it.
After seeing the buildings on the Pueblo Loop in Frijoles Canyon, we headed to Alcove House, which is 140 feet up up the cliff, and involved climbing several long ladders. I started up and then decided it wasn’t for me, so I waited down below while Louie went up to see Alcove House.
Look for Louie up high on the ladder!
Another reason I had wanted to go to Bandelier was because there is a trail called the Frey Trail. As it turns out, the trail goes from the campground to the park, and isn’t much to bother with unless you are staying in the campground, which we weren’t. (It didn’t take reservations and I prefer to have everything planned out so we don’t have to stress.)
But we passed by where it ended, and who doesn’t love a trail with their name on it?
We did hike up a little ways, just to say we did. We did!
Anyway, Louie enjoyed the Alcove House, and then we hiked back to the visitor’s center. There were plenty of signs along the way to learn, and then forget, though I did learned about Gambel Oaks, which helped me identify them throughout the entire trip!
We had a quick snack and bathroom break, and had to decide what to do next. We enjoyed a cup of coffee and some cake at the cafe, and then headed out on the Falls Trail, which was supposed the next most popular thing to do after Frijoles Canyon. It was a cool hike, but the weather wasn’t quite as nice and kept lightly raining on us. It was getting hot though, so it was probably for the best.
The Falls!
The trail might have continued further at other times but we got to a place where it was closed off, so we headed back.
After that hike, we decided it was time to go. We stopped by the campground on our way out to see the other end of the Frey Trail.
We even hiked in a little ways, and saw a woodpecker right up close. Louie had left his camera in the car, so he was upset that the one time he didn’t have it, we saw a woodpecker right there!
It was only about mid-afternoon at this point, so we decided to go check out nearby Los Alamos. It’s a weird place out there, lots of restricted areas owned by the Department of Energy, probably housing nuclear weapons but nobody would know (unless you visit mar-a-lago, I suppose?). There’s a National Historical Park in Los Alamos, but it was closed, but there is some stuff to see. We went to the Bradbury Science Museum and learned a lot, but what I didn’t like was that I felt the bomb was glorified and I wanted to see a more nuanced approach: hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed, and our country did it, and maybe it ended the war but maybe the war was already ending and we didn’t need to kill all those people. So I found being there very upsetting, but Louie enjoyed some of the science stuff, so it was a mixed day for us.
We ate dinner at a Mexican place called El Rigoberto’s in White Rock, and then enjoyed hearing the rain on the yurt as we went to sleep that night. I will say this: White Rock was a nice base for Bandelier, but there aren’t very many restaurant options. There is a good sized grocery store and plenty of gas stations.
Day 5: We woke up and decided to eat breakfast at the Fig and Pig before headed out of town. It was tasty, though oddly busy with a large group of people. We had a 4 1/2 hour drive to Mesa Verde on the docket for this day, and there were a few options as to how to go. We decided to take the route that would head north into Colorado first and then west. We were eager to see some “real” mountains!
The drive was gorgeous, and went through a variety of small towns, like Abiquiu and Tierra Amarilla. We stopped for lunch in Pagosa Springs, which has hot springs and a lovely river through it: we walked around a bit and then had a picnic by the river. (Interesting fact to me: we camped in Pagosa Springs when I was a kid, according to my journal.)
You can see the build up from the hot springs over the years!
After lunch we continued along, and finally made it to Mesa Verde around 3:30, just before the visitor’s center closed, so we had a quick look at the exhibits before checking into our campground. (Also where we camped when I was a kid: even the campground map was similar, nothing really had changed in over 30 years in that sense.)
Campground check in was excruciatingly slow, but we finally made it, and then we had to go pick out our own campsite. I found this stressful, but it wasn’t too busy yet and we drove around trying to figure out what the best option was: there were just a few tent only loops and that is what we chose from. We eventually picked one with a decent view, good privacy, and relatively close but not too close to the bathrooms.
After we set up the camp first (and this picture is from during meal prep, as obviously otherwise we would have everything in the bear box, which is conveniently and scarily location immediately next to the tent, in order to attract the bear to where we are), then we had time for a short hike from the campground. We headed out for a 2 mile hike on the Knife Edge Trail.
