Heniz 57

The past couple of weeks have been busy and I haven’t been keeping up with my writing so I will have to give you a quick update!

We had another of MaryBeth's Pot Luck’s also including a Pampered Chef portion. Pampered Chef is like a Tupperware party and they sell looks of cooking things to you. Obviously I wasn’t going to buy anything but came away with over $100 of stuff I am not sure we really need!! The party then went on to the Pot Luck part essentially bring along a dish and we all eat. Last time Stuart made curry and homemade naan but this time, keeping along the lines of Scottish cuisine, he made 'Cullen Skink'. Obviously it is not too difficult to make back home but finding smoked fish is difficult, so he broke out the smoker again and smoked his own fish. He used Tilapia instead of Haddock, because again it wasn't available. It was fine and I think everyone seemed to enjoy it.

The next night we were out with Bill and Marah to the ‘American Chinese’. It was anything but American Chinese. It is something they do with a group of friends some of who are Chinese – which became very important in a place like this since the menu was not in English, or at least the menu you really wanted to see! It was bring your own and that meant champagne all evening!! We had 14 plates of food for 11 of us from fish, meat to vegetables and it was all great – my favourite was the snow pea leaves – snow peas are what we call mangetout and the leaves when steamed are vibrant green and a bit like spinach. It was outstanding value for money - well I think we couldnt read the receipt. It was in a part of town that was slightly less desirable and I am not sure we could find it again as Bill drove!!

Since the weather has cooled off and the mosquitoes we managed to get in a game of Disc Golf – I don’t think we have played for over 8 months – terrible! I won :)

On a school night we went to see Cirque du Soleil - Alegria (http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/alegria/) at the Toyota Centre with Robert and friends. He kindly organised tickets and surprised me when he said we were going later in the week as I had entirely forgotten about it. I have never been to the Toyota Centre downtown – it is where they play basketball. The enormous arena was divided in two and we had very good seats. The circus was spectacular. I don’t think my attention drifter from the stage once through the first half. It was colourful, entertaining and had some excellent acrobatics. They were doing trampolining, playing with fire, hula hooping and so much more. In the second half they had two contortionists and they nearly made me sick – at times it was hard to work out which way they were facing! The finally was men swing on the high swings over the stage – the timing of them catching one another was impeccable – wow, certainly worth the ticket price.

I picked up my new car!! I was a little sad about handing over Misty to the garage dealer until he gave me the keys to Iggy the VW Tiguan with many more toys to play with!

On Saturday I had a work function – it was a Chevron do to celebrate project sanction the Jack and St. Malo Fields. Maersk is in Jack in the Gulf of Mexico. The party was held on the east side of downtown towards Pasadena. The last part up to the restaurant is in a shady part of town and actually overlooks the ship channel – good thing it was dark when we were there!! It was our first big journey in Iggy and getting used to her built in sat nav was interesting – one wrong turn as she says the instructions different to the Garmin but I guess I will get used to it. We were greeted with complimentary valet parking but I was a little reluctant to hand over my keys – I had done less than 100 miles in that car!! Anyway we walked in and were greeted with people in Hawaiian shirts and served drinks in coconut shells – yes it had a Hawaiian theme! I am not sure of the reason for the Hawaiian theme but it was quite entertaining. We meet up with the other Maersk folk and it was not long before we were getting dressed up in funny costumes to get photos taken of us all!! Later on after dinner there was traditional pacific islands music and dancing demonstrations including Hula and the Hakka. An interesting night it has to be said not to mention a long drive home again.

New Mexico Roadtrip - Part 3

Saturday
For breakfast we headed to a small cafe we had heard about on "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" called Telcolte Cafe . Stuart had the 'Huevos Yucatecos' - a corn tortilla layered with black beans, two eggs, Swiss and feta cheese, pico de gallo, potatoes, fried bananas and of course New Mexico Green chile. I on the other hand had Weightwatchers playing on my mind so a poached egg and, well, a biscuit (British scone) – they didn’t serve toast, actually they made a big thing of it since it said it everywhere ‘No Toast’!

