Ryjks Museum, Anna Frank House, and Volendam

Cousin Wanda picked us up for a day in Amsterdam. She dropped us off near the Rijks Museum and we walked across the park in front of the beautiful building that houses the museum. I enjoy looking at art, it jogs my creative side and makes me come up with stories to go with pieces that catch my eye.

The museum was huge with lots of great art and collections to wander through. My 16-year-old granddaughter wanted to know why they always painted the women half-dressed in the old paintings. I couldn’t give her a definite answer because I’m not sure, but she was happy that they looked like real people and not models.

I enjoyed many of the landscapes, especially those by Johan H. Weissenbruch. We grabbed a snack in an out-of-the-way alcove before meeting with Wanda outside the museum.

From here we walked through Amsterdam to the Anna Frank House.

We stopped at a few shops along the way. Rietta went into a Lego store looking for a gift for her brother who likes Legos and then into a rubber duck store so she could get her brother’s girlfriend a rubber duck dressed in a Dutch outfit.

The Anna Frank House is now surrounded by a large glass building. First, you get a headset that when you enter a room either starts playing information that pertains to what you are looking at or you can punch in the number that is placed on the wall to start the dialog. All the information was interesting and kept my attention.

After you go through the information leading up to the war the self-guided tour takes you through the house where Anna and her family hid. Photos weren’t allowed.

The Anna Frank Museum is a reminder to always be watchful for those who wish to take over or treat others as less than human. It doesn’t matter their religion, race, or culture, every person is a human being.

We finished our day by going to an Italian Restaurant. There is something about foreign food in foreign countries that makes other cultures’ food not taste the same. Angie, Rietta, and I all commented on it after having Chinese and Italian food in Holland. Neither one tasted the same as what you get in America. I don’t know if it’s because the country you are in puts their own cultural spin on the foods or what.

I couldn’t get over the bicycles stacked everywhere. This was a parking area for them.

No matter what food we ate we enjoyed most of it and were thankful to be able to make this trip.

The following day Janneke and Cor took us to Volendam. It’s an old fishing village that is now a tourist attraction. We walked along the streets and shops, purchasing mementos and taking in the sites.

We had lunch at the Flying Dutchman Restaurant.

Waling around we saw sailing ships and fishing boats. Angie encounter this stoic woman of the sea and took up a pose next to her.

Rietta, Angie, and I dressed up in historical Volendam clothing and had our photo taken.

The day was fun and we learned more about Dutch culture.

Afterward, we took boxes with the souvenirs we’d purchased and Rietta’s 52 bags of hagelslag (real chocolate sprinkles) to the post office.

It was less expensive for my daughter to have Rietta purchase and ship the hagelslag than for her to buy it in the United States. I’m sure her kids were happy to see that box arrive!

That was the end of our visit to Holland. we had a wonderful time and it was fun connecting with my husband’s family again after not seeing them for awhile.

Merry Christmas or Holiday that you celebrate this time of year!

My Fun Filled Year

It’s hard to believe that this year is nearly over. It was filled with fun, new friends, new books, and great opportunities.

We started off the new year with a trip New Mexico and Texas to visit family. Might as well go where it’s warmer in the winter. 😉

I attended a new author event in Lebanon, Oregon, held by the Lebanon Library. It was a fun event and one I’m doing again in 2025.

I joined an authors group who promote audiobooks, trying to get more sales of my audiobooks. I think it’s helping and we’ll be even better in the coming year when I can sell the audiobooks direct from my website.

In April I attended the Left Coast Crime conference in Seattle. It is always fun seeing author friends and meeting new readers. I’ll be headed to Denver this March for this same conference. They move around every year. I also had a wonderful week-long Oregon Coast trip with my friends. I write and then we go out and have fun. I like to do this twice a year but because of my Europe trip this year we only made it to the beach the one time.

May was a busy month promoting books and selling books. I attended the Beaver-con a mini comic con held for the first time in Central Oregon. I manned a booth for NIWA (Northwest Independent Writers Association) selling my books and those of other NIWA members. Then the end of the month I attended the Memorial Weekend Sumpter Flea Market as author Mary Vine and I have done for nearly ten years. This year it was poorly attended. We managed to sell books but not like normally.

June was another busy month with manning a NIWA booth at the La Pine Rhubarb Festival, promoting and writing books, and being one of the speakers at a conference in Beaverton.