Views abounded!
After our hike, we made a fire and our first camping dinner of the trip. (Mac and cheese with tuna and canned peas, yummy!).
One constant of the trip was that the days were warm/hot enough, but as soon as the sun went down it got cold. We thought Mesa Verde would be the coldest, but we were incorrect. However, the sky was the darkest! In the middle of the night I needed to get up to go to the bathroom and I was blown away by the night sky. There were stars upon stars, the milky way, distant universes, who even knows. So many stars that normally you can’t see because of the background lights around you.
Day 6: This morning would start with a tour of Cliff Palace. Several of the cliff dwellings could only be seen with a ranger led tour, which nowadays you have to reserve online, two weeks in advance. But it turned out that during the time we were visiting Cliff Palace was the only one that you could do! It’s too bad, because I was really wanting to try Balcony House again: we had gone when I was a kid and I remember it was scary but really fascinating. However, Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling and I was pleased to secure a time. We ended up arriving too early, of course, because they said to allow an hour from the campground but it didn’t actually take that long. There wasn’t too much to see in the area so we just wandered around and waited for our turn.
The tour has a few scary moments but mostly it’s not bad, and the structure is amazing to see, that it was built when it was built, that it is still standing as much as it is, and that we can see it. It’s all just amazing.
Cliff Palace.
The ranger led a terrific tour and we learned quite a lot about the people who built these houses. One interesting fact was that the people building at Mesa Verde weren’t doing anything particularly unique for the time: these sorts of houses were being built all over at this time, it’s simply that the ones in Mesa Verde have lasted longer over the years. It’s quite fascinating that all of sudden, everybody was building homes the same, as if they saw it on instagram, but it was likely due to trade.
In any case, we got to get up close and personal with the site, and then we climbed a couple of ladders to get out and that was a little scary but I managed.
After Cliff Palace, we had more to see. Unfortunately Wetherill Mesa was closed during this time (construction) but the rest of the part was open. We stopped at all the places, and took pictures and walked around and read stuff and promptly forgot most of it, as usual.
Interesting side bar: my old trip diary said we went to Wetherill Mesa and rode a train. Also we stayed at the campground and it was cold in the morning.
I thought this was interesting: this is a dwelling that isn’t open to the public, but there were people there in it that we could see from the lookout. We saw a trail that was marked “do not enter under penalty of law” or something like that, and I figured out that it was likely part of the route down to the house.
At the Spruce Tree House area, we decided to do a longer hike, the Petroglyph Point Trail. It used to be that you could go inside the Spruce Tree House, but it isn’t currently open to guests.
Petroglyph Point Trail was only 2.3 miles, but it was a lot of challenge, things to squeeze through, step over, lots of ups and downs. We ended up being able to see a cliff dwelling, not in fantastic shape, but one that was out away from the crowds so that was cool.
And then there was the petroglyph panel, which I did not seem to get a really good picture of. It was a little crazy when we got there with an odd amount of people and I must have gotten overwhelmed.
The rest of the hike wasn’t as interesting–there was a place where you had to climb over a couple of huge rocks that was pretty scary/difficulty, but obviously I managed. And we just kept hiking and finally got back to the visitor’s center/area where the hike started. At this point I was pretty tired but we forged ahead with more sightseeing.
Around 6 pm or so we headed back to the camp: we wanted to shower before dinner, so we did that and then enjoyed some Indian food packets from Trader Joe’s while sitting by the fire.
Day 7: We had to pack up in the morning, so we did that first, and then headed out for one more hike before leaving Mesa Verde. We wanted to hike the Point Lookout Trail, which left from the campground, and was 2.2 miles with 400 feet elevation change–doesn’t sound too hard, but it started climbing right away. Good morning to me! The hike was straightforward at least: up to the view, back down. The view was terrific!
We loved seeing Mesa Verde, but we were even more excited about getting closer to those snow capped mountains in the distance. To be fair, we didn’t know if we were going to those mountains or other mountains, but we knew that our next few stops were closer to similar mountains.