We had an early start because they were a lot of sights to see. First on the list was to visit Los Alamos and the National Laboratory Science Museum. The road wraps up the side of the hills and when you finally arrive on the plateau. Los Alamos was founded as a secret planned community to provide housing for the employees of the Manhattan Project during World War II. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos,_New_Mexico. The museum was small but good and would certainly recommend it if you are passing – it was interesting and shocking. On the fun note you get to try out the Geiger counter!

Next stop was to visit the Bandelier National Monument which is an archaeological site of ancient Pueblo cliff dwellings. The park road winds down so you are at the base of the cliffs. A short walk in you start to see holes in the cliff face. The path takes you right up to the cliffs and some if the holes have wooden ladders that you can climb up and just imagine what it is like to live in one of these holes. Some are very small I guess for sleeping, others were bigger that you could see evidence of fire smoke so must have been more like a living room! While walking around the site, we heard a buzzing/hissing noise. Stuart said it was probably crickets as he had seen some earlier. I knew it wasn’t crickets and suddenly I saw it! – I shouted 'Watch Out!' as Stuart nearly stepped on a coiled Rattlesnake. He then started to take close up photos of it until a ranger came and told us to get back about 6 feet because when they are coiled they are ready to strike and can attack up to 6 feet away! Tourist!!

We had a quick lunch in the car before moving on to our next stop was to look at the Valles Caldera a 12 mile diameter hole left by a super-volcano over 50 thousand years ago. It was so big that you couldn’t get the real impression of the caldera except the extremely flat plain surrounded by hills. We had heard that there were lots of geothermal hot springs in the area, so we headed off to find one with some very vague directions. After looking at the GPS and various guide books we found the informal car park at the side of the road and headed off into the forest to find it. Apparently the forestry service doesn’t like to advertise the location of the hot springs as there are 'bares in the woods'! With this knowledge we cautiously approached the hot spring, looked over the edge …… To our relief everyone was in bathing costumes. There was about 10 of us at the hot spring, including 2 other Brits. The temperature was like a hot bath except near the source where it was warmer. The view was spectacular looking down the mountain through the trees. It was almost a shame we had to share! On the way back to our car, we spotted a tarantula walking across the road. Once we had seen one we started to notice lots of them crossing the road over the next few days.




Sunday
Breakfast again and "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" recommendation. This time we went to place called the Tune-up Cafe . This morning Stuart had the Chile Relleno and I had Corned Beef Hash. Corned beef in the U.S is completely different to the tinned variety we get back in the UK and it was a lot nicer it looked just like pieces of steak, actually chunks of salt beef. Anyway our breakfast was a good filler for a day in the field!

The day before we missed one of our stops because it was dark by the time we headed back to Santa Fe. So our first stop was Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument . The cone-shaped tent rock formations are the products of volcanic eruptions that occurred 6 to 7 million years ago and left pumice, ash and tuff deposits over 1,000 feet thick. Perched on many of the tapering hoodoos are boulder caps that protect the softer pumice and tuff below. We took a nice walk around all alone but I had been given strict instructions by Stuart that we needed to be moving on to our next stop of the day by 10am at the latest!!

Back to the car on time, we then drove a long way out west to the San Juan Basin Badlands to see some more hoodoos. It was about a three hours’ drive and the last part was on dirt roads even though they were describe as State roads! A wrong turn on the desolate dirt road took us in the wrong direction but we managed to work out that we had gone the wrong way having found a simple map on my Blackberry. These hoodoos are off the beaten track and are not covered by any guide book. The last turn to them was down a track, avoiding a sign, saying something or other. Stuart was off watering the plants when I walked over the edge and let me tell you ‘wow’ it was an incredible site. We walked down among the hoodoos with no one to be seen or heard. I was very conscious about us tracking where we went since we needed to be able to find the car again which was well out of sight. It was the most wonderful find by Stuart, but because the land is delicate where we walked I am afraid I am not sharing the name you will have to find it for yourself.