July was a writing month. I sat down and wrote every day to get a book finished so I could attended the Tamkaliks Powwow in Wallowa Oregon. And July started my trekking around Oregon judging at county fairs. The categories I judge are sewing, crocheting, knitting, cake decorating, foods, art, photography, writing, and various other things like leathercraft and pottery. If it’s a small county with only one or two items then I do my best to judge the items.

fishing platforms on the Deschutes River

August more county fairs and the state fair where I judged writing. The month ended with our Labor Day Flea Market in Sumpter. It was poorer attended than Memorial Day. We are rethinking whether or not to continue with this event. They have started a new one on July 4th that sounds like it is gaining in popularity and we may switch to that once a year.

September is the month I waited for all year! My oldest daughter, a granddaughter, and I set out on my bucket list adventure. We started in the Netherlands where we stayed with one of my husband’s cousins. She and another cousin took us around the Amsterdam area. I’ve been writing about the trip on posts here. You can go back and read about them and continue reading about them as I will have several posts. From Netherlands we went to Spain where we stayed with one of my nieces. From Spain we went to England, specifically Bath. And then the train to Scotland.

October found us in Ireland. We had a week in Ireland and enjoyed every minute of it. When I returned from my trip, Hubby and I looked at houses that interested us in Baker City. OR. We found one that ticked off all buy one box and decided to go for it. We now own the house we will be moving into in a couple of years when he retires from his current job. We rounded out the busy month of October with a family reunion.

November was all about writing and selling books at two large holiday events. I had a booth with another author at the Redmond Holiday Market and then manned a NIWA booth at the Portland, OR Expo for their Holiday Market.

This month was all about finishing book 13 in the Gabriel Hawke series. And celebrating the holiday with family.

This month I have audiobooks, Yuletide Slaying (Shandra Higheagle Mystery) Poker Face (Spotted Pony Casino Mystery) and Murder of Ravens (Gabriel Hawke novels) on sale for $0.99 through Kobo. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to the books or start listening to the books in audio, now is your chance! I even have the second books, House Edge and Mouse Trail Ends, on sale for $1.99 through Kobo.

Boating in Amsterdam

The fourth day of our trip, Janneke’s brother Bert picked us up with his boat in the canal behind her house. We saw beautiful homes along the way. Lots of bike riders and joggers were on the paths and roads alongside the canals. Teams of rowers were practicing on the canals as well.

Houseboats of all shapes and sizes lined the water on the way to Amsterdam and as we entered the city. Some were gorgeous and others could have used some help. Most of them had large windows and the houses looked like ones you would see in a magazine. So pristine and well decorated. Some even had small gardens on their docks or roofs.

In Amsterdam, there were more houseboats to view a as well as the old, tall, narrow buildings. In all our travels around Spain, England, Scotland, and Ireland, Holland was the only place were we saw the tall narrow buildings. We spotted one building dated in the 1500s and more in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds.

The streets and bridges were filled with bicycles. Either ones that people were riding or ones that were parked. I think there were more bikes than cars. People sat along the canals enjoying a beverage or food at the restaurants.

The canals were narrow in some spots in the city. Because it was a weekend there were lots of people enjoying an outing on the canals. Several times I thought Bert would run into the back of another boat or get too close to one passing by. He would just grin and act as if he meant to get that close but I’m still not sure if he really could handle the boat that well or if we were just lucky.

Once we left the narrow canals and moved out into a large more open area with cruise ships, barges, fancy hotels and buildings along the edges of the waterway, we saw a large sailing vessel that would have been used in the 1800s.

We also saw a large building with swings on top of it. The contraption would load people on the swings on the rooftop, then tip out over the edge of the building swinging the people back and forth. That wasn’t something anyone in the boat wanted to do!

There were still so many flowers in bloom during our visit that the streets were a flurry of color. The flowers in planters along the bridges over the canals, in pots on balconies as well as the colorful buildings, modes of transportation, and people made every scene look like a painting.

After the boat ride, we drove to Nes aan de Amstel and climbed the church tower. The stairs weren’t too bad but the last part of the climb was straight up a metal ladder. There was one spot where the climb was through a tight spot. My fuzzy jacket caught on the old wood of the wall and for a moment I thought I was going to be stuck halfway up the ladder.

At the top were beautiful scenes of the countryside. Angie made it up and was glad she’d kept her fear in check as we looked out over the fields.

Rietta saw the tight space and the straight-up ladder and couldn’t quell her fear of heights, so she waited for us at the bottom of the ladder.