That’s where I will stop for this post. We were leaving the Cliff Dwellings portion of the trip and heading into the mountains. Next: the Million Dollar Highway and Ouray awaits!
After Louie’s graduation, we wanted to take a road trip. For various reasons, we haven’t had a good Rocky Mountain road trip in a few summers, so we were really looking forward to it!
I originally started planning this road trip for last summer, but when Louie got invited to attend the Oslo conference, we nixed the plans. So I said, let’s do it this summer instead, and replanned the whole thing, with a few minor changes. It was originally a two week trip, and then Louie got invited to do a conference in Vail, so we added that on, to make just about 3 weeks of travel.
But then I hurt my knee, and I was worried about hiking and such, but it didn’t seem like a reason not to go, so we went!
Day 1: We set out from St Louis in the morning. We had plans to stay in a small town in Oklahoma, Boise City, that night, so we had about 11 hours of driving to cover. We stopped for lunch in Olathe, Kansas, and just kept driving. I have to confess, I must have been putting the pedal to the metal a bit much at one point in western Kansas, and we got pulled over. It was in the middle of nowhere and the roads were straight and flat, and I had gotten carried away, I guess. The cop asked where we were going, and this was a tough question to answer as we were going everywhere! We said we were going to Boise City, Idaho first, and then I maybe said Las Vegas, New Mexico and the cop seemed to think we were complete idiots. Which at this point we really were. Lucky for me, he had had a roommate at the academy with the last name of Frey and seemed content to give me a warning, so I set the cruise control for the speed limit and we continued on our way.
We got into Boise City quite late, and grabbed Subway sandwiches for dinner at a nearby gas station.
Louie pulled over to take pictures of this barn.
Day 2: We had breakfast at the Farmhouse Cafe in Boise City, which was barely labeled as a restaurant, but google maps showed it to be one. It was busy enough, filled with cowboys carrying actual guns on their belts and a man who used the ladies’ room in front of me–I was about to go and then he went. He claimed it was because the mens’ room was out of order (which Louie was confused by as he had already used it) and the whole thing made me think about all the reasons we use one restroom or the other and WHO CARES as long as people can use the bathroom, which is a thing that everybody has to do, and yet here we were surrounded by people who thought the whole thing was a joke and yet they wanted to use bathrooms that didn’t match their gender identity. GAH. Anyway, I had thought it would be fun to say we had spent the night in Oklahoma as neither of us could recall having done so before, and perhaps that was enough for a lifetime?
New Mexico, not Oklahoma.
Our next stop was Capulin Volcano National Monument in New Mexico. We enjoyed driving to the top of the Volcano and hiking around a bit. My knee didn’t hurt too much with some walking, but I didn’t take the second hike with Louie and rested instead.
The landscape was VERY different than St Louis!We also saw a snake on the path!
We saw there was another NPS site nearby so we went to Fort Union National Monument after that. It was interesting as well, but the best part was seeing a whole bunch of pronghorn (sometimes called American Antelope) on the drive.
The ruins of Fort Union are in the background.
After that it was time to get to Las Vegas, New Mexico, sometimes called Little Las Vegas. No, it’s nothing like the other Vegas. But Louie has a friend, Mario, who lives there and we met him for dinner and stayed in a lovely AirBNB in the downtown area. We had dinner at the Castenada Hotel Restaurant. I enjoyed seeing that the Hotel was a former Harvey Girls Hotel, right by the train station, if you are a fan of the podcast The History Chicks, you might have heard that episode.
Day 3: We got breakfast in the downtown Plaza area of Las Vegas, at a small place called El Rialto. We were both eager to try New Mexican food, and enjoyed green chile sauce on our meals.
We had to find the door from Longmire in the Plaza as well: many shows and movies have been filmed in Las Vegas, and Longmire is one of them. The show pretends it is in Wyoming, but it is filmed in Las Vegas, New Mexico!
We then drove to Santa Fe to meet Louie’s friend again for lunch at a place called Cafecito, which was very good and was located on Shoofly Street. After lunch we said goodbye to Mario, and then walked around the square at Santa Fe for awhile until the weather became too rainy/scary looking and we thought it was a good time to drive instead.