Once again it was after 6pm before we were back at the hotel. We had now realised you got cheaper parking around the corner at the local car park than paying the extortionate valet parking fee. Since it was Halloween there were plenty of Halloween revellers while we looked for somewhere to eat.

Monday
Monday was a very early start to pack up and drive to Albuquerque for a hot air balloon ride. It was still dark (and cold) while we were getting the balloon ready. Inside the balloon, there was our pilot and 2 others from California that were celebrating his birthday. The ride was about 2 hours over Albuquerque with drops into a forest and the Rio Grande. The take-off was so peaceful and I thought the idea of being in a wicker basket high in the air would be a little scary but not at all! There was not a cloud in the sky and the beautiful autumn leaves along the Rio Grande made for some beautiful sights. We actually managed to pick up a bit of the trees on route! Before landing we were giving the low down on what to do for a landing. The pilot described the landings in one of three ways:

1) A Cessna landing –low winds conditions, smooth landing
2) Boeing landing – it goes down but jumps a couple of times along the ground, but usually you will stay upright
3) fighter jet landing – the most extreme landing in high winds and involves you hunkering right down below the edge of the basket, hanging on for dear life as you are certainly going over while being dragged along the ground!

Well we were lucky it was a Cessna day for us! Once we had landed and helped pack up the balloon – stuffing it into an oversized sail bag - we were given doughnuts and champagne – dead posh!!!
The drive home was a lot longer, about 14 hours. We passed lots of very long goods trains, saw more tarantulas, tumble-weed and there was a huge lightning storm just past Dallas that was lighting up the whole sky. It was an excellent road trip with the final tally of 2700 miles in 5 days. I am telling you Texas is big and most of the mileage was getting out and back in!

New Mexico Roadtrip - Part 2

The next part of our road trip was to get up to Santa Fe, which was going to be our base of the next three days. However there was just enough time to get distracted and look for minerals and pretty rocks! So after breakfast we went off to find our first 'rock-knocking' site of the day. The guide book, form the seventies, said that we could drive to it! We exited off the tarmacked road on to soft sand and dirt and the guide book said with anything but a campervan you should manage to drive through an underpass beneath I-85, but when we saw the 'tunnel' we decided against it. Good job too and the road leading to it was very sandy. I could also just imagine phoning the car company saying I managed to get their car stuck in a drainage tunnel!!

We were looking for Candy Rock a type of rhyolite which has coloured bands that resemble candy. We could easily see where we were to head so parked up the car and set off towards the stripy hill with a mast on it. The walk took us nearly an hour in the end as there were lots of ups and downs. We found our locality and stared looking for the best specimens of Rhyolite we could. Stuart found some nice little pieces that look a bit like colourful Edinburgh rock. After nearly an hour of searching we decided to head back to the car not to mention the sun was quite strong. Because we were in the desert the nights were cold but by mid-morning it was certainly warmer, although for a Houstonian it was still cool enough to wear my micro fleece!

The second 'rock-knocking' site of the day was further up the road we looked at botryoidal hematite and manganese deposits. The deposit was in an old quarry and the road going up to it was certainly bumpy and long – we had to make a stop to take down the chilli rista which was hanging from the hook in the back as it was beginning to shake the chillies loss! While I was off looking by myself I came across a snake and plants that looked like 'wild tomatoes'. Again we found some OK looking samples but still nothing as good as the book!




Once again it was quite a long day of driving and we only just arrived at our hotel in Santa Fe as the sun was going down. We were staying at 'The Inn at Loretto' (http://www.innatloretto.com/) which was our base for the next few days. The hotel is very close to the plaza and reminded me of something out of the Flintstones as it is built in the style of the Taos Pueblo. Santa Fe is at about 7000 feet above sea level and there was even an oxygen canister in our room if we felt light-headed!