We ended the day with dinner at Tante Marie’s house. She ordered Chinese food and we had ice cream for dessert. Another fun day with family.

Family, Flowers, Beach, and Poffertjes

On the third day of our Europe trip, another Dutch cousin, Wanda, picked us up. We visited with an aunt and uncle on my husband’s paternal side.

After the visit, we drove to a Dahlia farm that had 600 varieties of dahlias! All the colors, sizes, and shapes were gorgeous. Rietta cut some with visions of drying them to put in the journal she kept of the trip.

From the Dahlia farm, we drove to the beach.

We had a nice walk along the water’s edge. Rietta was excited to find so many full shells. On the Oregon coast, you are lucky to find a whole shell.

By this time, we were hungry. We came across a café on the beach that had swings for the chairs at the picnic tables. Rietta was excited about this discovery.

We enjoyed listening to the sounds of the ocean and watching the waves as we ate.

After eating, we wandered back toward the lighthouse. We climbed to the top and took photos of the views. From the lighthouse, we wandered a bit through the shopping area adjacent to the beach.

Back in the car we headed to Ouderkerk, we mentioned that Rietta’s mom wanted her to purchase 52 packages of hagelslag – it is a pure chocolate sprinkle the Dutch eat on buttered bread. Her family loves the treat. Her mom wanted her to get 52 packages so they would have one for each week of the year. Wanda felt a large supermarket would be the best place to get it. And so she took us to one. We counted out 52 packages and went to the cashier. She saw the heaped basket and asked how many. We told her and she put that number in the till. Rietta paid and we scrambled to find boxes to carry it out of the store.

When we arrived back in Ouderkerk, Wanda suggested we eat at the Panakoke Restaurant that Angie and I had seen on our first walk around the town. We agreed and we were happy we had. The poffertjes we had for dinner were delicious and filled us up. Poffertjes are small Dutch pancakes the size of a ping pong ball. They puff up when cooked and are served with butter and powdered sugar, or syrup, or fruit. I had the cinnamon apples with mine. Just thinking about it now makes my mouth water! It was the perfect way to end our third day in the Netherlands.

To make the poffertjes they use a special pan that has indents in it. But you can make the small pancakes at home in a fry pan if you like. Here is a recipe I found for them.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups milk 375ml / 12.68floz very warm but not hot (1 1/2 minutes on high in microwave), sub oat or almond milk
2 1/2 tsp instant yeast 7g slightly heaped
2 cups plain flour / all purpose flour 280g / 9.87oz sub buckwheat flour or half and half
1 egg
¼ cup sugar
2 tbsp butter 25g, softened or melted to grease pan
1/2 tbsp icing sugar / powdered sugar to dust

Instructions

In a large mixing bowl, add the flour, sugar and yeast, giving it a quick mix and making a well in the center.

2 cups plain flour / all purpose flour, ¼ cup sugar, 2 1/2 tsp instant yeast

Pour in the warmed milk and egg, then whisk into a batter. Cover with a tea towel or silicone bowl cover, and leave to rise for an hour. The batter should be double in size and look very bubbly when ready. Note: If in a colder climate, allow extra time and pop the bowl in a warm location.

1 1/2 cups milk,1 egg

Grease a poffertjes pan or frying pan with the butter over a medium heat. Once warmed, add heaped tablespoons of batter into each well in the poffertjes pan. Make sure to leave space if using a frying pan.

2 tbsp butter

Once bubbles start to pop on top (1-2 minutes), flip using a single chopstick or skewer (similar to making takoyaki). Allow to cook for another minute or two, once puffed up and cooked through, then remove from the pan. Repeat until all batter is used up.
Serve while hot, sprinkling icing sugar / powdered sugar over the top to dust.

1/2 tbsp icing sugar / powdered sugar

Recipe from https://www.wandercooks.com/

My Very Excellent Vacation

Whoops! I had planned to keep going with a post every two weeks while on vacation. That didn’t happen! To be truthful I was exhausted at the end of each day and while I did keep a journal of what we did each day, I didn’t get into all the details of the places we saw. That will happen here over the next couple of months as I share my Bucket list Vacation with you.

To start, my oldest daughter, Angie, and the 16-year-old daughter, Rietta, of my other daughter went with me. We had to be bright-eyed at 4:30 am the day we left to be on time for the departure of our flight. Which meant spending the night in Boise and taking a hotel shuttle to the airport. I wondered how the trip would go when the hotel shuttle didn’t wait for us because the phone in our hotel didn’t work when they tried to call to say the shuttle was early. The flight to Dallas was uneventful as was the 8 1/2 hour flight from Dallas to Amsterdam, losing one night’s sleep..

