Here Comes Santa Fe

The morning of our day in Santa Fe began in the most unlikely of ways: we actually slept in. For hours! But we still fit plenty in once we got rolling. We started with breakfast at Cafe Catron, where we sampled a New Mexico staple: a burrito (breakfast, in this case) served "Christmas style" (smothered in both red and green chile). Pretty tasty. Locals may now jump in and name five other places they think serve a better breakfast burrito.

We decided to grab some coffee to walk around with, and the name of one spot in particular demanded our attention: CrashMurderBusiness. I was wondering what had inspired such a bizarre name, until the sign at the door made it all clear -- it was a play on fun-sounding "mass nouns," which extended to the menu and the "Race of Roadrunners" I ordered as my beverage. (It tasted like a chocolate bonbon with chili powder. Perhaps you sense a theme of New Mexico.)

We wandered the Railyard Artisan Market for a bit, partly for "nothing in particular" but particular for something very particular. From our trip to New Orleans a few years ago, our one lingering regret is that we didn't buy a pair of paintings that really caught our eye. Since then, on any trip that takes us near the possibility of picking up some art, we take a look. Nothing spoke to us in the same way this time -- not even with the added ease of driving it back home. But we'll always have Julia Street in New Orleans... and, until we find something, a nice reason to appreciate some local artists when we travel.

Art was also the theme of the next stop, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. This multi-room gallery is dedicated to the famous artist who ultimately made New Mexico her home, and is filled with many of her paintings as well as the work of a few contemporaries, and one room of modern artists creating in response to her work.

Next, we walked the area around Santa Fe Plaza, a shopping district with a wide range of stores. We spent a few hours, first grabbing drinks at a pub called Desert Dogs (where we caught a bit of the World Cup final, including the eclectic halftime show), and ultimately picking up some clothes. I finally was able to find a hat I think works pretty well for me. (But sorry, I don't have a decent picture of me wearing it yet. Perhaps that'll come on some future trip.)

In the afternoon, we took a short trip out of the city to Nambé Falls. You wouldn't expect to find a 120-foot waterfall less than an hour outside Santa Fe, but there it is -- and with only a modest 1/4 mile hike to reach it from the trailhead. Unfortunately, we weren't prepared enough to also take the 1/4 mile hike through water to reach the base... but if you're going to be in the area and are interested, I'll throw that out there for you: take shoes you can take in the water.

By dinner time, we were back in Santa Fe and continuing the Mexican food theme: this time at a place called Tres Colores, where I took a shot at Mole Enchiladas (not a normal order for me by any stretch). It wasn't quite my thing, but I was glad for the vacation change of pace. And from what I gather, it was really good mole sauce, as evidenced by a conversation at a nearby patio table between a patron raving about it and one of the restaurant owners proudly explaining it was a family recipe.

We finished the evening with a pair of stops for after dinner drinks. First was Santa Fe Spirits, a distillery where we picked up a bottle of whiskey to tap into later for trip memories; then finally Nuckoll's Brewery, a place with a large balcony overlooking the depot where the train we'd ridden the night before pulled in after another sunset trip.

We talked about a possible morning detour to Bandelier National Monument the next day... but pretty much already knew we weren't going to do that. In the morning, we tried one more breakfast burrito stop (Tortilla Flats this time), that one more stop pretty much ending my desire to have Mexican food for the next week or two. (Nothing against that place. When in Rome... stuff your face with the local cuisine. That's pretty much how that saying goes, right?) Anyway, after a satisfying few days that we'd found very relaxing, we decided against another hike before immediately jumping in the car for a six-hour drive home.

It was a lovely little getaway to get the batteries charged ahead of Gen Con. (I know this blog has become rather intermittent anyway, but don't expect any posts for most of next week.) Colorado's neighbor to the south is a nice place to visit.

New Mexico, New Outlook

Next week is Gen Con, billed as "the best four days in gaming," but for me and many others is also a "big week at the office." To help reset and mentally prepare, my husband and I took a long weekend to road trip down to New Mexico -- which, blessedly, was actually 10 to 15 degrees cooler than the Denver area right now.

