Allophile

48 hours.

We've been here for 48 hours now.
No phone at home yet, so we found a café with free wi-fi--a nice break from the endless errand-running--toilet paper, a tomato plant for our little yard (!), plates to eat on, etc. etc...

We've been surprised by how green Tucson is in mid-summer. The high today will only be 95--nice for us, since the week before we arrived, it was up to 110...

So...to re-cap the road-trip up to this past Tuesday when we got to Tucson...

Sunday morning, when I last wrote, we were just about to go to the Steinbeck museum in Salinas. Appropriately enough for farming/wine country, there was a little wine-tasting in the lobby. The museum reminded me of how much I loved reading Steinbeck as a high-school student, and how much I have yet to read...
But knowing how much Steinbeck cared about public issues, I wonder what he would be writing about today--instead of chronicling the odyssey of the Joad family in search of work in California, would he be writing of the Jiménez family in search of work north of the border?
Truly--'las uvas de la ira'...

From Salinas, a drive through seemingly endless fields and vineyards, southward, stopping for lunch in the small town of Soledad. In a strip-mall off Highway 101, we found a place serving a weekend-special of 'birria'--Mexican goat-stew! mmm-mmm. A few miles away, we stopped for a few minutes at the restored Soledad mission--one of the smaller missions set up in the 1780's, now surrounded by a rose-garden, olive grove, and parallel rows of lettuce leading to the vineyars on the hillsides beyond...

That night, we stayed in Solvang--the kitschy-but-not-too-tacky 'Danish' town at the head of the Santa Ynez valley wine-country. I wonder how many of these 'European' theme-towns exist in the States? Leavenworth, WA...Helen, GA...what else? The country road from Solvang back to the highway leads through an area called Los Olivos--very reminiscent in climate and landscape of the south of France...

Monday morning, then, we drove down the Santa Ynez valley, and then up and into fogs and clouds before descending into Santa Barbara and heading towards San Diego. After seemingly endless 12-lane interstates full of aggression in L.A. and Long Beach, we took a break at the San Juan Capistrano mission--it's built right in the middle of town, so it's surreal to be in a garden planted in the 1770's and look beyond the wall at a Starbucks sign. The mission is famous for its resident swallows that return to nest, almost on schedule, every year, from their migrations to Argentina...Also, it was the first place on the West Coast where the first grapes were planted, where metal was smelted--up until then California was literally still a Stone Age society...so much can change in just two centures...

Monday evening--dinner with old friends in San Diego (thank you thank you thank you, J. & M!) and a few hours of sleep before heading on the road at 4 a.m. Tuesday to cross the desert before it got too hot.

The mountains east of San Diego are a dreamscape of huge boulders piled by titan forces who knows when or how...Then you head to below sea-level at El Centro, where we breakfasted at a completely Spanish-speaking Denny's...Over through Yuma, and several border-patrol roadblocks on the freeway (strange to be driving on the 'freeway' and be stopped multiple times).

About a third of the way between Yuma and Tucson, on I-10, is a tourist-trap called Dateland, named, appropriately enough, for a grove of palms planted back in the 1920's. "World-famous date milkshakes" the signs proclaim for miles...Downright tasty! Totally worth the stop...
While we took a stretching break, sipping on the shake under the shade of the date-palms, we heard birds--and we realized that they're the same as the birds that woke us up like clockwork in Nicaragua! "Zanates" or "great-tailed grackles"...music of 'home' now...

Last night, we finally were able to take advantage of the pool and hot-tub adjacent to our townhome. Because it's a quiet private neighborhood, and the pool access is only for the residents of our small complex, we had the place to ourselves! To look up at the first twilight stars, with summer lightning flashing far to the northeast, beyond the Santa Catalina mountains, while alternately soaking in cool and hot--so so relaxing, and such a realization--we LIVE here now--not on vacation, not going to be on the road all day to sleep in another motel, our birds no longer have to be tucked in the backseat of the car all-day--we're home!

1902 miles from last Wednesday, here we are.