Jerome, AZ

 We had several friends urge us to check out Jerome, AZ.  Since it was on the way to Sedona, and we had time, we figured we'd stop in. 

What a crazy little town! It was an old copper mining town, and is situated on a "long and winding road".

The town was way up on top of a hill, the roads were narrow, and there was not a flat spot in the whole town!

There were all kinds of shops and restaurants and some really nice art galleries.

It was very crowded....all the sit-down restaurants had long lines.......and we had limited time since we had to be in Sedona at a certain time.   So we stopped into a small coffee-shop-style place. There were only 2 tables and a man was sitting at one of them eating.   I didn't see anyone behind the counter, so I asked the man if the proprietor was around.  He says, "This is my place and this is my lunch-time.  If you want to have lunch come back in 15 minutes!"  Needless to say, we did not go back......we got some snacks from the candy shop and called that lunch!

We should have bought this shirt for Hubby.

The ride back down did afford us some beautiful views.

And the adventure continues to Sedona!

Desert Botanical Garden

 Before leaving Phoenix, we visited the Desert Botanical Garden.   We've visited many botanical gardens in New England, but of course this one was totally different!

It was about 90 degrees, but quite comfortable in the many areas of shade.  We laughed when we chatted with a local and he said how wonderful it is to visit the gardens in October because it was "so much cooler than summer"!  LOL   We thouught it was quite toasty!

These beautiful glass sculptures greeted us at the entrance to the Gardens.

Another stunningly sunny day!

Barrel Cactus with beautiful orange flowers.

 

The most common is the Seguaro Cactus.  We saw hundreds of these in our travels around the Sonoran Desert.  Some cactuses have no arms, some have many.  I was interested to see that some of them have holes in them because birds nest there!

Cute little quails were running around like pigeons.

I don't think the succulents in my yard are going to get this big!

The Prickly Pear cactus produce flowers and then provide fruit that can be eaten.

Sundial made with desert plants.

Check out the size of these huge cactus!

Beautiful Desert Roses

We spent a good 3 hours in the Botanical Garden and enjoyed seeing such a different type of environment than what we are used to!

Heading off to Jerome, AZ and Sedona tomorrow.

Phoenix and Organ Stop Pizza

 Tag and I started our Great Trip Out West by flying into Phoenix, AZ.   Pretty exciting for us since we'd never been west of the Mississippi!  We had a perfect ride into Boston with Flight Line, then a perfect and comfortable flight to Phoenix.  

We had a small bit of aggravation getting our rental car....an hour and a half from plane debarkation to sitting in the rental car.....then Karen, the AAA trip organizer, directed us to the wrong hotel!  (It was Holiday Inn Express, not plain Holiday Inn....duh!)  

Once we got into the right place it was smooth sailing!

Quite amusing to us to see Palm Trees and not Maple Trees!  We were also pretty amused to be swimming outdoors in the hotel pool in October....the temperature was 90 degrees....and yes, it is a dry heat!

That night we drove east to Mesa, AZ to visit Organ Stop Pizza.   When my Dad would visit his brother Bob, who lives in AZ, Bob would take him to this Pizza place that has the largest Pipe Organ in the world!

The organ emerges from beneath the floor with the guy sitting there playing it the whole time.

There are instruments all over the walls that play at appropriate times.

The organist would play for about 1/2 hour, then take a break. When he came back out he'd look at the list of requests people made and then play some of them!  Very talented guy!  Tag requested a couple of slower Beatles tunes, and I think the organist wanted to play something jazzier, so he played a whole set of  more vigorous Beatles tunes.

It was a fun night and good start to our vacation!

Tomorrow we head to The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix!

Straight No Chaser

 I've always loved the acapella singing group "Straight No Chaser".  They started as a bunch of college students out of Indiana University and made a name for themselves when their video "The 12 Days of Christmas" went viral.   

TEN years ago, we were going to Montreal to see Jamie play football, and I saw that SNC were playing there that night. I bought tickets - and then the "passport disaster" struck.  We lost our passports in our move to our new house, and we not only missed the game and the weekend in Montreal, we missed the show!

Needless to say, when I saw that they were back on tour, and going to be in Vermont, I jumped right in and bought tickets.  Since Rutland, VT is about 2 1/2 hours away, I thought we'd make a short weekend of it, see some of the sights, and stay overnight.

Our first stop was the "Four Aces Diner" in East Lebanon, NH  (right on the border of NH and VT). Typical yummy diner breakfast - and Tag not only had an appetizer (a popover, which, to be fair, he shared with me) he also had his entree and a dessert!   (Piece of strawberry/rhubarb pie).

We got into Rutland, which was a bit of a disappoitment to me.  It's not a cute little picturesque Vermont town......it was busy with pretty much no ambiance. However my research showed that there was the Chaffee Art Center, and they were having an outdoor art show and barn sale.

Unfortunately their "art show" consisted of two people, and the "barn sale" was leftovers from a yard sale!  Thankfully the Art Center itself was in a beautiful old house  - I think I enjoyed the architecture more than the art show!

The floors were all gorgeous parquet - I wish I'd taken some close up photos of those!

                                                 

There was some very intersting artwork!

Our next stop was the Norman Rockwell Museum of Vermont.   We had been to his museum in Stockbridge, MA several times, and were curious to see what this one was all about.  We were quite surprised to see a "50% off" sign on the front of the building.  It turns out the woman who owns the collection is selling the building and trying to sell the collection as a whole, so it seems like it was a good time for us to go see it!

