loft blog v2.0

Hit up the old I-8 interstate out of Yuma. If only they could hold the weather at the 10AM temperature, all would be well. Breezed through Dateland, (still in Arizona) and ate one (and only one) date, then caved at the gift store counter and bought two Red Bulls. (You never know when lack of caffeine will overcome the need for determining which wickedly sweet date is the best of them all.) Then off to Gila Bend at a stifling 90+ degrees after a lunch Sophia’s for some ‘adequate, but nice, better than that-renamed-Outer-Limits-diner-down-the-street’ tacos. Then, finally, to the piste de resistance… the Organ Pipes National Monument. Oh, la, la. There are spring flowers on the cacti, a rabbit in the field, and doves abounding. The border patrol (which we crossed three checkpoints of.. were overly tan, and had a few German Shepherds in hyper-checkout car mode), and well, the dudes were rather mellow in the 95+ degree heat. Who could blame them? And, well, thank God. That is one crappy, dangerous job. For the most part, I’d be cranky doing it and would probably be shot by an equally irritable migrant who understood the absurdity of checking borders when it is all about labor (and the ever-popular “Drug War”) and nothing more or less. But I digress… Once we found the visitor center, a mere five miles from the Mexican border, we walked the ten minute nature trail and spent 20 minutes in the visitor center of the park. Ah, air conditioning. Other than their complaint about the recent 150 miles of illegal road trails in the park from people not using the border entryway that were destroying a portion of the park (complete with memorial to park rangers who have been killed), um.. well, the visitor center was ‘Uplifting’ in a true ‘nature is the best’ sort of way. The consensus from the both of us, the park is absolutely beautiful. Possibly our favorite of the parks, so far. (Oh, but I am still a sucker for Yellowstone.. damn, I can’t get away from Yogi the Bear, yet for the moment, this park is the Summer of Love.) The temperature for this jaunt is not April average, but May/June levels. Damn, if that scenery isn’t a gorgeous, but completely human hostile environment. We actually bought two gallons of purified water from Gila Bend before heading out (home of the Gila monster lizard)… (oh, the humility of buying non-tap water) and, thankfully, for the record, we finished most of the first jug before our traversal to Tucson, with nary a rest stop on the way. Desiccation, the reason people usually don’t live in the desert. Doh!

Back to getting it together to update again… ah, procrastination can snowball…

Santa Cruz->San Simeon: Highway 1 along the coast delivered perfect blue skies and seas the entire way. With a stop at Phil’s Fish House in Moss Landing, we made a serious mis-order of the Tuna Special. Who knew you could turn Ahi Tuna into pineapple-sweet American Chinese food?! Sigh. At San Simeon, we found a nice-enough Best Western room with a fireplace and a view of the ocean. The surf sounded great, but the wind was blasting. In the morning, we took a tour of Hearst Castle. A big place, with a mish-mash of furniture and rooms. The most impressive part were the Spanish tiled patios with views in every direction. Nice.

Wildlife spotting: On the way up to Hearst Castle, a Golden Eagle hanging out and a Coyote eyeing our bus going up the hill, but alas, no zebras.

San Simeon->Santa Barbara: More Highway 1, but this time through some silly towns. We cruised through Buellton for some (famous) Andersen’s Split Pea Soup from a Dutch restaurant that was popular when the highway still ran by it. Then to continue our Dutch perusal of the area, we checked out Solvang, a town with few Dutch people left but all the glamour of silly Dutch decorations complete with pretend windmills along the main street. (Think Leavenworth, WA.)

Upon reaching the overpriced burg of Santa Barbara, we didn’t do so well on our pick of hotels. Another Best Western, but this one was 4 miles from the other end of State Street, and the decoration in our room was crazy un-matched 50’s/70’s decorations. Brown thick 70’s tiles, full-mirrored wall, and pink Laura Ashley wallpaper. Holy Cow, is that an ugly combination. The room just called for plastic plants. Not much for hanging out in rooms that could be inhabited by ghosts of past irate interior designers for the motel, we immediately headed downtown. With an eating ahead mentality (always with us), we picked the Palace Grill for dinner. It was almost Louisiana Cajun food, but well… not really. It was like too many LWHOL’s dined there (the main customers, really) and asked for all the spice to be removed from the food. Speaking of LWHOL’s, Santa Barbara was completely overrun with Baby Boomers of all shapes and sizes. Great weather though, and the birds sounded fantastic.

Santa Barbara->El Cajon: A brutal Friday afternoon drive, enough said on that. Too many people, too many cars, too much smog. Ah, Los Angeles.

