Roadtrip on Michel Weksler's Blog

Denver and the way home

Sun, 08 May 2022 12:25:00 -0800

Arriving in Denver after a long day of driving was a welcome change. After the endless wide open and sparsely populated great plains, being in a big metro area felt good and reassuring. Orit has a friend that lives here who arranged for us to stay at the in-law unit of her friend. That was probably the nicest unit we stayed in during our trip, and though the hosts wanted no payments, Orit suggested that we prepare brunch for everyone on Saturday morning as a token of appreciation, which ended up being a lot of fun. But this evening we still had plans - Orit’s friend invited us to join her for St Paul and the Broken Bones, with an opening act by Danielle Ponder. During the show I felt so tired that I thought I might be coming down with something. Then our friend reminded us that Denver is at altitude and instead of resting upon arrival we instead immediately went out to dinner, had a glass of wine and went to the show. I guess I’m getting old and should slow down a bit, at least when making the transition to places with lower concentration of oxygen in the air…

Memphis to Denver

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 12:24:00 -0800

Leaving Memphis we are now in “going home” mode. We have about 2,000 miles to cover, and we intend to do it in two weeks. This is not super fast pace, but faster than the pace thus far.

We wanted to visit a friend in Denver which is about 1000 miles away so we were thinking of 3 stops along the way. First we wanted to explore the Ozarks a little bit. This area has a bad rap partially due to the Netflix series of the same name. Stopping at a truck stop right before leaving the interstate and starting to climb into the mountains another reason why this place gets a bad rap becomes apparent. A bunch of NRA-created stickers and t-shirts are for sale with slogans like “this girl doesn’t retreat - she reloads“. Conceal carry is allowed in these parts without any licensing or training, and a friend of a friend with property in the area once said that “… everyone is carrying so everyone is polite” of gun culture here. Ok, I will NOT wear my AOC “Green New Deal” t-shrit for the next few days.

Tennessee

Wed, 27 Apr 2022 12:23:00 -0800

Nashville

On our way to Nashville we took a few detours along small country roads and happened to pass through the tiny city of Lynchburg. We had no idea we would come here, and have not read about it. But as we drove through town and started seeing black signs with a distinctive yet familiar white font we realized we happened on the Jack Daniel’s distillery. Not having planned it, we arrived when it was just closing, but managed to get a peek inside.

Birmingham

Sat, 23 Apr 2022 12:22:00 -0800

^{A very big wrench}

Birmingham is a nice city in the northwestern part of Alabama. I knew little about it before coming here and decided to make it a stop so I could visit a friend who recently moved here with his wife and baby daughter. We drove to Birmingham via Oxford, Mississippi, where we briefly stopped for lunch and enjoyed the calm, manicured and clean little town. It was a very stark difference to the run down, neglected feel of Clarksdale. The calm surface is in contrast to a very stormy past during the civil rights era, when a black student tried to enroll in the then segregated University of Mississippi here, ultimately leading to violent race riots that got national attention.

The Delta

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 12:21:00 -0800

The Mississippi delta is among the poorest parts of Mississippi, itself one of the poorest states in the US. “Thank god for Mississippi” has become a common adage in the south cynically referring to Mississippi’s low ranking on pretty much every measure of quality of life. Driving through the delta indeed reinforces this perspective. The vast empty fields, run down communities, deserted and crumbling farm houses all add to a sense of abandonment and despair. When we stopped in Cleveland, MS and encountered a functioning main street lined with cute little shops and a cafe where decent latte and croissants were being served, complete with a student reading a book by Freud (Orit excitedly pointed out that it was “Civilization and Its Discontents”), we were positively surprised. But this experience was the exception, to be sure. Later on when we stopped for gas as we approached the city Clarksdale, I had a really hard time understanding what people around me were saying with their thick accents and lots of local slang.

Big Houses

Sat, 16 Apr 2022 12:20:00 -0800

Yesterday was Passover Eve, and this is the first time in a long time that we are not celebrating it with our family. Everyone seems to miss it more than we realized. The Passover Seder is all about telling an ancient story of slavery and redemption, and 3,000 years later, it is still remembered, still rehashed, still processed. As we travel through the U.S. south, the more recent story of slavery is unfolding in front of us and it is evident that it is not yet done. It is still an open wound, the details of the story still being fought over. I hope it doesn’t take 3,000 years to heal.