We were met at the Amsterdam airport by my husband’s cousin, Janneke. She took us to Ouderkerk on the bus. She felt we wouldn’t be stuck in traffic by taking the bus, since we arrived in Amsterdam at 8 am on the 12th having left on the 11th in the U.S. Her mother met us at Janneke’s house with apple pie and we had tea. After the treat, we settled in and took a walk around Ouderkerk. We walked past a windmill being repaired, century old buildings in the town, and bought bread at the bakery.

Back at the house we had bread and homemade tomato soup before going on a car ride around the local area. The roads around Ouderkerk are narrow one-lane roads. When you meet another vehicle the one that has a wider edge on their side pulls over to the let the other vehicle pass. These roads were nerve wracking to me, because I felt many drove too fast for that type of situation.

Back at our cousin’s house we took a nap, visited, had dinner, and visited some more before going to bed.

The second day we went to Zaanse Schans, a small older town with many old windmills. The windmills were built to grind barley, rice, paper, wood, edible oils, mustard, tobacco, hemp, and many other things including the powders to make colors. We walked through several of the windmills to see how they worked and even stood up on top near the blades of one.

The three travelers on the top of a windmill.

After touring the windmills, or molen as they are called in Dutch, we wandered through the shops. Angie enjoyed the Catharina Hoeve building where the Henri Willig cheese company showed how cheese was made using cow, sheep, and goat milk.

They had tasting areas of all the cheeses that could be purchased.

This was Angie’s favorite thing!

Yes, we bought cheese while we were there. We also went to the wooden shoe factory, and the oldest first market of Albert Heinig.

From there we sauntered through shops and wonderful old houses and gardens. It was a good day and good start to your visit.

Because it was a tourist place, there were plenty of photo opportunities.

Angie and I in front of a heart made of wooden shoes.

Sherars and White River Falls

This is a short trip I made while waiting to judge day two of the Wasco County Fair. My hubby suggested I wasn’t very far from Sherars Bridge. When I looked it up and discovered it was only 8 miles from where I was staying, I hopped in my car and headed down the road.

The drive was gorgeous. The road followed the Deschutes River. On the opposite side of the river ran the railroad track. I’d sat alongside the river in Maupin the night before and videoed a train going by across the river. Beyond the railroad tracks was reddish sharp-edged rock on the yellow hills.

Following the river, I was on a barely two-lane asphalt road. Luckily, I only had three vehicles coming from the opposite direction. I saw the platforms and ladders the local Indigenous tribes use to stand on to catch fish. I happened to be there on a day when they weren’t fishing. A sign said they didn’t fish on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to let the fishery people do what they needed to do to take care of the fish and the area.

Sherars Falls isn’t tall but it is beautiful with frothy rushing water pouring down into the crack in the rock made from centuries of water flowing over it.

I took several photos from different directions and angles. I enjoyed walking over the lava rock that led down to the river’s edge thirty feet above the water.

From there I looped my way back toward Tygh Valley where I was judging. On the way I saw a sign for White River Falls. It looked inviting, so I pulled into the small day use only park. The trees and inviting green grass in an area that is mostly rock, dried grass, and sagebrush, felt like an oasis. I sat a moment taking in the cool breeze under the shade of the trees.

Then I walked down to the board explaining the presence of a building down in the ravine made by the White River just below the waterfall. It was one of the first hydroelectric plants in Oregon. It was built in 1910 using the water from the waterfall. But the river received its name from the white silt and sediment that flows in the water. A holding pond was made for the water to flow into to allow the sediment to settle on the bottom before the water was put through the hydro plant.

You can barely see the old hydro plant down by the river.

The falls is beautiful and as always, I gain serenity and energy from any for of flowing water. I wonder if it’s due to my sign being Cancer? Something I need to look up.

This little side trip was fun, interesting, and hopefully like many more I take when out and about judging at county fairs. Do you like to side trips when you are traveling?

Flying By

Summer that is! Wow! It’s almost the end of July. I can’t believe this month is almost over.

I spent most of this month with my butt in the chair writing the next Spotted Pony Casino Mystery. I wanted it to be published right before I go on a vacation in September. It is written, polished and off to my critique partners and beta-readers. I am proud of myself for writing over 70,000 words in 25 days.