El Cajon, CA->Yuma, AZ: We drove up through Lakeside into the hills and found all of San Diego in Ramona shopping for antiques, going ATVing and dragging horses around in the back of their trailers. It was a beautiful drive, but step out of the car for 1 second and you’d lose Toto and Dorothy. The winds were intense. Stopped in Ramona and checked out Charlotte’s Antique Store, who informed us that housing in California is crazy (duh) and that eBay is really cutting into the trinkets side of the Antique business. Stopped in at Dudley’s Bakery, did a quick survey of the breads, pastries, and LWHOLs, but left empty-handed. Stopped for lunch in Julian’s (a tourist stop that would like to remind you that Apples are grown in the region). We dined at Buffalo Bill’s for a bison burger and can thoroughly state that Sysco food delivery has really hurt the ‘home-cooking’ industry. Since when did freezer-ready onion rings constitute ‘home-cooking’? Such a very, very sad state of affairs. We stopped by the Desert Tower near Jacumba, CA (”the last of the great roadside attractions” its handout proclaims) and checked out the carved rock formations that they etched and painted. It was the equivalent of a McDonald’s playground size area that kids would love running through. Not much of an attraction, but we found ourselves laughing climbing around it, so I guess it works. Finally, off to the Yuma Cabana, a pink motel with palm trees… old, retro and with a small patio off the room with great temperatures at sunset. 80 degrees, wow.

Wildlife spotting: A wild turkey crossing the road outside of Julian.

A back entry of travels…

South Lake Tahoe -> Ely
We drove out on US 50 and were literally the only ones on the road for 45 minute stretches at a time. That highway doesn’t see much use, eh? We pulled over when we did find a few cars stopped by the side of the road just past Fallon (home of the Fallon Naval Air Station) and noticed they were watching the sky with binoculars. Looking at the map, we noticed the highway runs through the US Naval Reservation Target Area and sure enough a gigantic black plume of smoke was erupting from the hillside and six jets and a mid-sized fixed wing plane were zipping around us. We waited for a second bombing, but they were intent on flying in formations, instead. As the traffic dissipated down to nothing again, we were confronted by a pioneer wagon and horses coming at us with a sign on the side about some sort of pioneer route they were following. Our country is full of very strange people.

Wildlife Spotting: A few antelope, quite at home on the range.

Ely->Green River
We stayed at the Hotel Nevada and Gambling Hall in Ely, which came complete with a set of Harley Davidson Baby Boomer Bikers checking in with queries about the bordellos down the street. The receptionist assured them that they were within easy walking distance, and since they probably won’t be sleeping for days, may as well head right on over there. Folks in these parts were looking, um, a tad rough around the edges, but they were enjoying smoking and beer drinking at 9AM as we were checking out. Everyone looked happy in a Nevadan sort of way, which is to say, they would have rather lived back in the days of the dusty streets and cowboys of yore. We’d stayed out the night before over at Mr. G’s Maggie’s bar and listened to a local group play some music while inhaling way too much second hand smoke and wondering if the old gentleman that tipped over smack dab in the middle of the bar’s empty dance floor was going to be able to crawl back up or not. I tell you, Ely is a class act of a town. Heading back out of town, we forgot how much we dislike greasy egg breakfasts and ended up ordering a gigantic Chorizo Egg Scramble. What on earth were we thinking? We considered the roadkill set of folks next to us ordering pie for breakfast may have committed a lesser health crime.

Ely -> Green River
More of US 50 and more empty roads. We considered that Utah is still a strange place, after stopping off for pizza at a local restaurant that was decorated with mismatched tiny floral prints, and finally reaching Green River and being overwhelmed by the same style wallpapers and tons of pale pink stuffed furniture. It is a distinct decorating style and quite far away from the rough and tumble Nevadan cowboy aura. Gads, yuck. We found the UNC-Duke game on (without sound, bah) over at Ray’s Tavern (pretty much the only place to eat in town other than the fast food row, and packed with motorcross riders). We were fine with our overcooked pork chop and veggie burger until the guy next to us found the remote and started channel surfing. We bailed and ended up watching the game in the Utah-esc hotel of plastic plants and pink furniture. UNC won, so it was a fine end to a very long day of driving.