New Orleans, part 2

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 12:19:00 -0800

After a few days in NOLA we started feeling more at home. We explored the French Quarter inside and out, and visited another famous neighborhood, the Garden District, where there are nice big mansions, built by NOLAs richest people in the 19th century and preserved beautifully. People also come here for shopping. There is, of course, more to NOLA than just music, shopping and nicely preserved historical neighborhoods. NOLA was the center of the slave trade in the lower south during the so-called antebellum period. Antebellum is from Latin: Ante (before) and Bellum (war), e.g. before the war, which in the south means the American civil war. Writing the term feels a little repulsive, like wearing a MAGA hat. It also feels wrong, like saying “יורד” in Hebrew to describe someone who emigrates from Israel (the word comes from the root “to go down”, as opposed to the word that is used to describe someone who emigrated from another country to Israel, where the word is “עולה”, from the root “to go up”). That is to say, I don’t like using language that serves a very specific political purpose, one that I disagree with, where the words have been so well integrated into the culture as to almost become invisible. In the same vein, a shift has been taking place in recent years, from using the word “slave” to using “enslaved person”. As Katy Waldman points out “To reduce the people involved to a nonhuman noun … reproduce(s) the violence of slavery on a linguistic level; to dispense with it amount(s) to a form of emancipation”.

New Orleans

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 12:18:00 -0800

When we started planning our roadtrip we chose New Orleans (or NOLA as many here call it) as the destination of our first “leg” of the trip. Neither of us has been here before, we heard so much about its unique culture, food, music and natural surroundings, and it seemed like a good starting point to the “deep south” portion of our trip. So it was very exciting to actually arrive in NOLA, at the end of a very long day of driving. It was nearly 10pm by the time we were settled in our hotel. We were so excited about being here, and have heard so much about the nightlife, that we decided to go out and explore. Our hotel is right outside the french quarter, to its northeast. We walked a short few blocks and found a bar with a band playing live jazz music. There were a few more nearby. It was great to hear live music in the middle of the week, late at night. After a while we ran into a band playing live music in the street. There apparently are not enough bars, and they just had to play in the street. Everyone was very loud, the bars with sound systems that blasted music especially loudly, and the street bands with very loud brass instruments and a big drum. Over the next few days we would see (and listen to!) several more bands in various bars and on the street. The music we listened to was very varied. It was mostly traditional Jazz but there was some blues, rock and folk music mixed in.

Cedar City and Capitol Reef National Park

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 12:17:00 -0800

We spent the night in Cedar City, Utah, and drove the 2.5 hour drive to Capitol Reef National Park in occasional snow showers and a little bit of rain. Despite the weather, the drive was beautiful, and though it was cold and very windy, we had lunch right at the entrance to Capitol Reef.

We were originally planning to spend the day visiting Arches National Park, and spend the night in a campground near Moab. But we decided that braving freezing temperatures and a chance of rain overnight were not the experience we were going for, and that we should stay in a hotel or airbnb instead. Also, based on our experience of Zion being swamped with too many visitors and information on the Arches website, we decided to go for the nearby but much less well known Capitol Reef. I feel like on both counts it was a good decision.

Houston

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 12:16:00 -0800

It was already a few days ago that we left Austin on our way to Houston, but it feels like much more time has passed!

The drive to Houston is a short 2.5 hours on the freeway and goes through the Texas German Belt, where lots of people still consider themselves Deutschtexaner. We spent some time going up and down between the small little towns that dot the area, and sampled some of the local specialties - some Czech inspired Kolach, some Texas BBQ in a little shack that does not look like it contains such delicious food. The scenery was also nice, with cows grazing against a backdrop of rolling green hills. It is easy to see how Germans immigrants felt at home here.

Texas!