For dinner we went to close by Mexican restaurant inside a covered courtyard. We had freshly prepared guacamole made at our table to start with and surprised the girl making it by asking for extra chilies in it! While we were waiting between courses a magician came to do some close up magic tricks at our table. He was amazing not even Stuart could work out how he was doing it! His finale was a card trick – oh how boring I hear you say but no anything but! So I picked a card and initialled it and showed it to Stuart, the card went back in the pack and it gets re-shuffled. In between times he asks me for a ring – well the only ring I wear is my wedding band so I gave him that the next thing I know is he does some magic wand-ie movement and goes into his jacket, pulls out his wallet, opens the zip, and pulls out a sealed envelope. He hands it to me and inspect it all the way around it is definitely sealed – I open it and inside is my ring and my initialled card – how did he find the card, then get both my ring and card in an envelope, sealed and inside his wallet in his jacket!! It boggles my mind. But that was not the only excitement for evening as half way through our main course the kitchen set off the fire alarm. Nobody moved an inch, actually everyone except us continued talking and eating! Eventually we were told everything was okay, but they couldn't switch off the alarm. A short while later the fire service turned up just to be sure! At least we go a free drink for inconvenience.

New Mexico Roadtrip - Part 1

We left Houston on Wednesday evening and started the long haul journey to New Mexico – some 10 hours driving and most of that on one road, actually the same road as we took last year to Big Bend – I10! We took it in turn to drive the 500 miles, switching every three hours, to Fort Stockton. Listened to 'Radiolab' podcasts (www.radiolab.org) and 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' audiobook to keep us entertained. We reached Fort Stockton in the early hours after a excitement free journey – I only passed two deer standing on the roadside – it was my biggest fear after seeing so many of them killed on the road last year. We slept in the car for a few hours, in a truckers stop (truck, truck, car, truck, truck …), before a quick drive to Carlsbad for breakfast. I have to say I had quite a crick in my neck when I woke up and the car smelt quite ‘ripe’ as well!!

Now Thursday morning we drove the final hour into New Mexico, with the sun rising behind us, for our breakfast at the Blue House Bakery & Cafe Carlsbad. This place had come recommended on the internet and I would certainly recommend it – we had a fine Breakfast Burrito each!

First stop of the day was Carlsbad Caverns (One of the World’s largest caverns) - http://www.nps.gov/cave/index.htm. We missed the Ranger Guided tour of the Kings Palace Cave, to my disgruntlement, but visited the Big Room cave by ourselves. This is reportedly the largest cave in the Western Hemisphere and the Big Room was certainly big!

Geology lecture 1: The cave was dissolved along cracks and faults in the limestone rock by sulphuric acid. The limestone was laid down about two-hundred and fifty million years ago, as part of a reef complex along the edge of an inland sea. Seventeen to twenty million years ago, the ancient reef rocks that had been buried under thousands of feet of younger rocks began to lift upwards. Tectonic forces pushed the buried rock layers up and erosion wore away softer minerals to expose the ancient reef as the Guadalupe Mountains. Deep in the basin, brine originating from oil and gas deposits and rich in hydrogen sulphide was forced into the limestone at the edge of the basin. When this brine encountered oxygen-rich rainwater moving down through the rock, it created sulphuric acid. This acid dissolved the limestone creating cave passages. As the Guadalupe Mountains continued to lift up, the water drained out of the cave allowing fresh water to percolate through and leave minerals on the ceiling, walls, and floors that we know as cave decorations.

I learnt a new word 'speleothem', a collective term for cave decorations such as stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, etc. Unfortunately most of our photos didn’t come out great but it was really impressive (and cold) down there. I would recommend walking in and taking the lift out as we did. If you get there at sun set you can watch all the bats leaving from the cave entrance.

Next we went on to White Sands - (The world's largest gypsum sand dune field) - http://www.nps.gov/whsa/index.htm. We set off for White Sands and thought it would only be a couple of hours to get there, but the road over the top of the Sacramento Mountains took forever as the speed limit got down to as low as 25mph at some points (actually through a school zone it was a mere 15 mph – have you ever tried that!), and we didn't want to speed as we heard the New Mexico cops are pretty good at catching speeders.

