Crazy Things Happen in the Desert©

I can’t believe after waiting 31 years to return to the state of Arizona--with the Phoenix Suns and Steve Nash, who is responsible for my interest in basketball, the  Diamondbacks, who are in first place, right at this moment, anyway, and many, many days of outside tennis,




the Herberger Theater, which has given us years of entertainment, the Arizona Archeology Society, which has educated us on the southwest and its people, the Cave Creek Library for giving us the opportunity to serve our community, 

and the beautiful Sonoran Desert with all its hiking trails, which have given us years of peace and quiet while we have been exploring and discovering, with the sunsets that are continuously spectacular, the never ending stars in the night sky and moons that light up the desert and give shadow to the huge saguaros, with the coyotes howling, the owls hooting and rattlesnakes rattling--that we may be leaving it all.

We are faced with a decision of staying in the desert, where we have found out that I am allergic to all weeds, grasses and trees, and the dryness, dust and dirt isn’t doing me any favors.  Or should we follow the doctor’s advice and move close to the coast? It doesn’t seem right that living in the desert only lasted for 11 years after I waited so long to return.

Being Tourists in Arizona!©

Desert Caballeros Western Museum, in Wickenburg, Arizona  

We didn’t know about this gem in the desert and were delighted to have the opportunity to visit. The museum was a wonderful surprise, exhibiting the history of Wickenburg, a reconstructed old town Wickenburg in the basement and a southwest art collection that any major museum would be proud to have. 

There is even a Bolo Tie exhibit!  If you don’t know what bolo tie is--it is a 4-foot length of cord/leather that drapes around the neck with a medallion of some sort, such as turquoise or other gem, stone, copper or silver. The State Legislature actually made it the official neckware of Arizona instead of the bow tie or the necktie. 

Did you know that Henry Wickenburg was a gold searcher during the 1862 gold strike on the Colorado River (near present day Yuma)?  His discovery of the Vulture Mine in 1863, Maricopa County, Arizona, yielded over $30 million in gold and was the most productive gold mine in the Arizona.  The mine attracted more than 5,000 people to the area, and with the ranchers and farmers who settled in the fertile plains of the Hassayampa River, resulted in the founding of the town of Wickenburg.

If you are passing through or spending time in Wickenburg, the place to have breakfast, lunch or a pastry is Nana’s!  The food was good but the bakery goods were world-class--coconut cream pie, apricot pecan scones, sticky buns and so many more mouth-watering pastries!  It's located in the block behind the Museum, and is worth a trip in itself.

A Mission—The Road Trip ©

We escape the summer heat earlier than planned for this road trip after receiving the disrupting news:  a permanent move to the coast is advised due to extreme allergies associated with the desert and its plant life.  

This road trip to Santa Rosa, California, was intended  to be a surprise for Eric’s 40th birthday.  But it became a road trip of Surprises, Searches and Adventures.  

The Adventures. We leave Arizona in the early morning, looking in the rear view mirror at a beautiful monsoon sky with the sun breaking through.  The first day out is long, but rewarding at the end of the day with a cool evening, an ocean breeze and a view of the Ventura marina. We walk the beach and visit the downtown area where we find our first mission--Mission Buenaventura. 

The second day out we head north, stopping in Santa Barbara to visit our second mission:  Old San Barbara Mission, with its great architecture and art, paintings, sculptures and statues--the colonial art collection is rich and varied. Lunch are crepes at Pacific Crepes--not to be missed if you find yourself in downtown Santa Barbara!  

The next stop is Santa Ines, outside the faux-Danish town of Solvang.  Franciscan Fathers take excellent care of the mission, giving life to an active parish--the morning we are there a wedding is taking place. We drive through the town of Buellton, home of Anderson’s split pea soup, to reach the mission and yes, we stop to try the soup!  

The last stop for the day is San Luis Obispo. The town is pleasant with an ocean breeze.  After driving most of the day, we walk out all the kinks  and find Mama’s Meatballs for dinner.  It is a most surprising find--a great little Italian place with a menu from which we want to order everything!   The Mission San Luis Obispo is found in the middle of downtown and is a working parish.  January marks a transformation in the mission--it opens it doors and provides overflow housing for a month to the homeless. 