Green River->Vail
Another long drive past Arches National Park and onto Vail. Not much excitement, but we found that the snow storm that we thought we were chasing had evaporated into warm sunny days. We skied a few days on some (whew) free tickets. (Vail is now going for an ungodly $92/ticket these days. Go figure.) The snow was the standard spring crunchy/sunny stuff, but the ‘big snow storm’ turned one day into a foggy/overcast, no precipitation, sort of day. With the normal Vail restaurant scene reaction: “Whoa, that was an expensive sandwich.”, we shuddered, apologized to our wallets and dined at Zazza Za! in Avon for some semi-adequate Naple’s stye pizza, Garfinkel’s for some fish tacos and to watch the skiers come in from the foggy afternoon and, well, the Swiss Chalet for some fine overpriced Swiss raclette. Staying at the Evergeen Lodge was a good deal, though, a slightly dumpy, but not too dumpy, place on the ski bus line.

Wildlife Spotting: A Big Horn Sheep under a bridge near Glenwood Springs

Vail-> Boulder
We swung by Idaho Springs for some Beau-Jo’s pizza. They serve a ‘mountain pie’ pizza with a large rolled edge crust with honey on the table, so you end up with both pizza and dessert with a single order. They’ve removed most of the paper napkin drawings that used to cover the restaurant walls, but it is still a charming place. From there, we headed over to Celestial Seasonings for a tea packing tour. They have a mint storage room that they open up on the tour, and within seconds you’ll be lightheaded and after a few minutes your eyes will be tearing. Nice. Their peppermints and spearmints were the one item solely grown in the U.S., from the Pacific Northwest, in fact. While in Boulder we managed to fit in our 90,000 mile Toyota service and find some decent Thai and Vietnamese food. With that rejuvenation for the car and us, we were ready to go.

Wildlife Spotting: The prairie dogs whistling in the Celestial Seasoning’s prairie dog field.

Boulder->Denver
We headed over to Golden to take the Coor’s Brewery tour, finally. It is amazing how you can live in a city for a few years but never actually go to any of the nearby tourist’s sites, eh? Well, now, I have seen how they make that horrible beer, not even their Killian’s Red is good. The fine part of the tour was the smell of malt in the air, though. The place was permeated by that rich, sugary wort smell. It made us want to either brew beer or cook molasses spice cookies. Pilsner, though, what a waste. It was St. Paddy’s Day (oh, not really… just that Denver couldn’t face the fact that St. Paddy’s was on a Monday, so they moved their downtown festival to the weekend). We rolled into Denver in the early afternoon as the beginning of the mass exodus of the ‘Green People’ were exiting the ever so Irish street fair. It was an amusing sight. Folks were sporting such witty t-shirts, such as: “The leprechauns make me do it.” and “Wish on me lucky charms.” with many sporting green face paint. We decided to get more green watching in at the Wyncoop. And though, despite the abundance of green people, the food and beer were really disappointing. It’s been 10 years since I’ve been there, but the great food that I remembered didn’t get anywhere near our table. And, heck, they took out the pinball machines upstairs. Nothing like a round of playing a round of pinball on a very green Attack From Mars machine… oh, the disappoint.

Denver -> Pagosa Springs
On the way out town, I couldn’t convince Derrell (or myself for that matter) to actually get the nerve up to check out the Colorado Springs mega-evangelical church of Ted Haggard fame. You know, Ted Haggard, that political pastor that had a bit of a gay prostitute problem while really liking meth? Nice guy, we read that he was reformed and no longer gay. All thoughts of getting speedball crazy high and dreaming of men, gone, completely back to his family ways. Anyhow, it was Sunday, and Colorado Springs was close, but we’d feel too creepy if we entered that 10,000 person congregation. Instead, we drove U.S. 285 through the mountains and ran into some oddly difficult driving conditions for a short stretch. The sun was shining (no snow for us, of course) and the snow by the roadside was melting fast. This was causing water to wash over the highway and steam off the warm asphalt thus turning into a heavy dense fog that was only along the ribbon of highway and nowhere else. It was a peculiar sight and at times slowed us down to a speedy 15 miles per hour. We found the town of Pagosa Springs had grown since we last saw it and contemplated that Wolf Creek ski area was looking good. Unfortunately by the time we checked into Pagosa Springs, we lost skiing ambition with the super warm temperatures. We did find the tiny Pagosa Brewing Company, which since it was Monday, and actually was St. Patrick’s Day, was celebrating on the correct day with just about every local in town crammed in the one room bar for a post parade get together. Now, unlike the current brewers at the Wynkoop, Tony Simmons can brew fantastic beer and he has a kick ass chef doing some serious pub grub from the small red cart out in the garden. We enjoyed our evening chatting with him and his European story of how he got around to making beer and setting up his less than two year old business. Sweet!

