Day Six

The next day, we toured the famous Caverns at Carlsbad National Park. The entrance to the Caverns looks like...a giant hole in the earth.

And you walk down into it.

And you keep walking until you can't see any more. Then you keep walking. Seriously, though, you go 750 feet down. It's a mile long trail, but it didn't seem all that steep. The cave is 56° year round, which can feel nice in the middle of August in New Mexico. The rock formations are amazingly varied. And they all have evocative names that I can no longer match up with what I took a picture of. Still, here they are

After spending the morning and early afternoon in the cave, the bright, sunny, New Mexican day was a relief. Cloudless and blue, and, of course, hot.

We drove a couple of hours west into the Sacramento Mountains to a tiny town called Cloudcroft and found the Cloudcroft hostel. The scenery outside the car window changed dramatically from the ocher colored desert to lush green pine forests, in just a couple of hours. The air even felt less dry, and as the afternoon lengthened, we were shocked to see mist rising from the mountains. Cloudcroft (allegedly 9,000 feet above stress level, if the website is to be believed) was pretty adorable, but we left the exploring for the next day. We spent a quiet evening talking with the hostel's owner, John, as the sun set behind the mountains of the Lincoln National Forest.

New Mexico Road Trip, Days One and Two

I'm taking us back to the first day because, let's face it, I have a crazy number of photos, and it seems the only way to cover everything! Hopefully Julia and Cara will also be adding their photos (hint, hint!).

The very first day, we got into Albuquerque in the late afternoon and went directly to our hostel, Route 66 Hostel. We ate dinner, went to sleep, end of story. So I'm going to skip it, though perhaps Julia will share some of her outstanding pictures of the mural at the Albuquerque airport.

A few road trip themes you'll notice first off:

Driving pictures, not only of each other in the driver's seat, but also out the windshield and passenger windows. For those of you in faraway places where driving is the norm, please bear in mind that for New York Sea-ites such as us, driving is a novelty, and therefore completely picture-worthy.

Documenting the obsessive documenting:

(That's Julia documenting the difference between her tiny li'l soy cappuccino and my big bad funky drink that had five—five!!—espresso shots in it. Don't worry, I spilled it all over my bag instead of imbibing it, so my brain didn't actually explode from the caffeine.)

And bikers! I didn't take too many pictures of them, because they can look a bit forbidding, but they were everywhere. And they weren't the kind we have here in the northeast who are podiatrists and dermatologists during the week. These were full-time, hard-core, grizzled, cherry-chapstick-eschewing, for real bikers. These two were making friends. What could have been their topic of conversations? The dubious efficacy of her SPF? Leather chafing? One can only speculate.

I guess those are the three big themes that ran throughout the trip, although perhaps Julia can point out a few more. That first day, we noticed the cute signage all over Albaquerque's Central Avenue (aka, Route 66). Here are a few examples:

Ladies Choice Clothing Store [sic].

If you're wondering what they sell there, the side of the building had a mural that answers the burning question:

Elegant, no?

There were *lots* of cute motel signs. After a while, I just stopped taking pictures of them because there were too many.

Octopus Car Wash

After coffee, the first thing we did was check out the Buffalo Exchange, a huge thrift store close the campus of the University of New Mexico. Julia found this Pee-Wee Herman shirt, and I'm still a little shocked she didn't buy it. Are we getting old?

Our next stop was the University of New Mexico's Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. Sadly, we didn't get much time to look around the collection, but we did have a nice walk through UNM's lush, landscaped campus.

It didn't seem so out of place then, I think because we'd just come from New York, but all that green grass is an unusual site in New Mexico, and kind of stood out when I looked back on the trip. One wonders about their water usage! I guess the university bows to the stereotypical ideal for college campuses, when what would really be more appropriate is deserty scrub and piñon trees.

Our last stop of the day was the Rattlesnake Museum, where there were a lot of, oh, you know!!

That night we rolled into the Sandia Mountain Hostel, but since it was dark and we couldn't fully take in the charm (donkeys!), I'll save that for the Day Three post.

NM, yeah it'll be hot

That's the full two week car rental price, holy poo balls! I'm loving this trip already. Hopefully food and lodging is just as affordable. And that we find lots of unsupervised motel pools along the way... Anyone know anything about the supposed secret room at the Dia cabin of the Lightning Field? Also, taking suggestions on absolutely anything to see or do in New Mexico and Arizona--Audrey and I've got two weeks of unfettered exploring ahead of us!

Fall Delhi, NY Pics

It's been a while since I posted, so I thought I'd take it back to Delhi, NY. I've been sitting on these pictures for a while, and finally had some time on my hands to take a look. Carl, Cara, and I found these spores in the cornfield, and shook them out. Good, clean, fun until our allergies starting acting up!

Crazy long overdue pics from August in Europe with the Li family

I started off my trip in Berlin. Here's me being a tourist at Checkpoint Charlie with Melissa, the world's best host:



After only a couple days in Berlin, I was off to Vienna to meet up with the family. Here's mom and Tante Gerda after lunch at "Zur Wuadn Goass", which is obscenely convoluted Viennese slang for "To the Wild Goat". This was the beginning of many days of potato dishes with potato sides for me. Why yes, that's Wiener Schnitzel on mom's plate. Don't pretend to be surprised! I think she ate one every other day for the entire ten days we were in the motherland.



We visited many of our childhood haunts, including the pool in Strandbad Klosterneuburg where Matthias and Claudius and I spent many happy summer days:



Since visiting Tante was the major reason for the trip, we spent a lot of time with her, reminiscing about the past, getting verbally flayed in a highly malicious manner... only slightly more of the latter than the former. Here's her immaculate dining room:



The "maid's quarters" of her apartment, which Tante has only ever used as a (pious!) dining nook:



Tante met her new grandniece-in-law (is that right??):



And promptly showed off a patch of blooming bruises on her legs, the result of a blood thinning medication she's on:



She also shared some old photos. This one is of her and her late husband, my great uncle. Onkel Walter was on the Austrian national downhill skiing team, and also competed professionally as a kayaker. What a dashing couple!



And while we're on the subject of photogenic relatives, check out this fox. She was an actress and Onkel Walter's mother. Clearly, handsome genes run in the family; it's only too bad we're not actually related by blood:



The Austrian version of tea time is called Jause, and involves (preferably home-baked... check) pastries and coffee topped with (also preferably home-made... check) whipped cream:





My favorite part of the vacation though, was our two day hiking trip over a pre-alpine mountain called Rax. We took a cable car to the trail head, and the view from up there was absolutely as idyllic as you might imagine:



Our trails took us through fields of wildflowers (we even saw some Edelweiss!),




herds of cows (omg to be able to do that with your tongue!!),



and patches of snow with enough ammo for a mini snowball fight!



It was a dreamy two days of nature-tastic fun.







Then it was back to Berlin, and more touristy photo opps:



Melissa and I rode bikes everywhere, visited an art squat called Tacheles, ran into (!) Carl and Jasmine at a falafel place in Kreuzberg, watched avant garde performance art, went dancing, hung out with a cute puppy, and baked vegan pie: