People and Places: Part One

I don't have much time before we need to hit the road for the Grand Canyon, but I want to share a few random details before heading out.

For those of you who may not know, I had large sections of my hair dyed turquoise a week before our trip. So, Tim suggested that we conduct a little social experiment while traveling and record the reactions we get from people in different areas. Although my brilliant turquoise has begun to turn the color that blondes get when they swim in chlorine for extended periods of time, I have still gotten several comments, but these are a couple of favorites:

At Angelo's BBQ in Fort Worth, Tim overheard a little girl and her father arguing over the color as I walked to the restroom. He was calling it green, and she said it was turquoise.

In the elevator at the Holiday Inn in Sweetwater, Texas, an older gentleman who was in town for his great grandson's wedding realized the color when I turned to face him. He gasped and let out an audible "ohhhh" and then reached out to touch it.

We have had conversations with several others along the way, but a few stand out.

I don't know if it's a pre-requisite for concierges at moderately-priced hotels to be naturally cheerful, but we have met two so far that lit up the room the second we stepped into the lobby and made us feel as if we were home for the evening. The first was a woman at the Airport Fairfield in Nashville whose name I didn't catch. She asked us if we were in town for "Fanfair". Neither of us have any idea what Fanfair is, but we told her our story, and in doing so, found out that she was from Southern California and has only been in Tennessee for 5 years. She told us what must have been a funny story (Tim laughed) about traveling across the country with a Japanese exchange student, but I was distracted by the absurd whiteness of her teeth, so I missed the punchline.

The other concierge was a woman at the Sweetwater Holiday Inn named Regina, who seemed genuinely happy to be greeting the 12am - 7am crowd. She offered us free snacks and bottled water.

Another woman who made an impression was our waitress at the High Noon Saloon in Albuquerque. Apart from the Carlsbad Caverns themselves, this was my favorite stop so far. The old town in Albuquerque is a hub for local Native American and Mexican culture. Every structure is original Adobe (most almost 250 years old), and there is art everywhere. The town is nicely populated, meaning we saw a lot of people but they were evenly dispersed, and not crowded, giving the town a very peaceful feel. Anyway, our waitress was from Arizona and had that really tan, almost leathery look, she wore a silver buffalo around her neck. She found out we were traveling to the Grand Canyon next, and in a soft, very New Age-y voice, enthusiastically recommended that we stop in Sedona. "I don't want to get into depth about it but it's just really cool, " she told us, "There are really great vortexes there." We politely nodded.

I'll wait until we post the pictures to describe our experience at Carlsbad Caverns, but I'm loving New Mexcio now that we have crossed the monotony of the plains into the mountains and the plateau in this region. The terrain in the West is strikingly untame. It seems different than the landscape back home in the sense that there are much larger stretches of land unspoiled by human beings. It is truly vast and makes me marvel at its Artist.