After sleeping in the best we could (how better to start a long weekend), we set out on the drive. We stopped for lunch at Brues Alehouse along the waterfront in Pueblo, but from there it was south on down to Albuquerque. Our late start and a late afternoon delay meant there wasn't much time for activity that first evening. Still, we had the first of many Mexican meals at High Noon. Well... this meal was a bit "opt in," actually, as they're also known for their steaks. But I quite enjoyed my shrimp enchiladas.

After dinner, we enjoyed drinks at a bar along a stretch of what was once the historic Route 66 -- though that factoid was not the reason we picked it. A few years ago, we were briefly caught up in the whirlwind of a Netflix reality show called Drink Masters. A dozen different bartenders competed over several episodes in a cocktail making competition. We found it engaging, despite having the same central shortcoming that all the foodie reality shows have: you can’t taste anything being judged. But one of the show's contestants, Kate Gerwin, opened up this bar in Albuquerque. And while maybe you couldn't taste exactly what was made on the show, you could sample what she makes when not under time pressure and forced into bizarre restrictions.

You could also get a thrown martini -- not shaken, not stirred -- something I hadn't even heard of before this. Had to order one. Thrown, it turns out, is what you imagine a mad scientist doing to mix a concoction, showily pouring it back and forth between two containers. Martinis aren't my thing, so I certainly can't tell you if it makes a difference. But it's certainly a fun presentational thing for a bar to do.

The next morning, we stopped at Golden Crown Panderia to grab some empanadas on our way out of town. (The place has a 24/7 vending machine for pastries out front... but being there during business hours, we didn't need to use it.) Then it was west on I-40 for a stretch until we reached the Ice Cave and Bandera Volcano. We'd heard about the place from a friend, and decided we had to check it out for ourselves. Over a roughly 1.5 mile hike, you climb to the edge of a volcano crater, and along the path where flowing lava cut a trench several thousands of years ago.

Then a bit later on, you head down nearly 100 steps where you feel the temperature drop about 5 degrees with every 10 steps. At the bottom, you reach a cave where the temperature never rises about 31 degrees Fahrenheit, where dripping water has collected over the ages into a sheet of algae-covered ice. Like I mentioned earlier, New Mexico isn't as hot as Denver right now... yet it was still wild to descend from a warm summer morning into a frigid cave in barely a minute.

It's a fair drive out to the Ice Cave and Bandera Volcano (but worth it), and we were actually headed to Santa Fe for the evening. Still, we had time for a few stops, including La Cumbre Brewing Company. Some of you may recall the craft brewery map I picked up about a decade ago, where I mark places we've visited with pins. The craft beer industry has been going through quite the contraction since the map was new, and many of the places it shows don't exist anymore. But the possible quest to put a "gold pin" in every state continues with this stop (which had a great Mexican-style beer made with blue corn).

Our evening concluded with a "sunset serenade" excursion on the Sky Railway. Operating on a section of railroad track dating back to the earliest days of rail in the area, this tourist train takes you out to a picturesque spot in the desert to watch a truly beautiful sunset. The "serenade" part was a local Albuquerque musician who set up in the car and performed on his guitar on the two-hour round-trip journey.

Our long weekend still had one more full day ahead, which I'll recount later this week. 

Monumental Views

This past week, I made myself a tourist in my own home state and headed to the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, to Palisade. We were several weeks past the peak of the peaches for which the city is well-known... but it's also Colorado's wine county -- a little slice of Napa or Sonoma Valley just a few minutes east of Grand Junction. (With bizarrely named roads that are just mile marker fractions. Think "turn left on D 1/2 road, and we're at the intersection of 37 3/4 road.")

I'll often post a chronological recap of my trips -- as much for my own later reference as for sharing with others -- but that doesn't quite seem the right approach on this occasion. A lot of our activities were wine-related, and not all the wine was worth a detailed blow-by-blow. So I think I'm going to break things down into a "booze" and "non-booze" post... and start today with the latter.

On our first morning in Palisade, we started by backtracking east a bit to drive the Grand Mesa Scenic Byway. Along the way, we saw bighorn sheep grazing right by the road, a curiously decorated golden toilet marking the start of someone's private driveway, and plenty of beautiful mountain scenery. But as we approached our destination, an overlook known as the Land of Lakes, the weather took a turn. A drizzle increased to full-on rain, and we were high enough for low-hanging clouds to become a view-spoiling fog.