You can see the very ominous storm clouds in the background.
After an hour or two, we headed to our next destination: a yurt in White Rock, outside of Bandelier. We checked into the yurt and got situated, then we had dinner at the Pig and Fig, a local restaurant, and took a drive up to White Rock Overlook.
The view out the top of the yurt.
That seems like a good place to stop today, so I’ll pick up with Day 4 and more White Rock next. I’m sure you are thrilled I fit 3 days in one blog post, aren’t you?
We had another weekend hosting house guests and it went very well.
Louie had gotten his PhD back in August and then participated in a recognition ceremony in December, but he hadn’t gotten to do the “hooding”, where his adviser puts his hood on. He had some family that wanted to attend the May ceremony as well, so it was on.
People arrived on Friday, and came over to the house. Saturday was spent hanging out and prepping things for Sunday, when we were hosting everybody for a dinner. Saturday night we headed over to Louie’s mom’s house for a party.
That’s where I ran into trouble. There had been a big storm, and unbeknownst to me the sidewalks were very muddy. I ended up slipping in the mud…slowly…one leg went straight forward and the other bent off to the side. At first I thought I was okay except super muddy, but by evening my knee was hurting quite a lot.
I ended up missing the actual graduation ceremony and watching it online instead.
I had trouble walking, but my knee never swelled up or anything, so I was hopeful it would be getting better on its own. Resting that day seemed to help a lot as it is definitely better but still with twinges here and there (not the knee, but the side of the knee). Hopefully it won’t negatively affect our trip too much as we plan to do a lot of walking and hiking…
When Louie’s name was called out the place erupted in cheers. Many of the graduating students have taken classes with him, so they cheered him and even stood up! It was very moving to hear. You might be able to see the videos on my Instagram. you
In any case, we managed to host a bunch of people for dinner. We had planned on using the grill but nature has its own plans and there was another huge storm and rain so we all sat around the table and cooked on the stovetop. It worked just fine.
We had Louie’s parents and stepparents, his brothers, his in-laws and me. It was a good time!
Monday morning I had my last class at my school job, and Louie took some people to the airport. I’ve been finishing up teaching, recuperating from my silly knee injury, doing grades (done!) and finishing up my summer teaching schedule. It’s been really nice sleeping in–I got up at 8 am this morning and it was so ridiculous and decadent.
We finished watching Jury Duty–I loved it, and highly recommend you watch it, so funny! We’ve been watching The Sinner lately, which is pretty good. We accidentally watched the last season first, which mostly worked but did spoil a few things, so don’t do that if you can avoid it. I have been reading some good books lately, and especially enjoyed “Cutting for Stone” by Araham Verghese and “Happy Place” by Emily Henry (though it was fairly predictable, still very fun to read). I’ve been reading a bunch of cozy mysteries by Lynn Cahoon as well.
I was happy when people seemed to think we had really done a lot with the house so far. It’s been really fun getting to show the place off (a feeling I am quite unfamiliar with!) and I am tickled and proud when people compliment my decorating choices. We still have things to do, the shelves, the walls, the kitchen, and the sunroom, but we’ve done a lot and are really happy with how the places looks and feels. We are excited to host more people this summer (both my sisters) and look forward to having this house for a long time.
Louie is glad to be done with graduation and the semester as well. I couldn’t’ be more proud of him!
The end of the school year is always busy with performances and such. I’ve had juries at two schools (don’t even ask), festival, the studio recital, school recitals, school concerts, and this weekend is graduation for Louie and we have people coming into town.
I am ready for some downtime and vacation. I’m worn out and exhausted! The good news is that the house is doing well and we are mostly just living in it. There is still more to do: mostly putting stuff on the walls, but we are unpacked, we have all the furniture and rugs we wanted to get, and we are finding where things work best to store and use them. It’s a delight living in this house, and it’s a delight teaching in this house. There are many things in my life that haven’t turned out the way I wanted, or perhaps as well as I wanted, but Louie and I are very happy together in our beautiful home.