Pagosa Springs->Santa Fe
Well, being close to Durango, we had to see what the housing boom had done to the town. It wasn’t too bad, but they did have an overabundance of new strip malls along the highways. One of these newly built areas did deliver, though. We were ready for lunch and spotted a parking lot full of huge pickup trucks and a line of people out the door at a fine establishment called ‘Serious Texas Bar-b-que’. OMG, was that pulled pork good. That place was well worth the wait and those Texans were smokin’. It made up for all the past week’s mediocre food and then some. We had a great drive to Santa Fe, thanks to the Garmin Nüvi and managed to get a number of back roads in through the New Mexico pine forest. It was a thoroughly gorgeous drive and came complete with every cowboy’ed hatted pickup truck driver giving us a wave as we drove past. Now, that’s some small town living. Upon arriving in Santa Fe, we found comfortable spot at Garett’s Desert Inn within walking distance of the plaza and immediately met a pair of Baby Boomers from Northern Minnesota walking around in shorts and complaining that is was really cold (probably near 62 degrees out at that time). We were completely confused by them having just come from the snowy mountains that morning, but later saw that the forecast for Santa Fe was going to hit the mid-70’s by the end of the week. Ah, spring.

Santa Fe->Albuquerque
We walked the Old Town’s trinket shops and observed the tourist buses with loads of white haired old people and yet again found the area not to our liking. The Seasons cafe overlooking the Old Town is about as close as one needs to get to the touristas. We got a good morning of history in at the Art and History museum. The General Beale and his Southwest Camel Corps must have quite a sight in 1857. Camels, it seems, were perfect for desert and mountain travel, but they have a few bad traits. One is that with bad tempers, they can spit the entire contents of their stomach at you (with accuracy), and, well, if you could get past that, the strong stench would cause horses downwind to bolt. I just read in a Montana magazine that Nevada had enough camels that the state passed a law forbidding you to let your camels run at large on public roads. A strange world to contemplate before the steam trains and autos took over the continent.

Albuquerque->Gallup
Following a large piece of Route 66 and setting the Nüvi to map out a route off-highway, we had a Nüvi failure. Our road turned to dirt, then to a bumpy trail and finally stranded us at a culvert crossing full of water trying to take us under the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad line. In 4-wheel drive we backtracked our way out of that routing. We settled back onto paved roads and visited Bandara’s volcano crater and Ice Cave. This was a privately owned Ice Cave and not much of a stop, but it was great to get out of the car and do some walking. After that, down the road past many a speed trap and through one DUI checkpoint (Easter was in full swing in New Mexico), then over to El Morro National Monument to check out the graffiti of over 2,000 signatures left near the watering hole. And of course, our new found Camel hero, General Beale had his signature carved there, as well as some dudes taking over the continent for Mexico City back in the 1600’s.
Wildlife Spotting: Coyotes out and about for the day. We ended our day in Gallup at the Historic El Rancho Hotel where the walls were covered with signed pictures from movies stars from the era when Route 66 carried them through this seriously overbuilt lodge.

Gallup->Flagstaff
We drove through the Petrified Forest National park and inspected the extremely heavy chunks of wood/fossils that were over 225 million years old. The park had a late start, since just outside the southern gates, there looks to be more petrified wood chunks for sale outside the stores than all of the pieces combined within the huge park. Ah, capitalism. Another UNC basketball game was calling us when we reached Flagstaff and we lounged about watching it, while people were working on getting their first of the season sunburns outside on the patio. We stayed at the old Weatherford Inn which is a wonderful hotel with the one weak spot of being near the center train station and the 60 trains that go through town blowing their whistles all night long. Traveling with earplugs is a good thing. Haven’t needed them since India. Go Heels!

Flagstaff->Beatty’s
We scored some great Biff’s Bagels and garlic bagel chips on the way out of town. The girl at the counter said she had just started making them. Good stuff and we shortly realized we should have bought the other bag. Traveling through fields upon fields of desert flowers we reached Hoover Dam and an hour long trail of cars crossing it at 11AM on a Tuesday morning. We had no idea how close to Las Vegas the dam was, but we certainly are well aware of it now. That was a crazy amount of people. A bridge is being built beyond the dam to alleviate the traffic and probably to avoid having that much weight on the bridge everyday since the Lake Mead water level is half of what was when the dam was built. We cruised the Las Vegas strip and decided not to stay in town, but headed out to Beatty’s. We met some young Brits at the Sourdough Pizza and Pub and listened to their opinions of what they had seen between San Francisco and Beatty. It was something along the lines of: wow, what a big country.. it is way poorer than we expected.. and it is very surprising to see town after town look the same with all the same stores.. and your news is like The Sun.. And on the other side of us, we later met Baby Boomers (how can there be so many?!) from Eastern Oregon and they proceeded to advise us to retire early and buy an RV. We liked the sound of the first part, but given that this early in the season, the RV parks were showing No Vacancy signs already, we were really suspicious about the latter advice.