We were the only car in the parking lot when we stopped long enough to reinflate tires after a pressure warning had gone off. (I need to get a portable compressor for my own car!) Just the time that took, standing out in the freezing rain, was enough to discourage us from trying even a half mile hike to what surely would be a view of fog. So we bailed and headed back down the mesa. We might have missed The View we'd been seeking, but the sights were plenty beautiful on the return trip. The weather was clearing as we got to the bottom -- not quite enough to convince us to turn around and try again for the hike, but enough to promise that our winery-hopping afternoon wouldn't be spoiled by rain.

We had much better luck with our morning hike on the second morning. We drove into Grand Junction to have breakfast with family from the Denver area that was coincidentally driving home from their own road trip, and then pressed on to Colorado National Monument. It's a location that I think gets forgotten amid beautiful and well-known spots in other "four corners" states, but it's absolutely worth seeing -- a long loop road that circles Monument Canyon and provides access to gorgeous hikes of many lengths and difficulties.

We drove in at the western entrance and stopped at Canyon Rim Trail. The visitor center was closed due to the current government shutdown, but the trail itself was the main attraction. As the trail name suggests, we hiked along the rim of the canyon, getting a wonderful view of several named rock features out in the canyon. It's about half a mile to a marked overlook spot -- though honestly, the view was more breathtaking along the way, and no less so on the short walk back.

While on that hike, we'd seen other visitors at an overlook on a different point of the canyon, and decided to seek that spot next. That turned out to be Otto's Trail, an even shorter quarter-mile hike that takes you right to the edge of canyon rim. (Though the uphill return trip caught us maybe a little off-guard after the level Canyon Rim Trail.) If you're ever in Colorado National Monument, you should absolutely plan on one or both of those two hikes; they're a real showcase of what makes the site special.

We continued with the full loop, making other shorter stops for photos -- but ultimately deciding against any further hikes in favor of grabbing lunch back in Grand Junction and then getting back to afternoon winery-hopping. These morning drives -- both the one that went according to plan and the one that didn't -- were a welcome reminder that when you live in Colorado, beautiful locations are really right there in your "backyard." I'm glad they were part of our getaway.

I'll be back later this week with highlights from our winery visits. 

Glenwood Getaway

Sometimes, it's fun to be a tourist in your own state. And Colorado is a particularly beautiful state for it. This past weekend, my husband and I drove to Glenwood Springs, around three hours west of Denver, for a wonderful little getaway.

On the drive up on Friday afternoon, we stopped at 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirits, a place we came to know through their tasting room in Vail. But this stop was at their actual distillery in Gypsum, where I enjoyed a delicious praline Old Fashioned before the last leg of our journey to Glenwood Springs.

After breakfast Saturday morning, we went to Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. It's essentially a small theme park built high on the mountainside overlooking the city; in fact, you have to ride a tram just to get to it. We rode several of the rides (including a dizzying swing that put you out in the open air overlooking the Colorado River). But we also cooled off underground with two different cave tours on site.

King's Row is more or less a large single chamber where you make your way down a long staircase, dropping a couple hundred feet (and about 10 degrees Fahrenheit), looking at all sorts of neat cave features along the way. The Fairy Cave tour is a guided tour through over a quarter mile of tunnels and rooms sprawling throughout the mountain. Highlights there included an outdoor exit to a natural terrace on the mountainside, a demonstration of the natural phosphorescent properties of the rock, and the comedy stylings of our tour guide (who clearly had done the same routine hundreds and hundreds of times, and was past giving it a full effort).

Glenwood Springs is known for its hot springs, which was the star of our afternoon stop: Iron Mountain Hot Springs. An outdoor spa resort with over 30 pools of varying temperatures, you can amble from place to place, relaxing. The clouds came out just as we arrived, which turned what otherwise might have been a too-hot afternoon into a perfect time to relax. We stuck mostly to the "adults only" side of the resort, which was not only more sedate, but also served adult beverages. A frozen drink to accompany a hot soak was a perfect way to unwind.

We were especially glad not to have planned the spa later in the evening when a torrential rain opened up to drown the city at just before sunset. We were dry inside at dinner and got to enjoy the sound through the propped-open restaurant entrance.