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 12:15:00 -0800

El Paso

We enjoyed our one night stay at the Stanton House in El Paso. The hotel is nicely appointed, and though we didn’t make use of the spa, it still was a good alternative to camping in the rain. We had dinner at a great restaurant that felt so different from the bay area. It was clearly a place people came for special occasions, and the restaurant played its part, with lots of very well dressed waiters hovering over every table, a good wine list and some purely for show gestures, like bringing a mini coat rack next to every woman, so she can hang her purse on it. I can hear the eyes of every Berkeley-ite rolling at how un-woke that is. Why assume that only the woman has a purse? And with the constant “yes m’aam” and “yessir”, they are making assumptions about people’s gender preferences…

Goodbye Nambe, a little Santa Fe, White Sands and some fuel surprises

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 12:14:00 -0800

We said goodbye yesterday to our Airbnb in the Nambe pueblo. It is a very cozy Airbnb, situated in an old adobe style house that is nicely renovated. We stayed here for 3 nights and it started feeling like home. It is great to be somewhat stationary for a little bit, and have a base from which to explore.

^{The apricot tree near our Airbnb just starting to flower}

At some point during our stay, our host stopped by to chat, and we talked for a long time. It was a really interesting conversation, though she did most of the talking. She started by telling us about the history of the place, and how she and her husband bought it several years ago and renovated the structures to create several Airbnbs, but how the vineyard, which is also part of the same property, was bough by another buyer. She is a retired white woman, but the property is inside ancestral Puebloan land, which is a bit unusual. After a few sentences she started referring to the other buyers as “the Indians”. She explained how water rights are an issue and how the ongoing drought makes the nearby creek have too little water for “the Indians” to water the vineyard. She also made some racist comments about how they prefer to not work the vineyard and instead get money from the federal government. I was worried about how the conversation might go from there. But then we moved to a different subject, and told us about how they recently hosted a family of Afghan refugees that were being resettled in the US. It is a dramatic story - the family, a dad, a mom and a few very young kids, comes from a rural area near the border with Pakistan, and they knew nothing of the ways of a western family. Everything was new to them - cooking inside the house, on a stove. Using an oven. A fridge. Supermarkets. Car seats. She had to explain stuff to them, using largely signs and gestures, as they speak no english, and there wasn’t always a translator available. She talked for a long time, telling us story after story about her experience of hosting that family, until it became clear we are probably the first people she’d told about it. When we discussed this later, Orit suggested that hosting an Afghan family might not be considered a purely good thing in those parts, that people might have objections and view this more critically, so she may be just keeping those stories to herself. The more we expressed our admiration to our host for her actions, the more she felt comfortable and the more her stories flowed. I was very moved by her stories, it is quite rare to get an opportunity to play such a role in someone’s life, and our host seemed to just do it because she could not not do it. It made me think of baby A, which Orit and I fostered during 2020. We also taught him about the world, we also communicated with him with more than just words. And for me, it also felt like I could not not do it. There was no other realistic option.

Atomic City

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 12:13:00 -0800

The city of Los Alamos sits on a secluded mesa somewhere between Taos and Santa Fe. Back in 1943 it was a school for well to do boys called Los Alamos Ranch School, when the government bought it and turned it into a secretive weapons program called The Manhattan Project. About two and a half years later the project conducted Trinity the first large scale nuclear test, which marked the dawn of the nuclear age. The project produced Little Boy, which was dropped on Hiroshima, followed by Fat Man which was dropped on Nagasaki. Arguably, those bombs contributed to Japan’s decision to surrender, ending WWII in the Pacific theatre.

Continental Divide and Hobbit House

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 12:12:00 -0800

After visiting Chaco Canyon and Aztec Ruins, we drove to Taos. The drive from Aztec to Taos is gorgeous. You have to cross some part of the Rockies, and the high elevation meant there was still plenty of snow on the ground along the way. It was really really pretty. I was also excited to cross the continental divide. There is something so magical in crossing this invisible line where rain falling on one side will go to the Pacific and rain falling on the other will go to the Atlantic. There is very little to tell you that you crossed it, aside from the convenient sign. That we now know where it passes with great accuracy always makes me think about all the engineering achievements of the 20th century, and though today we look at some of them critically (Powell lake, anyone?), they are still inspiring to me. It also marks an important milestone in our trip. It is as if we are now starting to descend towards the south, though geographically speaking, this is not entirely true.