Beatty’s->China Lake/Riverville
Yet another National Park, this time Death Valley. Having traversed snow just a week ago, hanging out in the desert at 94 degrees was a bit disorienting, but we warmed up to it. We were just at the edge of surviving the short walks in the park in the heat. Add another five degrees and forget it. It was a great time to see the area, the wildflowers were blooming in every direction. The Toyota survived all the climbing. Standing at 232 feet below sea level in the valley and looking at the highest point in the US, Mt. Whitley (14,505′) gives an astounding amount of depth perspective to the valley. The evening spent in China Lake left us with one of the few meals we’ve walked out on after only one bite. We ordered some fajitas from a dumpy Mexican restaurant and they offered up a plate of chicken fat and gristle. Even by southeast asian standards, that’s beyond bad. What a dump of a town. We ended up at the Best Western in town and were assigned a room with a kitchen, so we recovered our evening and cooked up some fine aglio e olio.

Wildlife spotting: A roadrunner hanging out near the campground picnic tables.

Riverville->Three Rivers
We were headed towards Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, and given the 90 degrees of the past couple of days, let the Nüvi pick our routing. Well, lo and behold, there’s still a few yards of snow left up in those there mountains and the roads usually stay closed until mid to late May. We backtracked and drove around the West side of the park through the orange groves and past the strawberry stands. We stopped at an orange stand and tried to buy just two naval oranges, we were laughed at and given two oranges for free. I guess their primary business is selling large boxes to the local grocery stores, eh? After that, while looking for a Swedish Bakery which ended up in a Nüvi routing failure, we instead stopped at bought a basket of strawberries from a Vietnamese family tending a small plot of them at the edge of a small town. Finally, small strawberries with flavor. So, we forgave the Nüvi and used it to select a random lunch spot. Porter Street BBQ in Porterville sounded nice, so off we went. We discovered the BBQ joint was just two southerners in the middle of a parking lot with a few permanent tables under a tree. Now, that has all the signs of being good BBQ! We ended up with a tri-tip sandwich with some fantastic sauce on a perfect bread roll. Is that really what the Arby’s chain was trying for? Arby’s should hang their corporate heads in complete shame. Our evening stop, landed us in Three Rivers, in a beautiful little town near the river (doh!) and at a Best Western that was since the last printing of the 2008 BW guide, now a ‘Best West’ and no longer part of the chain. We were soon to discover the reason for the parting of ways the next morning. As we turned on the water for a shower, there wasn’t a drop of warm, or even luke warm water coming out of the shower. We asked at the front desk and the Indian family informed us that maybe this evening the repair man will be out and have the gas heater fixed. Sigh, no shower.

Three Rivers->Los Banos
Showerless, we entered Sequoia National Park and the ranger asked us how our day was going. Well, showerless, we informed him. He queried us about where we were coming from and then laughed and said that he and his wife when they first took this ranger job were staying at that hotel for a few weeks. Nothing was ever working, since the family that ran it insisted on fixing everything themselves. He since then has a beautiful spot in the park housing.. with working warm water. The park was beautiful, the trees were big, the snow was still high (so most trails would take more effort than we were willing to give them since they required snow shoes) and the tourism was at a dull roar. After way too windy of a road leaving the park and a consensus by all within the vehicle that we’d been in the vehicle far too long without getting any walking, we finally, finally, finally, drove into Los Banos for the evening next to Gilroy. Another UNC game to watch, this time against WSU. Go Heels!

Los Banos->Santa Cruz
And this is where we stop the road trip for awhile, since you can never road trip through a town where you have lived for long periods of time. We did manage to get our Rio swapped out in Santa Cruz, though, so finally we will be able to listen to the radio again. Nothing like country music or Mexican music on the road.

After exiting Italy (past Fortezza / Franzensfeste), we drove through the Alps, no stops for dressed up cows this time, though. We overdosed on more autumn scenery and ate lunch at a tourist trap of a restaurant with great views overlooking the town of Innsbruck.