Sunday morning brought one more excursion before our drive home: we hiked the trail at the nearby Hanging Lake. It's a steep 1.2 miles up a mountain, but your reward is a cliffside lake so beautiful it feels like it came out of a fantasy novel. And a short walk up and behind the lake takes you to Spouting Rock, a tall waterfall that both pours over and leaks through the mountainside, in an equally fantastical display. The hike back definitely left my feet and knees aching, but it was a wonderful cap on a wonderful weekend.

Even for those Coloradans who at least occasionally travel around the state, Glenwood Springs is often just a "place on the way to Aspen." But it's very much a worthwhile destination of its own, and I really enjoyed our visit.

One Last Trip Through History

It was the fourth and final day of our Washington D.C. excursion. We decided to hit one more Smithsonian museum, the National Museum of American History. It's a fascinating and eclectic collection of artifacts from the country's earliest days, props from movies and television, signs from various political campaigns, and vehicles from every era of the nation. There are even a few trinkets of the past decade or two that you might not even think to put in a museum -- but if you pause for a moment and take a longer view from 50 or 100 years from now, would totally make sense to preserve in a museum.

Julia Child's kitchen from her hit cooking show stands in a gallery devoted to the evolution of food in the modern era. (And was an interesting thing to see, in light of also learning about Julia Child at the Spy Museum the day before.) The same gallery displayed everything from a collection of craft beer cans representing the explosion of that market to a fondue pot exactly matching one in my friend's cabinet at this very moment.

If a tour featuring items you might find in your own house doesn't sound impressive, then the second floor is probably more for you. That's where you will find the literal Star-Spangled Banner, the very flag that flew above Fort McHenry and inspired the poem that became the country's national anthem. The flag was known to be significant even in its time, which is why many pieces were cut off of it over the years as souvenirs. What remains is still an impressive enough 30 by 34 feet, and the efforts to preserve it now are so heightened that the flag is displayed in low lighting in a special room where photography is prohibited. There's something simultaneously awesome and uncanny about looking at it; you may eventually realize that the uncanny aspect is due largely to the fact that the flag has 15 stripes, not 13. Practice at the time was to add a star and a stripe to the flag as each new state joined the union; one can only imagine what the flag would look like today had that continued.

I mentioned that when we toured the U.S. Capitol, we saw a number of statues all throughout the building. One statue that used to be there and now resides in the American History Museum is one that was too weird to keep displaying where the government was trying to do business, this bizarre rendering of George Washington:

In the political campaigning section, you'll find all manner of protest signs, buttons and bumper stickers, and one of those Florida ballots that caused all the trouble in 2000. You can totally see how someone intending to vote for Al Gore might have voted for Pat Buchanan -- and how little chance of making a mistake you'd have trying to vote for George W. Bush. (And the sign nearby reminds you of this moment when everybody had to learn what a "hanging chad" was.)

The pop culture section was a feast for any fan of anything -- it boasts the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, one of Prince's guitars, an Alien egg, Captain America's shield from The Winter Soldier,  the original (not yet blue) Grover puppet, and so very much more. It even had two costumes from Star Trek: Discovery -- the Emperor's outfit from the Mirror Universe, and the Red Angel suit from season 2.

But soon we had had our fill of standing and admiring things, no matter how interesting. So we decided to sit for a leisurely lunch at a nearby pub, slowly passing the time before we needed to head to the airport for our return home.

There's a ton to see and do in Washington D.C. In talking about my trip, I've had many people tell me they recall going there as a kid -- and that totally makes sense. But I think there's probably even more to appreciate as an adult. I'm glad to have visited.

Your Vacation, Should You Choose to Accept It....

After the Air and Space Museum, it was well past time for lunch. We wound up getting that at the Wharf, a collection of restaurants and stores along the Washington Channel. The Wharf hadn't been a "planned stop" on our trip, but was a lucky find; it was just a nice spot on the water with plenty to see.

Then it was time for our second museum of the day, the International Spy Museum. It's one of many DC museums that isn't part of the Smithsonian Institution, but it's well worth going. It's a perfectly curated collection of artifacts and stories of real spycraft, peppered with just a hint of famous fictional spies.