Before arriving at the Silicon Valley for the weekend we stop to visit Mission San Miguel and The Rios Caledonia Adobe.  The mission is beautiful, busy and houses Padres. The Adobe, built in 1835 by the Indians, was used as a private residence for a family of fourteen in 1851, was sold in 1862 and in 1868 was used for stagecoach stop, tavern and inn.  Local legend has Jesse James, the Delton Brothers and Tiburcio Vasquez visiting the inn. In 1886 it was once again a residence but also a school, post office, mattress-making/upholstery shop, dressmaker and tailor shop.  In 1895 a family lived in the adobe and ran a dairy farm on the property. In 1903 walls were built and a garden court with cacti and shrubs were added, and it was opened to the public.  In 1915 the original stagecoach road became Highway 101.  Today Rios-Caledonia is California Historical Landmark #936 and a San Luis Obispo County Park. After our visit to the old adobe we are told that Dos Amigos is a great place to eat and it is lunch time!  Mission Soledad was the last mission of the day.

Once we arrive in the Silicon Valley we look around and see Yahoo, Google, etc., etc... a different world.  We explore the small towns with their quaint but busy downtowns--Santa Clara, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Palo Alto.  All inland but with a cool and refreshing breeze  and the temperatures only in the 80‘s! 

After a quiet weekend we are off to the hustle, bustle and crowds of Santa Cruz.  We drive to Carmel/Monterey area searching for the Carmel Mission.  It is truly one of the most beautiful missions. 

Finally, on the day of the surprise, we leave early but make a mistake heading north to Santa Rosa.  Instead of crossing the Richmond/Rafael Bridge we stay on the 101 straight through downtown San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge.  It is beautiful driving across the bridge but it does make us a little late. 

The SURPRISE is on all of us when we end up meeting in the parking lot--literally in the same parking spot of our rendezvous location.  It can’t be—it was, right in front of us--ERIC!  As we turn into the parking lot of Oliver’s Thomas says, is that Eric right in front of us?  We turn right into the parking lot into a tandem parking spot—so we pull all the way forward.  And what is happening behind us becomes the surprise.  Eric turns left into the parking lot and pulls right behind our car saying to Jan, that guy took my parking space and that car is from AZ and the license is GO4EVER, and that is my mom getting out of the car!  SURPRISE!  Okay, it doesn’t go exactly as planned but not only is Eric surprised-- we all are!

Surprise over—on to see Dozer.  Remember Dozer?  My new best friend, now my tallest friend from Safari West.  Lunch at the park is our way to get in for a visit to Dozer.  We spend at least a half hour taking pictures and encouraging Dozer to participate in the visit!  

Our first full day with Eric and Jan we take a drive--we find ourselves in the middle of the redwoods in the morning and in the afternoon we are driving along the coast! That evening Eric’s birthday dinner is at Khoom Lanna Thai Restaurant downtown Santa Rosa.  If anyone is in Santa Rosa, don’t miss this Thai!  

The second day brings a short trip to Sonoma for the last of the twenty-one missions. First, we stop at Quarryhill Botanical Gardens--located on the hill surrounded by grapevines.  

The next stop is lunch at El Molinos, for world-class Mexican food in a converted service station.  Also, we check out the Fairmont in this little town close to Sonoma, and even find a very small Starbucks. 

Sonoma is a quaint town with a square in the middle of town surrounded by vineyards.  We visit the Sebastiani Winery with the purpose of buying a bottle of wine for Judi.  She was okay with scaling the courtyard walls at home after the UPS guy threw over a package that could not have withstood the monsoon rains--thank you, Judi!  

Too soon we start back to Santa Rosa and dinner at Rustic, located in the Francis Ford Coppola Winery--an Italian dinner outside looking over the vineyards. 