Chaco Culture National Historic Park

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 12:11:00 -0800

Yesterday we drove to Chaco Culture National Historic Park, a little known park in the northwest corner of New Mexico. It preserves a canyon with several so called “big houses” built by Chaco people, which modern pueblo people see as their ancestors. It is another landmark showcasing the culture of ancestral pueblo people like Wupatki, Mesa Verde and Capitol Reef. The big houses might have been used for religious purposes, and were built around 1000 years ago. They show great architectural skill. Some of them are 4 stories high, and all sites are perfectly aligned with several celestial phenomena, such as the equinox, winter and summer solstices and certain moon phases. There are many ceremonial round structures called Kivas throughout the structures, and the scale is quite impressive. The buildings are built from stone, wood and clay, and have a sophisticated core-and-veneer construction which made their walls strong enough to hold the weight of 4 stories.

Arches, Canyonlands, Moab and Mesa Verde

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 12:10:00 -0800

The past few days have been a whirlwind of parks, hikes, overlooks and driving. Orit and I both feel like we would like to take a few days to slow down and digest everything we’ve experienced, so we changed our plans for the coming weekend and will try to stay in one place for 3 (!) nights.

The day before yesterday was probably the toughest we’ve had in our trip so far. There is no external reason or constraint that caused it to be like that. In other words, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We started the day with a fairly strenuous 2.5 mile roundtrip, 1000 feet elevation gain hike in Capitol Reef National Park, to see a really nice arch. We then drove 2.5 hours in beautiful terrain to Arches National Park, and spent 3 hours exploring its various lookouts and short hikes. Though we didn’t do any strenuous hikes there, we were completely exhausted by the time we arrived at our hotel. By then we had walked more than 10 miles, some of it in rough terrain, and have been in the car for hours. Delirious, we went out for dinner, wolfed down some salad and pizza at Antica Forma, a really nice Italian style pizza restaurant, got back to the hotel, dipped in the hot tub for a bit and collapsed into bed. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

Sedona's main street does not scale

Sat, 19 Mar 2022 12:09:00 -0800

^{Traffic jam in Sedona (image credit: David Jolkovski/Larson Newspapers, Red Rock News)}

When we visited Sedona recently and got stuck several time in pretty terrible traffic jams like this, it got me thinking about the causes. I think that traffic issues are often caused by cities scaling faster than their roads do, and while Sedona is not a very big city - around 10,000 people according to the 2020 census, It does get a fare amount of visitors - 3 million visitors in 2018 according to the Sedona chamber of commerce. Most of those visitors are not a surprise to Sedona city leaders. The visitors are all coming to hotels, campgrounds or registered Airbnbs, so the city knows where they are staying, and can get data on how long, and use that for planning. So if we assume each of those guests stays for a week and that they are mostly spread around 8 busy months of the year, we get about 87K visitors in Sedona every day. So let’s call it 100K residents and visitors who are all moving around Sedona every day.

Zion NP

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 12:08:00 -0800

This image above is actually still from Lake Powell. I took it to try and capture how low the water has gotten. As you might be able to see, there is a line of camper vans up on the left, and if you continue that line all the way to the right, you get the the transition area in the big white rock on the right where the color turns from white to brown. That line is where the water level used to be. So I would be 30 feet under water taking this picture. And to get to the water you actually need to go down further.

Page, AZ and Drought

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 12:07:00 -0800

We drove out of Sedona on our way north. We stopped for a nice breakfast at a busy cafe in Flagstaff, and stocked up on some food and supplies. We then drove up back through the high desert landscape near Grand Canyon, but this time we kept going further north, towards Page, AZ.

Right outside town there is a massive tourist attraction - Horseshoe Bend. An area where the Colorado river does a perfect horseshoe. There is of course a parking lot, an entrance fee and a 0.5 mile walk to it. The walk is short enough that everyone goes - young and old, people with disabilities, everyone.