Every time I come home I am so happy to be there. I love how our rugs and furniture turned out and I am so excited that we picked them out ourselves…Louie and I learned quite a bit about what our personal styles were through the process, something we had never really done before. Muriel approves of the rugs as well.
My parents visited last weekend. I realized I didn’t take any pictures, but my dad took a nice photo on his bike ride.
We had dinner with Louie’s parents, took many walks, had dinner out, went to a biergarten and enjoyed the outdoor weather, and they watched me play a solo with the St Louis Classical Guitar Orchestra and assisted with my studio recital. It was a great visit and I’m glad they were able to make it up here.
Playing a short piece with the Guitar Orchestra. It was a lot of fun and they were really nice.
A lovely gift from a student. The studio recital was terrific. We held it in Tower Grove Park at a pavilion and had a little reception afterwards as well. It wasn’t too long but everybody did well and it is always nice to get everybody together in one place for a bit.
Sometimes Miles and Muriel share the hammock. They spend HOURS a day on the cat tree looking out the window. I would too if I were them.
Peonies blooming in our yard.
I have to say, I’m feeling much better about the progress we’ve made on our move after having people over. I tend to be pretty hard on myself, but I realized, we moved in less than two months ago and basically are done (except for the walls) so, that’s actually pretty good. I tend to compare myself too negatively to others and have been trying to focus more on the positive. I feel good about what’s going forward with my career and jobs, and I’m looking forward to a summer filled with family visits, vacation, events, and relaxing, as well as teaching.
It’s easy to see what other freelance musicians are doing and feel jealous of them: I don’t sub with the symphony, I am part time in my jobs, I don’t have any really fancy titles, I don’t have any summer festivals I go to, etc. But I have what I have and nobody can do everything, nor should they! I try to remind myself to count my own blessings (cheesy, I know) and to not compare my inside to other people’s outside!
I keep thinking I’ll write here more often. Perhaps I will going forward, now that things are settling down. How is May going for you?
I am counting down the days left that I have to get up really early! School is nearing an end, everything happens all at once, and then we are hitting the road for a bit and seeing some mountains.
I got to see my favorite current performing violinist, Augustin Hadelich, play a solo recital Sunday night at the 560 Center at Wash U as part of their Great Artists Series.
A program which includes Bach’s Partita no. 3, Ysaye Obsession Sonata, and Bach’s Partita no. 2!
He played entirely from memory, of course, and even had an encore: the slow movement from Bach’s A Minor Sonata. It was an unbelievable night, and at times it felt as if the entire audience was holding their breath.
I was lucky enough to be able to meet him after the concert as well. Louie was kind enough to take a picture.
The next day Augustin did a masterclass with some students at Wash U which I attended as well. In addition to experiencing such an amazing performance, it was fun to see various friends and colleagues from the violin (and viola) community here. I got to catch up and chat with several people that normally I only see in passing here and there, and it was really nice.
We have seats right up front and we adore them. I highly recommend any concerts that the Great Artists Series puts on, but this was a highlight. Thank you Jen!
Other stuff going on: Jazz Saturday night with friends (and dinner before at Brasserie), Dim Sum with Louie’s parents on Sunday, lots of stuff around the house, and lots of teaching!
We’ve been opening the windows when the weather is nice and of course the cats love this.
I forget if I shared our new living room set up with you yet. We put the finishing touch on the furniture the other week when we got the orange chairs, which I love. When I walk in the front door, I am just so happy every time.
It’s always one of those “I can’t believe we live here” moments. I was never a person who wanted a big house or cared too much, but I might have been wrong. Having this lovely home has made the past month so phenomenal. I am sure it will wear off, but we are both just so happy to be here. To be fair: I hope the feeling doesn’t wear off, because we need to appreciate our privilege and how lucky we really are to be able to afford a lovely home like this one. There is still more to organize and unpack (mostly pictures, some books) but I can’t believe how much we have done in just over a month.
If any local readers need any cardboard boxes or know anyone who does, please let me know. We have a few. Also packing materials.
Muriel has started climbing up on the stair railings. This makes me very nervous when she does it on the higher floors! I suppose she’ll be fine…