In the museum, you can hear about revolutionaries who spied on the British for George Washington's forces. You can learn about a tunnel painstakingly cut beneath the Berlin Wall. You can see real-life Bond-style gadgets used to surveil, pass messages, assassinate, and more. I learned about Julia Child's unexpected connection to intelligence gathering. About the brilliant Russian spy hung out to dry by Stalin. About the real Mata Hari, not the much glamorized version of fiction. And you get to role play a little, if you're into it: as you move through the exhibit, a series of computer stations presents you with a cover identity, a mission, complications to avoid, and ultimately a debrief.

And then, in a special extra exhibit, we saw a collection of more than a dozen different vehicles from James Bond movies. They ranged from pristine to bullet-riddled, from tiny taxi to huge speedboat/glider combo, from the 1960s to the 2000s. A fun little walk through film history that made me want to go back and watch some of those movies again.

Then we decided to go to the Washington Monument. While it is possible to go inside, tickets are incredibly limited, released the day before, and get snatched up in literally seconds. We'd been trying every day to get in without success, and now knew for sure we wouldn't be going inside before we returned home. Previously, hoping that we would get in, we hadn't really gone up close to the monument on our initial tour of the National Mall on day one -- and so we did so now.

It turned out to be fortuitous, because as we were touring the plaza around the Washington Monument, we saw a marine helicopter circle and land in the lawn at the White House. Still reeling over how neat that had looked (and what great pictures we snapped of it), we watched as the helicopter took off again, made a circuit around the monument, then went back and landed at the White House again. And again. And again. Some kind of practice drill, clearly.

But it was enough to spur us to head in the direction of the White House. It turns out that you can't get anywhere near as close to it as you used to be able to -- barriers and stern-looking guards establish a perimeter many blocks away from the building itself. Still, the marine helicopter kept entertaining us as we got as close we could, snapped a few pictures... 

And then decided it was time for dinner, and for closing down for the night. We had one final day in DC remaining.

Up, Up, and Away

Of all the many, many museums that make up the Smithsonian Institution, arguably the most well-known is the Air and Space Museum on the National Mall. That was our destination at the start of Washington D.C. day three. Because of its popularity, and the fact that half the museum is currently closed for remodeling, you need timed entry tickets to go right now (so they can manage the number of people inside). We'd set those up ahead of time, for the moment the museum opened.

Things start immediately inside the door, with the original filming model of the Enterprise from the original Star Trek. As part of a recent refurbishment, they've wired it for lighting, so for five minutes at the top of each hour, you can see it looking just like it does on your TV screen -- which we caught as we came in the door. Given how long the model was likely built to last in the 1960s, there's probably a real "ship of Theseus" quality to what's on display here. (How much of the model is really the original? How much of that even still exists after multiple refurbishments?) I don't think that detracts in the slightest from the thrill of seeing it.

The museum is divided into many galleries, and the first we came to was for the Wright Brothers. Extensive displays chronicle their efforts to build the first airplane, detailing all the versions leading up to their success, their bicycle-building background and how it informed their design, and much more. Plus, of course, the original flyer sits right there at the center of the room. Perhaps the most striking thing about it is, frankly, the rest of the museum -- the short window of time in which everything else you can see there came into existence after the original invention. (For example, the Wright's first airplane built expressly for military purposes is in another gallery of the museum; it was built less than a decade after their successful flyer.)

The museum keeps up with the times. Part of one gallery is devoted to drones, displaying one of the first remote-piloted drones used to deliver something (medical supplies). That same gallery displays one of the earliest planes meant for personal use, and oddities like a combination car/plane that detaches from its own wings to become one of the stranger-looking things you might encounter on the road.

My favorite gallery in the museum will surprise no one: it's the crewed space flight area. There, you can see the actual capsules from all three of NASA's 1960s programs. The Mercury capsule is from Alan Shepherd's first flight; it is so shockingly claustrophobic that I don't think I could even sit in it with the door off. Gemini is represented by Gemini VII, the capsule from the mission that tested a rendezvous between craft in space. Apollo is represented by, what else, Columbia -- the command module from Apollo 11. And besides the module itself, the gallery boasts Neil Armstrong's EV suit.