Sedona

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 12:06:00 -0800

Sedona is a beautiful place. It is set in a unique landscape of towering red rock buttes, and because it contains no tall buildings, you can see the view from practically anywhere in town. It is also a spiritual place. Something about Sedona, perhaps the beautiful surroundings, seems to have drawn to it an exceptionally large population of healers, artists and spiritual guides. There are even several vortex meditation sites (whatever that means) nearby.

On the road to Sedona

Mon, 14 Mar 2022 12:05:00 -0800

We left Grand Canyon National Park to make the ~150 mile trip to Sedona, AZ. Along the way we got a few last looks at the Grand Canyon and the Colorado river deep inside it.

^{Looking east from Lipan Point, Grand Canyon}

^{Looking west from Lipan Point, Grand Canyon}

We then continued east to highway 89 and stopped at the Wupatki National Monument, where you can see the remains of a communal living space built by Native Americans around 500 AD and inhabited for about 700 years. It has 100 rooms, in its final years benefited from a layer of ash deposited by the eruption of the nearby sunset volcano that made the soil more fertile.

Grand Canyon

Sun, 13 Mar 2022 12:04:00 -0800

^{Sunrise over the Grand Canyon}

Grand Canyon was beautiful. We did the drive up to it at the end of the day and got to our hotel, the El Tovar Hotel right on the rim of the canyon after dark. When we walked around looking for something to eat, we came across three grazing Elk, chewing calmly right in front of us, completely oblivious to our presence. Later on, we ordered room service because all the restaurants were fully booked, and woke up really early the following morning. We were able to appreciate a beautiful sunrise over the canyon, followed by a nice hike along the rim. We did another good hike in the evening while we were waiting for a table at the hotel restaurant - the wait was an hour and 40 minutes…

Quick stop in Vegas, and on to Grand Canyon

Fri, 11 Mar 2022 12:03:00 -0800

We left Death Valley in a rush. All night long, a strong wind was blowing, sometimes gusting up to 50 mph. Our tent rattled and shook all night long, making for a restless sleep. In the morning, we packed up our stuff in a hurry stuff, hoping to drive away from the wind storm to a place where we can get organized and calmly put ourselves and the car back together. As we drove, we got to death valley junction, a tiny city with a hotel and an opera house with a very interesting story. Unfortunately we missed the guided tour of the operate house, so we only got this one picture of its outside.

Death Valley

Fri, 11 Mar 2022 12:02:00 -0800

The drive to Death Valley from Bakersfield was long and meandering. It mad its way through canyons up and down a range of mountains, and finally gave way to more open land, only to again climb up and back down into the park. Along the way. we stopped for a quick lunch in Ridgecrest, the last major city before the park. It was very obvious that the little place we stopped at was geared towards a very different crowd than places we frequent in the bay area. The setting was plain, with no decoration or detail on the walls. The space looks like it was a small factory that was made into a restaurant with minimal renovation. Some parts of the space still had an old and dirty drop ceiling, there were very few windows and the light came from artificial light, cold and white. Why does a place like that even exist? Obviously, people find it useful in some way, otherwise it would go out of business. The food was decent and the owner seemed nice and welcoming. But the thought that the world would be a better place if this place was just a little more aesthetically pleasing, if it was put together with a bit more attention to the look and feel, was inescapable.

On our way!

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 12:01:00 -0800

My wife and I finally hit the road today on our big trip. It was a long time coming. We drove to Pinnacles National Park, and did a nice hike there, and we are spending the night in Bakersfield.

As we were driving out of the bay area, we passed by a hotel in Milpitas where, a little more than 20 years ago while on a business trip, I was awoken by a frantic call from my wife telling me to open the TV and see what was unfolding in the twin towers in New York City. A little more than a year after that day, we immigrated to this country along with our two young kids, and ended up staying at the same hotel while searching for a home to rent. It was interesting to reflect on the years that have gone by and how much has change in the world and in our personal lives. We’ve established ourselves in this country and put down roots, our kids have grown up here and are now taking their first steps as adults in the world, and we are embarking on a road trip in the south west and southern US that we’ve been planning for a long time.