My cover designer has the cover made.

Now to get the back cover blurb written and some memes made to promote the pre-order and the release of the book. That’s what the rest of this month and all of next month will be about. Setting up all my blog posts and promotions through my vacation. I don’t want to worry about having to get things out on a schedule when I’m enjoying traveling with my oldest daughter and granddaughter. I’ll have more about the trip in future posts.

I made time this month for two fun things. The first one was learning how to make Tule baskets from a Paiute woman. My daughter and I took a class from Beverly Beers. It was fun and taught me a bit about the culture and that I need to really practice if I want to make tight baskets. Here are some photos of the process.

We started with ten pieces of tule that had been soaked. You squeeze out the water and kind of flatten them in the process.

The next step was crossing five pieces over the other five and weaving them together to make the bottom of the basket.

When the bottom was woven, then a longer piece of tule was bend in two and then used as the weaver to go around the basket. I struggled with twisting the pieces correctly in between the uptight pieces. Beverly took mine out at one point and made me start over.

My finished product. We were told we could soak them and then put them around a can or jar to let them dry to the that shape if we wanted a perfectly round basket.

This is what it looked like after it dried and I added the tule rose I made (with help from my daughter) and the dried seeds that were on the end of one of the tules.

The other fun thing was attending the Tamkaliks Powwow in Wallowa Oregon. I enjoy the ceremonies, the dancing, and visiting with the vendors. I found a young woman who was selling healing teas and balms from the Umatilla tribe who gave me her email so I can ask her questions to hopefully give my Spotted Pony Casino books more color and influence of the culture.

Here is a youtube video I took of the horse procession at the powwow. It is my favorite part of the event.

Have you ever attended a powwow? I enjoy the singing and drumming as much as the colorful regalia and dancing.

A Trip through Leslie Gulch to Owyhee Reservoir

As Hubby and I age, we have been making a list of places that are only a days drive from us that we want to see. A couple of weekends ago, we took one of those trips.

Thursday Hubby said, “We’re going to Leslie Gulch tomorrow. Pack one night’s clothes and some food and drinks.” Always up for a spontaneous trip, I packed what we would need and as soon as he’d finished some farm stuff Friday morning we headed out with Nia navigating the way. 😉

Nia with her head out the window sniffing the breeze since we were going to slow.

Hubby had been told by several people how pretty Leslie Gulch is and that it was a narrow rocky road. It did live up to that expectation. We had passed the sign to Leslie Gulch many times on our way to Nampa and Boise Idaho through Jordan Valley, OR. Each time we would say, we should take that road some day.

That day came! It was a beautiful day, sun shining not too hot. At least until we arrived down at the reservoir.

The rock formations and multitude of colors kept my head whipping back and forth to both sides of the gulch. Some rock appeared smooth with streaks of red, pink and black, while others were porous yellow, pink, and green. And then were were the large and small cavities in some rocks and others that appeared to be made from a yellow, pink or gray lava.

I know very little about rocks or geology but I love rocks in all their colors, forms, and surfaces.

After making our way down the gulch to the reservoir, we noted the places a person could park a camper, though Hubby expressed when we came back it wouldn’t be to this spot because it took us over an hour to go 26 miles in my Jeep Cherokee. That was how gnarly the road was in places. You couldn’t go very fast and had pull over to let oncoming traffic go by.

The reservoir was smooth. There were people fishing from the side and others putting in small fishing boats or rafts. There is a trail that goes around the edge of the reservoir. We walked it a short distance to see more of the reservoir, then went back to the car and pulled out our lunch.

The drive back out was just as inspiring as the drive in. The rock formations took on different tints and shapes as we came at them from a different direction.

We plan to get back and camp a couple days at the Owyhee dam either in the fall or next spring. Hubby said he didn’t want to be down in that hole in the summer. And we will go to the damn because it has better camp area and easier to get to road. But I enjoyed our trip through Leslie Gulch. I love when we do spur of the moment trips!

I’ll just tag onto the end of this and today is the last day you can get the my book Poker Face in Audiobook for $0.99! Check it out here with other great listens by Independent Authors. https://indieaudiobookdeals.com/

Spotted Pony Casino Mystery

Book 1 of the Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries

Dela Alvaro is a disabled veteran who grew up on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation. When an IED in Iraq ends her military career, she comes home to reassess her life and lands a job in security at the Indian-run casino on the reservation.