Fictional space travel is represented in the museum by more than just the Enterprise. While the gallery devoted to other planets has replicas of probes like Mariner and Clementine, it also includes a prop Tribble and a set of Spock's ears gifted by the Nimoy family. And if Star Wars is more your thing, hanging in the rafters in the main hall, you can see a full size fighter from the set of the sequel Star Wars movies. More interested in things here on Earth? A gallery on speed boasted a rocket-powered car, and Evel Knievel's motorcycle.

And as I said, all this was only half of what the museum could showcase when fully open and not being remodeled; just this much took us several hours to see.

There's tons to see and do in Washington D.C., but if you should ever find yourself there with limited time, I'd definitely recommend that the Air and Space Museum makes the cut.

Artistic Endeavor

After touring the U.S. Capitol Building, we made our way around the grounds to the west side of the building. We happened upon a quiet little garden that, I learned from Google Maps, is called Summerhouse. It's hardly hidden -- besides being on the map, a sidewalk takes you straight to it. But there was no one else inside when we arrived, and we stopped for a short rest in unusual solitude, compared to the frenetic pace of the day so far.

We then walked by a few smaller monuments near the Capitol, including the horse-mounted Ulysses S. Grant, before eventually renting scooters once more to take us to the American Art Museum.

Spread across three sprawling floors, this part of the Smithsonian isn't on the National Mall... though that, plus the later afternoon hours, meant it was far less crowded than you might expect. We wandered for hours until tired feet finally caught up with us, but we saw lots of interesting pieces in that time. A personal favorite of mine was a collection of fancy-looking pieces that had been done up in aluminum foil by artist James Hampton. The same "found objects" section of the museum had statues made of bottlecaps, unusual wind chimes made of random trash, and more. I was also taken by Alexis Rockman's 40-foot wide canvas titled "Manifest Destiny," a disturbing apocalyptic hellscape.

The museum also included portraits throughout, including one by Joseph Silfred Duplessis that many people would recognize: the painting of Benjamin Franklin is the basis of his image on the $100 bill. Plus interesting landscapes from Yellowstone, painted in places I'd personally visited (albeit created at a time before the place was even designated a National Park). And so very much more.

We grabbed dinner at Founding Farmers Distillery, a restaurant that not only made its own spirits, but apparently its own everything. I tend to go for seafood when closer to the ocean (with an expectation of it tasting better than I can get in Colorado), and that worked well for me on this occasion.

And finally, once the sun fell and a very pleasant evening set in, we found a rooftop bar (it seems many hotels in D.C. have one) to just relax in the slight breeze and sit -- blessedly, sit -- a spell before turning in for the evening. Our trip was half complete.

Prose and Congress

Visiting the Supreme Court may have turned out to be a bit of a bummer, but the next couple of stops on our tour of were much better. We went next to the nearby Library of Congress (specifically, the Thomas Jefferson Building).

Once you get inside, it's not the "row after row of books" you might conjure in your imagination when you think of a library. That does exist, down on the main floor -- which you can only access if you have a membership or are on a special tour. (But you do get to look down on that beautiful space from a gallery above.) Instead, the main area you actually tour is a large, beautiful foyer filled with all sorts of ornate designs. A small sample of the Library's collection is displayed throughout for museum-style viewing. Always on display (I believe) are a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, and a notable early world map said to be the first to depict the Americas.

Among the rotating exhibits was a look at the work of a political cartoonist from the Nixon/Watergate era, and a photo exhibition filled with all sorts of provocative, amusing, and thoughtful images. Both these exhibits highlighted that the Library of Congress is not solely about "books," but about the preservation and cataloguing of knowledge in many forms.

After the Library of Congress, we grabbed lunch at a nearby pizza place. I mention this not so much for the pizza (though it was fine), but for the way it showcased a wholly different "9 to 5" world in Washington, D.C. It's not that we were trying to eavesdrop, but people really carry on enthusiastic conversations in public places (and might want to curtail that, to advance their careers). On the walk to lunch, one woman was proudly declaring her 6 years of job security: she works in a U.S. senator's office. At lunch, we overheard two men planning what seemed like a minor coup d'etat of the congregation of their local church. (I didn't even mention dinner the night before, where one intern was discussing the juiciest piece of dirt she'd ever dug up on a rival politician. Only adultery, which was too commonplace to be too damning anymore.)