Time just goes by too fast--it is now time to head south back to the desert. We take in more missions in on the route south, Mission San Rafael, Mission San Juan Bautista.  Of course, we stop in San Miguel at Dos Amigos for another great lunch! 

The SEARCH is of coastal towns.  It seems like one little beach town on top of another little beach town.  The beach neighborhoods are jammed with one house on top of another, with streets that are almost impassable.  We finding that one town runs into another, so that we never know when we leave one and enter another.  From San Diego to San Francisco the traffic is heavy and the small towns are crowded and too busy.

(Copyright 2011)

Chocolate Soup?

This is nothing like Grandma's Chicken Soup

1 quart heavy cream

11 ounces premium milk chocolate, chopped

1/2 teaspoon Chimayo red chile power

salt to taste

For serving: whipped cream, toasted pinons, fresh berries

Heat heavy cream to just below scalding.  Add the chopped milk chocolate and remove from heat.  Mix until smooth, then strain through a fine sieve into a bowl.  Stir in the chile, cover and chill overnight.  Serve cold garnished with freshly whipped cream, toasted pinons and fresh berries.

La Casa Sena Big Winner At Souper Bowl

The Santa Fe New Mexican. Santa Fe, N.M. February 15, 2006

On a Mission©

A Road Trip 

Spain’s efforts to colonize California from 1726 to 1823 left behind twenty-one missions.  

The missions were established by the Spanish crown which controlled the secular activities of the Catholic Church of Spain and its territories.  Together with the military, Spain established a presence in California and protected this territory from Russia and England.  The military established presidios/forts close to the ports and acted as a provisional government.  Spain’s representative distributed funds for the missions and recommended how many padres would be allowed at the various missions.  Franciscan Padres established missions to teach the native population the Spanish culture, Christianity and a trade.  

The end of the California missions came in 1834, when the Mexican government, which had gained independence from Spain, transferred control of the missions from the Catholic Church to civil authorities. The property passed into private ownership and the mission buildings fell into ruin.  In 1933,  the Union Oil Company deeded several parcels to the State of California.  Under direction of the National Park Service, the Civilian Conservation Corps restored or reconstructed many of the mission's adobe buildings.

Fourteen missions, 2,500 miles and over 200 years later, we found that many of the Missions are still very much ALIVE!

Mission Basilica San Diego De Alcala, the first of the California’s twenty-one missions, was built in Old Town, San Diego in 1769.  

San Buenaventura Mission was founded by Fray Junipero Serra in 1770--it was the ninth and last mission founded by Father Serra. It was named for a Franciscan theologian, Saint Bonaventura.  The mission burned down in 1793 and it took the neophytes 16 years to build the church, which still stands downtown today and is a very active parish and school.  Ventura, CA

Old Mission Santa Barbara, “Queen of the missions for its graceful beauty”, was the tenth mission that Junipero Serra had planned to establish, but before his vision could be fulfilled, he died in 1784.  The location of the tenth mission on the hilltop has spectacular ocean views and is the only mission to remain under the leadership of the Franciscan Friars since the day of its founding in 1786.  Santa Barbara, CA

Old Mission Santa Ines, named for Saint Agnes (Saint Agnes of Rome, a thirteen year-old Roman girl martyred in A.D. 304) and founded in 1804, is the nineteenth of the twenty-one missions. It was the last mission in the Southern California chain that stretches 650 miles between San Diego and Sonoma.  It is today a working parish, and houses an order of Franciscan monks.  Solvang, CA

Mission La Purisima Concepcion or La Purisima Mission, with the original Spanish name being La Mission de La Purisima Concepcion de la Santisima Virgen Maria (Mission of the Immaculate Conception of Most Holy Mary)  was founded in 1778 as the eleventh of the twenty-one Californian missions. The mission was best known for its hides and blankets, and at its peak inhabitants herded as many as 24,000 cattle and sheep. The most extensively restored mission in the state, it hosts over 200,000 visitors each year.  Mission La Purisima is currently the only example in California of a complete Spanish Catholic mission complex.  Lompoc, CA