Not even a year into being the assistant to the head of security, Dela is promoted on a trial basis. When one of the casino employees is found stabbed and stuffed in a laundry chute, she knows she can kiss head of security goodbye if she doesn’t find the killer before the media gets hold of the story.

While she is in over her head, she can’t decide if the FBI Special Agent called in to help is a blessing or a curse. It’s a man she ran across in Iraq who overrode her authority. When a second casino employee is killed, Dela has to decide if she can trust the special agent with not only keeping her job but keeping the rest of the casino employees safe.

My Happy Place, The Oregon Coast

I’m spending a week at the Oregon Coast to finish writing a book. Why do you say do I need to go to the coast to write? Because at home I have too many distractions. Like, feeding animals, doing laundry, making meals, cleaning house, and many more things that take my attention away from the fact I have a book to finish.

Here on the coast, I write and I walk on the beach to get fresh air and energize my brain. I always manage to write a lot when I’m here. If I can finish the book before it’s time to leave, I can start figuring out the next book.

Here are some of the fun things I’ve seen while on my walks.

This was the scene we had the first night as we sat outside at a restaurant. The first day at the coast was beautiful. The warmest we’ve had and the prettiest sunset.

This is a starfish I found on one of my walks. I thought “wow this is so unusual” and then another day there were six starfish on the beach. I threw them back into the water. I don’t know if they were still alive or not. There weren’t any rocks around for them to have been clinging to so I wasn’t sure if they had died and were being carried around on the waves or what.

As aways with a walk on the beach there are seagulls flying and fighting over the crabs and other sea creatures that the birds eat.

I like to take photos that encompass more than the main object in the photo. This is a mussel shell. The iridescent colors didn’t show up in the photo as much as they did in person but I liked the scope of the photo.

I liked the lines made in the water by the incoming and outgoing waves that crossed at this point on the beach.

This is my favorite sight at the beach. It was a trail made by a crustacean heading back to the water. At first, I thought someone had pushed a rock through the sand, but I saw the little almost zipper like markings in the middle of the track and picked the critter up to see where his head was buried in the sand and see his body poking out of the shell. So I set him back down and took a photo.

The beach is one of my favorite places to go to reenergize and get a book finished. I can’t wait until next month when hubby and I come back over to celebrate our 45th anniversary!

And don’t forget my latest release, The Pinch is set on the Oregon Coast in a different coastal town.

Book 5
Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries
Dela Alvaro, head of security for the Spotted Pony Casino, is asked to do a security check of a casino on the Oregon Coast. She no sooner starts her rounds at the casino and a child is kidnapped. The parents are a dubious couple. Special Agent Quinn Pierce of the FBI has been out to get the father for some time.

One of Dela’s best friends from the Army appears and they catch up, only to find her friend strangled the next morning after having divulged to Dela she may have photos of the kidnapping.

As Dela struggles with the violent death of yet another best friend, her lover, Tribal Officer Heath Seaver, arrives and the two begin untangling the lies, bribes, and murders.

In the end, as Heath carries the child to safety, Dela must face a cunning killer alone.

Purchase link: https://books2read.com/u/38Y787

ebook $4.99 – Print $14.99 – Audio $14.99

A mid-winter trip South

To say I couldn’t wait to get my Jeep back from the body shop after we were hit by a deer coming back from Portland before Thanksgiving, is an understatement. We, Hubby and I, had planned a trip to visit his sister in Killeen, TX, meet up with our oldest granddaughter to disperse the last of her belongings, and meet her brother in Clovis, NM at the Air Force base where he is stationed.

When the body shop finally called and said we could pick up “Spitfire,” I started packing while Hubby started mapping out the route we would take to hopefully avoid snow.

We didn’t leave until 2pm the first day because Hubby had to load a hay truck before we could go. We made it to Ely Nevada in 8 hours. We were beat. I found a pet-friendly motel and we called it a day. Nia was happy to be out of the small area she had, because of the totes we were taking to our granddaughter. I didn’t think to take a photo of our load. But all she had for room was her kennel pointed to the space between the seats and the arm rest/console to sit on when she wasn’t in my lap.

The next day even though we had a good 12-hour day of driving planned, we stopped at all the places that interested us.

The first was Cathedral Gorge in Nevada. We were both intrigued by the deep, narrow gorge with red rock spires.

The next stop was outside of Touqerville, Utah. We did a little walk around the car to Nia sniffed around.