After lunch, we went to tour the U.S. Capitol building. As increasingly goes without saying on this trip, it was a beautiful space, inside and out. Where you get to go is limited; you can be taken to the actual floor of the House or the Senate, but you need special dispensation given in advance from your local Congressperson.

Side story: we looked into that ahead of time... but our Congressperson, thanks to a district line moving just a couple of miles in 2020, is now Ken Buck, Republican representative who actually realized a few months ago that he was no longer loathsome enough to continue in the current, MAGA-dominated incarnation of the Republican party. He actually showed a modicum of integrity and resigned from Congress, leaving his vacant seat to be filled in a special election this month. But it meant that at the time of our D.C. visit, our seat in Congress was vacant, with no one able to field any tour requests (for the Capitol or the White House, which requires similar arrangements).

Still, what you see of the Capitol on the public tour is pretty neat. You get to visit the rotunda, a cavernous round space lined with massive paintings and large statues (where people of import, including presidents, sometimes lie in state upon their deaths). You also get to visit the original main room of Congress, from when the Congress was small enough to fit in such a room. It's now home to dozens and dozens of statues. Apparently, every state is allowed to designate two statues to display somewhere in the Capitol, and many of them are assembled here. (The newest was just two weeks old, with one state recently having changed out their statue.)

We found one of the two Colorado statues down on the lower floor near the tour ticket desk -- it's astronaut Jack Swigert (the one played by actor Kevin Bacon in Apollo 13). The statue had caught our eye even before our tour began, because we actually recognized it. There is an identical statue at Denver International Airport, standing outside the train station on concourse B. (At the end of our entire trip, we'd take another photo with that one just to "collect the set.")

After the tour at the Capitol, there's a rather large museum area you can spend time in... and we did. I found this something of a mixed bag. The series of dioramas showing how D.C. (and specifically, the Capitol itself) filled in over the centuries struck me as very neat. I was less enchanted by the fawning video of the business of the Senate, painting the crassest behavior in the noblest light. (It gave me more of those "maybe some people ought to visit the basement sometime" vibes.) But overall, the Capitol was a beautiful place to visit.

We had a couple more stops before we ended our day... which I'll pick up next time.

Hitting the Rhode

Day 8 of our New England trip was the final full day of our vacation, and perhaps the rainiest of all. The drizzle was steady and unending from sunrise to sunset.

We began with a few last Connecticut stops before crossing the state line, first at the Mystic Seaport Museum. It's a maritime museum that includes what felt like a dash of "Renaissance Festival" to it -- a collection of old buildings is clustered right on the shoreline to display different types of services you'd have found in an historic port. They're kept right alongside several old ships, including a whaling vessel.

Yet even though this was a Saturday (or maybe because it was a Saturday?), most parts of the museum were closed. Maybe it was the rain, maybe we were "out of season," but for whatever reason, you couldn't go aboard most of the ships, and only a couple of the buildings were staffed with people to fill you in on more of the history. We tried to give the place a chance, but quickly lost our patience for ambling around in the rain, not seeing much. Unfortunately, the Mystic Seaport Museum turned out to be one of the few big "busts" of the trip.

So, we went on to Clyde's Cider Mill, a buzzing spot open only in the fall, pressing regular and hard apple cider with an old-time steam-powered press you can see in action. It was oddly fascinating to watch, as we snacked on a few more cider donuts.

Next, we proceeded into Rhode Island, specifically to the coast near Newport. Our plan in going there had been to head to the Cliff Walk, with not only a lovely view of the ocean, but of a number of mansions built nearby. Unfortunately, the rain soaked all the fun out of that. We did see people on the Cliff Walk, but they didn't look especially happy, and we were in no mood to join them. We stopped at one mansion in particular, the Breakers, but opted not to go inside when we saw the high price for admission. (I think we were shy about it after our lackluster experience at Mystic Seaport Museum.)

Still, Newport wasn't a loss. For one thing, we collected our "gold brewery pin" for Rhode Island, at the Coddington Brewing Company. Not only was the beer pretty good, but I enjoyed a cup of lobster bisque to warm me up. Then we drove along the well-known Ocean Drive, a 10-mile stretch of road that takes you right along the water -- a rather striking sight even on a gloomy day.