We headed to Füssen in Germany, and after checking into the Hotel Sonne (with a great sauna and bathrobes!), we headed out for some touristing. We drove by the Disneyland castle Neuschwanstein, but didn’t go in, and checked out the interior of the Wies church. The latter being a Rococo style church full of scary looking cherubs, which just made me want to check out the ultimate Rococo residence, the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg. (The summer palace of the tzars… Now that’s some interior design!)

We had decided to head up the village of Hees in the Netherlands, as in Voorhees, or at least the town before Hees. This sounded like a grand plan until we went to leave Füssen and found that the Ford Focus locks the trunk when you put the lid down. (Well, only if the doors to the car are locked. The mighty Ford Focus doesn’t lock the trunk, if one of the car doors is unlocked.)

Now just how did we discover this nuance in fine automobile design? Ah, by locking our keys in the trunk… So, we rechecked into the hotel without our luggage and spent the day getting ADAC (the German equivalent to AAA) out to unlock the car. Since every good German is a member of ADAC, only non-members pay for this rescue service… and pay we did. We found out it costs 110 Euros to have a guy in a spiffy yellow jumpsuit come out and, in less than two minutes, use two blood pressure cuffs to push the top of the door away from the frame and insert a state-of-the-art coat hanger to pull the door handle open. It was such an easy job, it made us wonder why Ford even bothered putting locks on the car. Derrell was also quite amused that the anti-theft red light in the dash was blinking contentedly throughout the entire procedure.

Well, anyhow, that pretty much blew our chance of getting from South Germany to North Netherlands and still get the rental car back in time. So, Hees was a short-lived destination.

Füssen, even for an additional day, was another cute place. It had the standard Alps in the background, autumn leaves falling, river through the middle of the town… Y’know, the old ‘bowl you over with the scenery’ that is starting to look standard in Germany. The tourists were missing, that was a fine thing. And the owner of a winestube adopted us, along with two chaps from Scotland and fed us a mighty fine fried wiener schnitzel (with only a touch of actually tasty brown sauce).

As we drove up to this Tyrolean town, the smog & weather cleared to gorgeous autumn weather. This town was still in Italy, but it was most assuredly Austrian. The menus reverted back to mostly brown-gravied items. We were served one of the stranger food items that we’ve ever encountered. It was listed as Gnocchi e Spinachi in the Italian translation of the menu, and so I ordered it with the true sadness that comes with ordering the last Italian dinner that you will see for quite some time. What arrived though, was truly an inspired dish. Two oval German bread dumplings the size of large goose eggs arrived over a puddle of green pureed spinach, with a load of chopped sauteed ham over the dumplings, dusted with white melted cheese, and for the glamorous touch… the plate edge was decorated with paprika sprinkles. (This was a fine restaurant, after all.) Well, our reaction was complete shock, then we headed straight headlong into complete dining despondence. Ah, Austria. Oh, and I won’t mention the deep fried, heart-attack-on-a-plate, gigantic elephant ear pesto flat breads that they were selling to a line of Austrians at an outdoor food stall being washed down with equally gigantic beers… whimper.

Realizing that there were soon to be no end to the number of dumplings in our future, we looked for other things to amuse us in the town. The town was gorgeous in its Autumn foliage. There was a river running through the town with the Alps as a backdrop, and in the evening, some of the smallest bats that we’ve ever seen were zipping around in a feeding frenzy along the river’s edge. We had stepped into a fairy tale set, again.

The cathedral in town had been recently refurbished with an extreme use of gold gilding over its Baroque interior, and even to our jaded, seen one cathedral too many, eyes, we considered it impressive. It even had Tyrolean painting on the outside. We kept forgetting that we were still in Italy. (Well, other than the no-smoking ban… )

And finally, for other amusements, our Hotel was a Best Western and that came with an indoor swimming pool, including a smattering of white haired old ladies and men (yes, in Speedos, with not a care in the world about fashion), a hot tub (woo!) and a swimsuit spinner (now that’s luxury, baby).

Lucca - Yuck. Lucca had way too many tourists and our hotel was full when we arrived so we ended up in an extremely smoky room. Bah. We did find a nice dinner after most of the tour buses left & the shoppers started to dissipate. Derrell got a good ravioli that looked a bit more like pot-stickers in the way they were formed. He was very, very pleased. And we were surrounded at dinner by 20 and 30 year olds, the first we had seen in weeks, so it seemed. We realized that we were getting used to the white-haired old lady, tour bus circuit, and that sort of scared us.