After that we came to Colorado City, AZ. I made Hubby turn the car around when I spotted a purple store with the name “Paty’s Place.” I told him it had to be my store with the name spelled the same.

At first glance, Hubby and I were taken with the breath-taking views and nice homes in Colorado City. We stopped at a grocery store that had a deli and purchased lunch. We let Nia out in the dog park in the corner of the parking lot, and talked about coming back and staying to visit all the things we saw in the distance that we would like to explore. However, as we drove around, there was something about the place that had us both asking lots of questions. Why were the houses all so big? Why were there houses that had been started but never finished and no for sale signs on them?

As we continued down the road, I looked up the town and discovered three Mormon fundamentalist sects were based there. And that the leader of one of the sects had practiced polygamy and he was sent to prison as a sexual predator. He had expelled men from the town and gave their wives to other men. It was a place we decided we didn’t want to return to. But we will stay elsewhere and check out the surrounding area.

After that we stopped at the Navajo Bridge that crosses the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry.

Shadow of the bridge spanning the river.

Nia wondering why people wouldn’t stop and pet her. 😉

I enjoyed traveling through the country that Tony Hillerman wrote about in his books. I am a fan and was giddy as we drove through the four corners and towns that I read about in his books. Not to mention seeing First Mesa and hogans. We spent the night in Gallup, NM. And going through Albuquerque the next day we saw hot air balloons.

The next day we continued and arrived in Killeen, TX at my sister-in-law’s about 7 pm. We spent a couple of days with her and her husband. She took us to the town of Hico, TX where we went through a museum about a man who claimed to have been Billy the Kid. He went by Brushy Bill. I didn’t see how the photos of him as an old man resembled how Billy the Kid might have aged. We also ate at the Kup of Koffee restaurant and went across the street to the Wiseman Chocolate shop. The lunch and the chocolate were delicious.

We bid them farewell early in the morning and got back in the car to drive to Clovis, NM to visit our grandson in the Air Force and his wife. We were pleased with the way they are facing life as adults. They took us to the Billy the Kid burial site and museum in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. After that we went back to Clovis and walked through the small zoo there.

Leaving Clovis, we backtracked through New Mexico and a corner of Arizona. At a roadside market and gas station, I had the good fortune to visit with two Pueblo women who were selling jewelry and pottery. I purchased a rhodonite and turquoise bracelet from one woman and a seed pot from the other. The woman who sold me the seed pot, told me that what I purchased was miniature put that was used to store seeds and to sow them. She also told me she was Acoma “Ah-kuh-muh) Pueblo and she was of the Bear clan. Along with her name on the bottom of the pot is also a bear paw. She also told me what the design on the pot depicted. The bold black represented mountains and land, the orange the sun, and the black lines rain. I am so glad this woman was open to sharing this with me.

Our next stop was Morristown, AZ a small town near Wickenburg where all the rodeo people go to stay in the winter. Friends of ours spend the winter there. We arrived before dark and settled into the trailer we rented for our stay there. The rain at night pounded the roof but we stayed dry. The following morning it was too wet for anyone to be roping so the couple took us to Wickenburg to see the roping grounds, the stores, and do to some laundry. Then we went to Surprise for lunch and rummaging around in the thrift stores. I came away with 6 red dresses to send to an artist in California who puts up an outdoor display along a highway to promote the MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) movement.

The next day we checked out a secondhand store in Wickenburg then drove up into the hills to Yarnell, AZ. We went into a gift shop and a secondhand store there before heading back to Wickenburg and having a late lunch at the Ornery Pig BBQ. There the men went back to where we were staying, and my friend and I went back to Surprise so I could get a case of my favorite wine. It was half the price in Arizona as in Oregon and they were having a sale on it! I call that a win!

The next day we headed back home, making it to Winnemucca, NV just after dark. We ran into snowy roads about Tonopah and decided to not try to get all the way home. The first day of our trip, we’d stopped in Winnemucca for dinner and ended up at Wingers. It has really good food, so we had dinner there on our last night of our trip as well.

That was our first trip of 2024 and while it put me behind on writing related things, it was a fun trip and I’m glad we decided to do it.

Have you taken any trips so far in 2024?

	patyjag on Always Moving Forward
	dianamcc on Always Moving Forward
	patyjag on Last of our 2024 Trip
	Sharon Marchisello on Last of our 2024 Trip
	patyjag on Sweet Deal Coming

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