Mission San Luis Obispo, the fifth California mission, was founded by Father Junipero Serra in 1772.  It is named for the patron saint of the mission, Saint Louis, Bishop of Toulouse, France.  The mission is the halfway point in the chain of missions and is often called the “Prince of Missions”.  Mission San Luis Obispo is now a parish church with an elementary school. San Luis Obispo, CA

Mission San Miguel.  Mission San Miguel Arcangel was founded in 1779 as the sixteenth of the twenty-one California missions.  The mission was named for the “Most Glorious Prince of the Celestial Militia, Archangel Saint Michael”.  Mission San Miguel's appearance is much the same as it was when founded--the inside of the mission has never been repainted.  The pictures and the colors you see are the originals that were created and painted by Indian artisans under the direction of Esteban Munras. Today it is still a parish church, a novitiate for training Franciscans, and a center for retreats and meetings.  San Miguel, CA

San Juan Bautista, 

founded in 1779 by Father Fermin Lasuen, is the fifteenth of the  twenty-one California missions, and was named for John the Baptist.  San Juan Bautista is located in the San Juan Valley where the mission sits on the San Andreas fault! The church was destroyed by an earthquake in 1803, but because of its fast growth, plans were already underway to build a larger church.  The mission is still active to this day and claims to have served mass every day since 1797. In 1957 the classic movie, “Vertigo” by Alfred Hitchcock was filmed on the mission grounds.  San Juan Bautista, CA

San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo Mission, the second mission founded June 1770 by Father Junipero Serra, was named for Saint Charles Borromeo, the Bishop of Milan.  One of California's oldest Spanish missions it remains a parish church today and it is the only one to have its original bell tower dome.  Mission Carmel is the burial place of Father Junipero Serra, Father of the Missions.  Carmel, CA

Mission San Rafael Arcangel, founded in 1817 as a medical asistencia by Father Vicente de Sarria, was named for Arcangel Rafael, angel of bodily healing. San Rafael, a sub-mission, was a hospital serving the sick from Mission Dolores in San Francisco, making it Alta California’s first sanitarium.  It was never intended to be a stand-alone mission but in 1822 was granted full mission status.  San Rafael, CA

Mission Santa Clara de Asis, founded in 1777 by Junipero Serra, was the eighth mission of the twenty-one California missions.  It was named for Clare of Assisi, the founder of the order of the Poor Clares.The mission was ruined and rebuilt six times but the settlement was never abandoned.  Santa Clara, CA

San Juan Capistrano, founded in 1776 by Father Junipero Serra, was the seventh of the twenty-one California missions. Called the “Jewel of the Missions”, it is probably the best known California mission--famed for the beautiful gardens and the return of the swallows that annually migrate some 2.000 miles from their winter homes in Central America.  San Juan Capistrano, CA

Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, “King of the Missions”, largest and most populous of all the California missions--it is the eighteenth of the twenty-one California missions. It was founded by Father Fermin Francisco de Lasuen in 1798, and named for Saint Louis IX, King of France.  The current church, built in 1811, is the third church on this location.  San Luis Rey, CA

Mission San Antonia de Pala, “Wonderworker of the world”, was founded in 1816 by Padre Antonio Peyri.  A sub-mission of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, Mission Pala is the only surviving Asistencia in the mission system and the only mission-related structure still ministering to an Indian population. Pala Indian Reservation, Pala, CA

Mission Nuestra Senora de la Soladad, was the thirteenth of the twenty-one California missions founded in 1791 by Father Fermin Francisco de Lasuen. It was named for Our Lady of Solitude.  The name was taken from the remote location and an expression the native Indians used that sounded like “soledad,” the Spanish word for solitude.  The tiles from the roof of this mission were once sold to pay a debt owed by the rancher who owned the land on which the mission stands.

Mission San Francisco Solono was the last and northernmost California mission, the twenty-first mission founded 1823 by Father Jose Altimira. It was named for St. Francis Solano, missionary to the Peruvian Indians.  Mission San Francisco Solano was the only mission founded after Mexico’s independence from Spain.  Sonoma, CA

(Copyright 2011)