We also had an indulgent dinner at White Horse Tavern, touted as the oldest operating restaurant in the United States; it's been serving guests since 1673. Knowing that my time for great seafood was running out, I went back to lobster again, this time with a lobster ravioli served in a delicious, creamy sauce.

Finally, it was on to Providence for our final night. We had options for a couple more activities in the area that we might have done. But the rain was still on. Also, in the way of many good vacations, as we were here nearing the end, we were actually looking forward to home and ultimately were not up for leaving the hotel room until morning.

When that morning came, we just had the drive back to Boston to make our noon flight home. We did squeeze in one more minor tourist attraction, though, by grabbing our breakfast at the original Dunkin Donuts location in Quincy, Massachusetts. The classic look of the exterior has been preserved, while the interior has large photos blown up on the walls, showing what the place looked like back when it was new. Not worth going out of your way for, by any stretch, but it was basically right on the drive back.

The flight home was uneventful. (It landed early, even!) Our cats were happy to see us. We were happy to reach our own bed (and pillows!). We'd had a wonderful time. I doubt we'll return to New England to do another "full circuit" like this. But there were certainly particular areas that we enjoyed a lot, and I could see going back one day to really explore those, without moving onto somewhere else each day.

Maybe we'll even manage to time it better with the fall leaf colors.

Subs, Trains, and Automobiles

Day 7 of the New England trip was Connecticut day -- the only day since Boston where we woke up, spent the day, and fell asleep all in the same state.

We traveled first to the Submarine Force Museum. It's actively managed by a division of the Navy. In fact, there was some sort of ceremony going on when we arrived that we felt like we didn't want to intrude on; a large group of sailors and their families were gathered for some sort of event in a wing of the museum. (Like I said, we didn't want to intrude, so we never found out exactly what it was.)

But we did get to see the centerpiece exhibit of the museum, the U.S.S. Nautilus. It was the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, and you can go aboard to tour it. It was an interesting juxtaposition with the Revolution-era Constitution we'd been able to see earlier on the trip; positively luxurious by comparison. But of course, even the Nautilus is some 70 years old, and as cramped and claustrophobic as you'd imagine a submarine to be.

As we rolled into the early afternoon, we went to collect our gold "Beer Map" pin by visiting Fox Farm Brewery, surprisingly not our first "brewery in a barn in an out of the way location" for the trip. (Not that anything in Connecticut feels truly out of the way when you're used to a state like Colorado.) This is another highly regarded brewery among beer snobs, and once again it seemed to be for the same reasons: they do very true Czech/German-style beers that are proudly pure... but also pretty good.

We thought their beer reminded us a little of a place back home, Prost Brewing, and so we got it into our heads to ask for a specialty you can get at Prost: the "Dunkelweiss," a blend of their Dunkel and Weiss style beers. I could almost see the bartender's brain melt when I asked for it... but we had tasted both the beers separately and liked them, making us wonder about the combo. Even though I assured the bartender that yes, we'd combined these styles before, and yes we liked them, he ultimately just refused to try it. As Marty McFly might say, "I guess you just aren't ready for that yet."

The rest of our afternoon was spent on the Essex Steam Train and Riverboat. The still-operating steam train doesn't really take you to any meaningful destination per se, but you can still take a scenic ride. Once again, this turned out to be an experience that was good even as it was, but would have been better still had we been just a few weeks later for peak fall leaf colors. (It also didn't help that the steady drizzle that we'd left behind from the opening days of the trip had now returned.) Still, we got to sit back, relax, and watch the countryside roll by.

After an hour on the train, we transferred to a riverboat that brought us back -- another vantage point on the lovely scenery. We sailed by Gillette Castle, an elaborate early-20th century home built by actor William Gillette, who made a fortune playing Sherlock Holmes and funneled it into this eccentric home. We saw interesting birds, and enjoyed a cocktail on the hour-and-a-half return trip.

From there, we dropped things off at the hotel near the Rhode Island state line where we'd stay the night, before heading to a delicious dinner at a restaurant called On the Waterfront. The location of the restaurant was just where the name would suggest, though we were there past dusk and not fully able to appreciate the view. (The food was delicious, though.)

The next day would be our final full day of the trip...