This museum did not have any of his original work, but rather was a collection of all his works from 1910 through 1978.  It included the first painting he ever did, as an illustration in a book, to his last piece.   It was set up in chronological order, and must have had thousands of pieces.   I was always impressed with the amount of work he produced, but I never had any idea he did so many ads, magazine covers (besides the Post) and portraits.  It was truly amazing.

We still had some time before check-in, so we went to the "Historical District" which was the walking area of downtown.  Again, not impressed......kind of seedy, run down, and half the store fronts were empty.    But.....of course, when we found a parking space, it was right in front of this:

Yup!  A used record store!  Hubby was thrilled....and proceeded to go inside and find 2 good records for his next "Vinyl Night".    I think he's bought used records on every single trip we've ever taken!

Time for us to go check in at the Holiday Inn.  I must say, this place won't be getting a good review from me......I'll leave it at that.  The only good thing was that, although the website said the pool and hot tub were closed, they were open.  And being the good Girl Scout that I am, I came prepared with a bathing suit just in case!

So after a nice swim, and soak in the hot tub, we set off for dinner.  I had made reservations at a place called Table 24, but on our excursion downtown I was not happy with the looks of it, and we saw this place right across from the theater, so we had dinner there:

And finally the reason for our visit!  The show was in the Paramount Theater, which was an old-fashioned style place where we sat in the balcony.   Straight No Chaser was absolutely fantastic!  Well worth the trip and I really, really want to go see them again!  Very impressed with the show!

I tried to upload the short snippet of video I took, but it wouldn't go, so I'll post it another way.

Thanks, Hubby, for always going along with my crazy ideas.  It was a lovely weekend!

Valentine's Day 2021

 Our Valentine Getaway choices for this year were severely limited due to restrictions for the pandemic.  My first choice would have been to go to the Essex Inn.....a place we've been to and enjoyed several times.  But, Vermont wasn't allowing NH residents to come visit, so I was forced to find someplace in NH that would fit my criteria.  Namely, it must have a pool and hot tub.  After careful consideration, I chose the Common Man Inn and Spa in Plymouth, NH.

Normally, I would have booked us for the weekend, but the other criteria for our weekends away is that there must be fun stuff to see and do in the area.  Not much happening in Plymouth, NH!  But the place has the requisite pool and hot tub, so that's where we decided to go for just one night.

An important consideration is always food....as in, I don't have to cook it!   We left Saturday morning and stopped up the road in Londonderry at the Bacon Barn. We had never been there before...I can't imagine why.  Because it was a cute hole-in-the-wall sort of place, which suits us just fine.   The food was absolutely delicious!  Belgian Waffle with blueberries for Hubby, bacon eggs benedict for me.

After our yummy breakfast, we headed north.  Originally we were planning to go to the Christa McCauliffe Planetarium in Concord.  They were re-opening that day after being closed for massive renovations.  I had bought tickets and everything - then got an email saying they decided to move their opening date to March 5.  Hell and damnation!!!  There isn't a heck of a lot of places that are open right now, but I found the NH Guild of Craftsmen had a place on Main St. in Concord, so we went there.

Believe it or not, I have been living in NH for 37 years, and I have never seen the State House in Concord.  So it was fun to do a little sight-seeing.

The Artists Guild was a bit of a disappointment....same old stuff we'd seen at many other places.  But Hubby remembered a record store he'd been to (of course!) so we stopped in there for a short visit.

Continuing north, I felt like it wasn't possible to be in that area without going to the Chaos and Kindness Store in Laconia.  We had a a little fun there and Hubby bought me a new shirt.

From there we made it up to Plymouth.   We got to the room about 3pm .  Everything in the place was made from wood....very rustic and lots of doo-dads to see.   

We immediately hit the pool and hot-tub.  It was described to us as being "first-come, first-serve", meaning if there was someone else in the area, we'd have to wait.   Luckily for us, when we got there a family with a young child was just leaving the pool area.  We swam for a while and some young men came in to use the hot tub.   When we noticed they were sitting on the edge because they were too hot, we offered to switch with them and we had our turn in the hot tub.

For dinner, we went to the Italian Farmhouse, which is owned by the Common Man.  I was worried about us getting in since it was the Saturday night before Valentine's Day, and rightly so.  The wait was an hour....unless we wanted to sit at a high-top table in the bar?  Sure, why not!  We had drinks and a lovely meal.  The food at the Common Man is always excellent.

Back to the Inn and back in the pool and hot tub!  This time no one was around so we stayed as long as we wanted.

For breakfast in the morning they offered an Continental breakfast with one hot dish.  I was disappointed that it was the typical hotel breakfast with cold scrambled eggs.  We usually don't bother with hotel breakfasts, but I had another plan for lunch and didn't want to ruin our appetites anyway.

We did, however, sit in the little living room with the fireplace and we played chess on this most unusual chess board!  (I won!)

We left the inn and went a little further north to Moltonborough, where they have the oldest continuously running country store in the country.  The place was huge, with room after room of stuff.

Pickle barrels.....both sour and dill.

Wood stove warming the place up.

Cabinet made into a cooler for drinks.

And from there we went to Meredith to have lunch at Hart's Turkey Farm.  This restaurant lived up to its good name.   We had a delicious lunch with home-made mashed potatoes and some amazing butternut squash.   We thought about spending some time in Meredith because they have a sculpture walk in the downtown area, but it was very cold out.   So we decided to save that for another, warmer time!

It was a lovely Valentine's Day with my sweetheart!