Volterra - This town was also busy during the day, but rolled up after the tourists took off in their tour buses. We stayed in a hotel with a pool, but the pool was too cold to consider, and as it had autumn leaves starting to drift across the surface, we got the idea that autumn was actually still with us. In general, we walked the town and took in the views, nice enough place with very low tempo. We placed ourselves at dinner with a family of loud Americans behind us. I suppose it was good that they were loud, though. Derrell came down with an allergy attack during dinner. We were surrounded by blooming things in this town, and one of them didn’t agree with him at all.

San Gigminano - We headed towards the slightly bigger town of San Gigminano, and found 50 gigzillion tour buses and tourists, more than half of them from America. What a tourist trap. The best part of the town was the walk outside of the walls (away from the tourists). The views were stunning, the weather excellent. You know, all that good stuff that nature can deliver, and not even a tour bus can take it away. (Well, unless the tour bus manages to park next to you.) We rented a nice guest room in the attic of a Tuscan house with old wood beams in the ceiling and a fine tiled floor. The room was much better than the town.

Montipulciano - We stopped in a couple of cute towns on the way to Montipulciano, at Perucia & Monteciano. In the latter, we had a nice lunch with bulgur salad with some great balsamic vinegar and ribbollita (a Tuscan bread soup), served up with a sampling of the local Barolla wine. The day was perfect weather for outdoor cafe dining. Montipulciano ended up being a steep town, again filled with a billion tourist buses. We ended up at a mediocre meal after walking in circles up and down the hill through the city looking for open restaurants. This may go down as one of the worst guest rooms we’ve rented. The bed had a plastic sheet for the base sheet, and you don’t realize just how much you sweat at night until you lay down on one of these horrible, horrible things. Ah, that’s what happens when you roll the dice by getting a room from the Tourist Information office. They usually work out… but not always.

Gubbio - Now this was a quiet town, and we felt a bit removed from the crazy tourist scene that we had just experienced over the past few days. We landed a few good meals and one absolutely insane French meal with a horrific waiter. Our French dining experience involved watching the waiter make the genteel older couple next to us move mid-meal to place four patrons at their two person table. The waiter was acting as flighty and gay as a jaybird and was actively insulting every table in the vicinity. We were searching for some Monty Pyton humor, but we just couldn’t justify the guy’s behavior to anyone. Mind you this was a Michelin starred restaurant, but it wasn’t due to the service. We still can be happy with the kitchen, although, I would never recommend this place to anyone but a sworn enemy. We managed to get out of the kitchen, some grilled veggies, parma ham layered on a fried crisp of thin cheese and fresh tomato bruschetta for a starter, then followed it with truffled capon with flakes of pecorino cheese for an appetizer, and then a pumpkin ravioli in butter sauce came out, and finally, the main course of duck that melted away in a rich dark wine sauce. We were impressed with the kitchen, but we were ready to strangle the waiter with the strangiprezzi pasta that we had with wild boar ragu sauce from our earlier lunch down the street. Ah, people do come to Italy to just enjoy the restaurants, don’t they?

Trento - We drove out of Gubbio and ended up in the Italian flat lands. It ended up being a tough smoggy day of driving. We originally thought we wanted to stay in Modena.. but it was too smoggy. The air was looking orange. So, back to the highway we went and headed north to get out of the smog. We stopped in Trento where the air was clear. The town was showcasing the regional artisan food specialties over the weekend at a Farmer’s Market style set up. It was one of the more likable towns. There were university students and the level of tourism was just a distant backnote against the business of the town. Although, we were sad that we were starting to see the end of Italy transition back into the Germanic world, the flower boxes were looking good. We ended up staying at a place called Hotel America, which seemed like one bedroom apartments complete with patios had been remodeled into a hotel. Not much to say about that hotel other than the shock of the size of the place after the past few small rooms we had rented, and, well, hey, no plastic sheets!

Ah, our food dreams come true. We have left the land of Germanic cooking. No more goulash, schnitzel or brown gravied meats for awhile. Woo!

Stresa is nice quiet, even though touristy, Italian village on Lake Maggiore, just across the Swiss border, with the Alps showing in the background. We stayed put for three nights and got some laundry done and dodged the raindrops. The area is super picturesque, but we didn’t really get a glimpse of it until the last day. This ended up being a relaxing stop and we found some good Italian food, complete with pizza, pasta with ragu, and had time to sample wines from the region at one of the new snazzy wine bistros in the town.