As we descended from the Sacramento Mountains we could see the vastness (275 square miles) of the White Sands shining in the sunlight. It was like the ocean. Because of the delay in getting to White Sands and still having quite a long drive to get to our hotel for the night we didn't spend much time at White Sands and only had a short time to walk around the dunes. But it was spectacular and exactly what I wanted to see.

Geology lecture 2: The common mineral gypsum, a hydrous form of calcium sulfate (CaS04. 2H20) is rarely found in the form of sand because it is soluble in water. The gypsum that forms the White Sands was deposited at the bottom of a shallow sea 250 million years ago. Eventually turned into stone, these gypsum-bearing marine deposits were uplifted into a giant dome 70 million years ago when the Rocky Mountains were formed. Beginning 10 million years ago, the centre of this dome began to collapse and create the Tularosa Basin. The remaining sides of the original dome formation now form the San Andres and Sacramento mountain ranges that ring the basin.

We were heading for Truth or Consequences but on the way passed Hatch - The Chilie Capitol of the World - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch,_New_Mexico. I knew Stuart would like to see it so we stop and took some photos of the chilie fields and checked outt a roadside shop (Gilly's Hatch Valley Chile Company) to by some red hatch 'Ristas' (strings of chilie peppers). Gilly and is brother were very friendly and very excited to get some foreigners to the shop, but was a little confused about Scotland as he said; "Oh! Scotland, those funny wooden shoe people". Gilly can ship you chillies so look at the sign closely for his phone number :)

Finally we arrived at Truth or Consequences, approximately 1300 miles after we set off the night before! The town was originally named Hot Springs, however, the city changed its name to Truth or Consequences in 1950 after a radio competition!

We stayed at the Sierra Grande Lodge http://www.sierragrandelodge.com. We first got asked – ‘What time would you like me to run your mineral bath?’ We actually decided to take the mineral bath – run from the local hot spring in the morning, but when we got to our room it was beautiful with a huge sunken bath in the room. The bed was so high you had to take a running jump at it and overall it was a lovely place (highly recommend it). We had a quick wash and went out for dinner before everywhere closed up and had an alright dinner, but since we didn’t want a lengthy affair it worked for us. We were in bed by 9:30pm and did not wake up until the alarm went off signifying it was time for our mineral bath. The mineral bath was steamy hot in a private room! And we had an hour of getting seriously ‘prune-i-fied’ before heading to breakfast. Breakfast was also great as they bake all their own bread, rolls and muffins (I even wrapped up one in a napkin to eat later :) ).

Just an interest fact, nearby Truth or Consequences they are building 'Spaceport America', the worlds first purpose-built commercial spaceport http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceport_America

Halloween is not just for kids

A couple of weekends ago Stuart took me to go and see the Doggie Halloween Dressing Up Competition at one of the shopping malls nearby. There were all types of dogs and all types of costumes. The bulldogs were all dressed up in leathers - they were bikers or trollops! However their macho looks all went wrong when they walked on to the stage. Each one of them would get on to the stage and lie down I think in stage fright. All i can say it that it was madness and I actually felt like it was a proper cultural experience!

Mind you later in the day we went off to a flea market up I45 in the afternoon. It is on the list of must see when on Houston. It is called Sunny Flea Market. Let me tell you we were in the minority it is very Mexican. It was certainly an experience but we didn't buy anything. They had lots of stalls of the most amazing colourful cowboy boots and some with really really long toes. We assumed the really long toe boots, which you would certainly trip up if you were walking anywhere in, must be for special occasions. On the way back to the car we got asked if we wanted our windows tinted - again! A truely cultural Saturday :)












On Sunday morning I took part in an indoor triathlon at the gym (it is a distance race in a set time). There was not many of us taking part but it was certainly fun. I did pretty well at the swimming and on the bike I raced against the guy sitting next to - well he didnt know I could see his speedo and distance! However, he trumpted me on the run! It is the only event I can say I was number one (well actually that was just my bib number not my place!)