NEW MEXICO, DAY 1: AMERICAN AIRLINES FAILS US AGAIN, BUT HATCH, NEW MEXICO, IS A WINNER

Friday, June 25, 2021

I'll get a confession out of the way: When Bob suggested New Mexico for late June and early July, I thought he was crazy. Washington State or Oregon, maybe, but New Mexico? We'd be roasting along with the chiles.

As it turned out, we had only one or two hot days at the beginning and end with a spate of unseasonably cool weather for most of the trip. Meanwhile, Portland hit a historic high of 117° F. Who would have guessed?

Second confession: When Bob told me he booked a 12:45 AM flight on American Airlines leaving out of Ontario, connecting in Dallas, and arriving in El Paso at 8:11 AM, I was sure he was crazy. Turns out, we stayed up late and got no sleep for nothing because when we arrived in Dallas, we learned that our American Airlines connecting flight to El Paso had been cancelled. 

In its place we were offered a substitute flight that would be leaving at 1:15 PM, EIGHT HOURS LATER.  For that we stayed up all night? Almost all of of first-day-plans were now impossible. We pushed a little harder and learned that we could choose to get on a list for a stand-by flight at 9:00 AM, and then another at 11:00 AM if the first one didn't work. If neither worked, we still had the 1:15 PM option.

Bob got in a line to talk to AA Customer Service at 5:45 AM to discuss other possible options. No employee showed up until after 6:30, and by that time about 20 people were in line. Bob, about 4th or 5th in line, made it to the front at 7:10. There was still only one agent and a long line. No worries. Bob's turn was quick because there were no other options.

Meanwhile, I drowned my sorrows in a Pinkberry smoothie. Such a nice thing to find in the airport!

I walked by this shop several times, and I am proud to say that I did not give in to temptation.

CALIFORNIA: PALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUM

 June 12, 2021

Last weekend Bob was away from home so I decided to take a little trip out to Palm Springs to visit the art museum. I hadn't been there in years and thought it would make a good day trip.  Unfortunately, it topped out at about 110° F that day, but fortunately there is covered parking and I spent most of my time inside.

If you think of Palm Springs as a lush oasis, you are misguided. It is definitely the desert.

The museum evolved out of a regional museum into an art museum in the 1950s and moved into its current Modernist building at the base of Mt. San Jacinto in 1976.

Today the museum has a collection of about 24,000 objects, which is not bad for a regional museum.

I started with a temporary exhibit across the street from the museum. History of Suspended Time (A monument for the impossible) is artist Gonzalo Lebrija's recreation of a piece of performance art when he used a crane to drop a car into a lake while filming it with a high-speed camera. This is the moment just before the car hits the water.

Although this car is a 1968 Chevy Malibu, the exhibit reminded me a lot of Cadillac Ranch, which we had just seen a few months prior in Texas.

TEXAS, AUSTIN: BLANTON MUSEUM OF ART, UT AUSTIN, AND TORCHY'S TACOS

March 25, 2021

On our last afternoon of the trip, we spent a few hours in the Blanton Museum of Art of the University of Texas. Founded in 1963, it is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. The current building, erected in 2003, was funded in part by a $5 million donation from the wife of James Michener, but then the Houston Endowment made a $12 million donation in honor of its then-chariman, Jack Blanton, and the museum got its new name (although there is a Mari and James A. Michener Gallery Building).

The entry way is designed like an atrium, and hanging from the ceiling is Thomas Glassford's work Siphonophora (2016), which looks like a giant sea creature.

When we were there the Blanton had a special exhibit of artworks collected by Leo Steinberg (1920-2011), a part-time art history professor turned print collector. Over about 50 years he amassed a collection of about 3,500 prints covering 500 years of art history. It is an incredibly diverse collection. Here are a few of my favorites. 

(L) The Holy Face (1649) by Claude Mellan and (R) Haitian Woman (1945) by Henri Matisse:

TEXAS, AUSTIN: A HAILSTORM AND McKINNEY STATE PARK

 March 25, 2021

On Thursday morning at about 4:15 AM I awoke to some loud banging that I thought was Bob trying to open the window.  When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was watching an incredible hailstorm. He had woken up thinking I was trying to get something out of my suitcase. It sounded like rocks were hitting the hotel. Bob said that when he first looked out the window, the ground was covered with white balls of ice. By the time I pulled myself out of bed to look, it had already melted and a good-sized river was rushing down the road. I checked out the weather app on my phone and saw the following:

Later, we saw photos of the quarter-sized hail:

TEXAS, AUSTIN: CONGRESS AVENUE, THE BULLOCK TEXAS STATE HISTORY MUSEUM, THE MAGNOLIA CAFE, AND A BAT TOUR

 March 24, 2021

I mentioned that Austin is a walkable city, which we know firsthand because we did a LOT of walking. 

One of the main thoroughfares of the city is Congress Avenue, which runs from the state capitol building to the Congress Ave. Bridge, passing by lots of interesting architecture.

The Colorado River bisects Congress Ave. No, not that Colorado River, but another river by the same name that has both its source and mouth in Texas. Turns out it is 862 miles long--the 18th longest river in the United States--and I had never even heard of it.

TEXAS, AUSTIN: FROM ST. MARY'S CATHEDRAL TO THE MEXIC-ARTE MUSEUM

March 24, 2021

Austin is a fairly walkable town, and there are many things to see within walking distance of the capitol. Just a few blocks away is St. Mary's Cathedral. The cornerstone was laid in 1872, the same year Austin became the capital of the state. (It is really too bad that the ugly office building behind it spoils the view.)

It is always fun to see another iteration of the Virgin of Guadalupe in North American cathedrals. I also love the also ubiquitous gentle, smiling face of the current pope, Pope Francis. These two images were in the foyer before the main doors into the sanctuary.

The view from the rear entrance:

TEXAS, AUSTIN: STATE CAPITOL

 March 24, 2021

We had driven through Austin on a prior visit and had intended to visit the capitol building, but Bob couldn't find a place to park, traffic was awful, and we gave up. This time, however, Bob found a hotel (the Hampton Inn) with an underground parking lot just two blocks from the capitol.  Very nice. In fact, we wouldn't know how nice that parking lot was until the next night when a ferocious hailstorm woke us up in the middle of the night.

Hotel parking lot entrance

The first thing we did after checking into our hotel was walk to the capitol. Like everything in Texas, it is ginormous. In fact, it has the largest gross square footage of all the state capitols. Only the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., is larger. Built in 1888 to replace the previous (and smaller) capitol that was destroyed by fire, its neo-Renaissance style features the domes, columns, plasterwork, and pediments of classical architecture. It is made of red granite sourced from Granite Mountain near present-day Marble Falls, where we had spent the previous night.

Front view

View of dome from behind the building