Not much is happening in this town, so maybe it is the small things that make your day. Take for instance the laundromat had a new feature that we hadn’t seen before. The washer dispensed soap automatically, so the cost of washing your clothes included the soap. This made for one of the cleanest public washers that we’ve seen. No powdered soap sticking all over the place. You could even use some sort of rechargeable smartcard dongle to avoid having to find the right change. All in all, quite a dignified laundromat.

And did I mention that grilled fish in butter sage sauce is a specialty of Stresa? Nope, not a dumpling in sight…

Oh no, Ed Jew! We didn’t expect the Tourist Information to tell us that Zürich was full, unless we wanted a 350 Euro/night room. So we were rerouted out to a hotel that they didn’t mention was an Evangelical Christian retreat center. It was at least an environmentally awarded Evangelical retreat, but it was still a bit creepy getting up and seeing prayer in progress by the ladies sitting on mats in what looked like a children’s classroom. We’ve been surrounded by Christianity and churches this entire trip, so I’ve been trying to pinpoint why I found this place disturbing. Maybe it is just that Christianity was being presented wrapped in IKEA furniture that was causing me distress.

On the positive side for the hotel, the ladies working the front desk were wonderfully patient as I asked 20 questions about how to use the phone to call back to the states to get our credit card working again. Oh, and they had a fine cheese selection in the morning with a great view of what would have been the Swiss Alps and Lake Zürich, if only the clouds weren’t in the way!

Food prices near Zürich were astronomical, about 100-200% higher than San Franicsco. We found a very casual Greek restaurant to eat at and made a meal up of just hummus, pita and dolmades with a salad on the side, no main entree. The bill hit 50 Euros. Hmm, we were going to have ATM issues, if we stayed in Switzerland much longer. So, between the rain and the costs doubling, we decided to head back towards Italy, where the hotels were cheaper, the food very inexpensive and the weather.. magnificient.

On the way out of the rain towards Italy, we hopped off the highway and checked out the Burger King (and its restrooms). The basic hamburger (that one that usually ends up in the kid’s meals) was 3.75 Euros, instead of the 1 Euro advertised everywhere in Austria and Germany. The food prices didn’t seem like they were stopping folks from eating out, but with the foreign exchange rate in place, spending $5 dollars for a mediocre Burger King burger just doesn’t compare with hopping over the Swiss-Italian border and spending $6 dollars for a fine plate of Taglierini al Spinaci e Pancetta or Capellini Arrabbiata. But, hey, that’s just my opinion.

From Garmish, we woke up to a solid downpour of rain that the news said was going to last a full week. With not much else on the agenda, we decided to continue the drive along the Alps. We toured in the rain through Austria and ended up in Switzerland. Not many people in Appenzell, as it is a base for walking, hiking and biking. The area is known for its Appenzeller cheese, so Derrell had a macaroni & cheese dinner that was fantastic and I found a rice risotto that was great. The restaurant also served up a fondue, but I couldn’t get over the smell of old socks that emanated from the tables that were being served that dish.

The architecture of Bavaria had been left far behind. The flower boxes that were in absolutely every window in Bavaria were in only half the windows in Appenzell. In addition, many of the farm houses were facing the same direction regardless of the position of the road leading to them. I looked this up after we left and found that they were all facing to the South. Since this was a big embroidery region, the houses were built to let in maximum light.

We woke up to another beautiful day and we had beautiful views driving along the Alpenstrasse, a picturesque road that winds through the north side of the Alps. Along the way, we were slowed down by a small procession of Austrians in traditional wear who had decorated their cows with flower headdresses and marching the cows down the center of the road to their winter pastures. (We glanced at each other with a “Can you believe what you are seeing?!” look.) With the rolling meadows in the foreground, Tyrolean houses along the road and the mountains tinged with snow surrounding the valley, this went into the unbelievable storybook moments of travel.

As for Garmish, it looked like the most convenient town for a room that avoided the overflow of the München Oktoberfest tourists. Being tired from driving all day, we didn’t have an overly favorable impression of the town. One of the ‘attractions’ of the town is to ride the cable car up the mountain for the views. This was soon realized to be a non-attraction for us, as the weather was changing and getting cloudier by the moment and the price for two of us to go up the cable car was 90 Euros… 90?!

On the positive column for the town, we were surprised to see Indian and Vietnamese restaurants, since we just left a series of heavy tourist towns that only had a Pizzaria or Trattoria on show for International food. We discovered the reason for the existence of the International restaurants as we left the town the next day, there was an American military base on the far side of town, which did explain why the folks eating in the Indian restaurant didn’t look like your standard American tourists. We were sort of wondering what was up with the patrons.