Home Again Home Again
I have slept almost all the time since returning, and LJ-app on my iPod cruelly devoured the post I was working on during the trip, so there were no posts while on the road.
We visited Santa Fe for about a week, and Olympia for several days after that. There was a LOT of traveling in there, and I made some hilariously poor packing decisions that resulted in me having to do a lot of crash-shopping, and a lot of shivering before that. I might have neglected to look up simple facts like the altitude of Santa Fe (7000 feet!) and the fact that it was windy and even still snowing a bit there. You know that joke about how the coldest winter Mark Twain ever spent was a summer in San Francisco? Well I packed for San Francisco and it wasn't enough. I also sort of forgot that deserts mean I want to wear long sleeves so I don't have to slather myself in sunscreen. I didn't have a packable sun hat so at least that wasn't an omission. Luckily there were plenty of stores delighted to sell me practical clothes and also fripperies like some pretty skirts, and Brad's mother and sister really helped me out by scouting some of them ahead of time and finding good stores for what I needed. (I got some awesome long-sleeved travel shirts that are immune to packing and don't feel horribly synthetic, though some of the fiber is definitely manmade, but if it breathes AND I can pack it, AND it can run the gamut from a nice restaurant out to a hike in the desert, I am definitely not complaining; these are the ubershirts.)
I really liked this format as a way to visit with Brad's family, as it wasn't around the usual hustle of winter holidays (typically we visit Seattle for Thanksgiving or Christmas) and it wasn't as COLD as it is in Seattle in the winter. Well, it was pretty cold in Santa Fe, see above, but by the end of the trip it had decided to be for-real spring, and even at its coldest, Santa Fe was a gorgeously walkable town. I also really loved being in such a walkable area; Brad and I had wonderful walks every morning but one, and that was the one he was suffering from food poisoning and I decided that a rest day wouldn't be such a bad thing for me, either. Teresa also recommended a great downtown hotel in Olympia, so we could wander around the waterfront for our morning walks and then walk to breakfast.
Food has just gotten much easier for "my kind" in only the past five years, too. Instead of no one knowing what I was talking about, every server I talked to had heard of celiac and went to great efforts to identify things I could eat. I was able to find something easy to eat on every menu I came across, including the incredibly challenging Sonoran Mexican restaurants. (There is wheat or corn in nearly every dish there!) I did run right through my supply of benadryl so I could have been more careful, but if I had any gluten exposure it was mild, and some of the allergen exposure was willful: corn starch in powdered sugar to satisfy my meringue fixations, and milk in various dishes. I have managed to narrow my milk problems down as well; if it's fully cooked as in a flan, or cultured as in cheese, it's fine, but I have trouble with more lightly cooked dairy as in buttercream, cream sauces, and ice cream. I also tested goat milk and it works just fine. Soy milk was a good alternative in cafe drinks, though I don't want to make a daily habit of it; it's great for when I just really want a chai or a latte without asploding from allergies later, or nonfat milk seems fine as well if I want to stick with dairy.
Santa Fe is a surprisingly food-oriented town; I'd expected it to have great New Mexican food but not as many options elsewhere, and I was delightfully incorrect. There were even several restaurants oriented towards using local produce wherever possible; we ate at an upscale one and had a wonderful meal. It's also a very arty town; there were more local artists than I could have possibly visited even in a week, lots of fabulous pottery, the Georgia O'keeffe museum (which I did make it to, and liked), and the oldest operating playhouse west of the Mississippi (we saw a cute little morbid comedy called Dead Man's Cellphone there.) There was even a very nice food co-op right next to an ayurvedic vegetarian restaurant with really good lassis and chai. There was a cafe right across the street from our hotel with free wifi and great chops for accommodation: they made plain ginger tea with lots of fresh ginger for Brad when he was still sick from the food poisoning, and I got to eat house-cured lox with gluten-free bread instead of bagels. I can't decide what my favorite restaurant was; that little cafe (Tarts and Treats?) was so homey and accomodating, with really delightful lox, but Amavi just had mind-blowingly good food (including a dacquoise cake that I was almost afraid to eat, since its texture was so cakelike), and Tia Sophia's had a bowl of great HOT green chile stew that I want to try to replicate.
Olympia is also highly food oriented; we ate out for almost every meal, which was embarassing when I realized that we had bought more to eat in our hotel than we could possibly manage. There was a lovely little restaurant near our hotel that I want to try again for real (we just had appetizers since we'd eaten at the airport), a bakery that fed me lovely meringues and poached eggs, a breakfast place that would not have been out of place in Scruz, and a restaurant with a great view of the water and great drinks where I got some yummy yummy lamb. We didn't have time to really dig into Olympia, but it's a fun little city and I really like how it's so close to the water.
I got up at six in the morning almost every day and walked around with Brad; this was made very easy by the time zone difference in Santa Fe, because the sun was already up there at 7am. By the time we got to Olympia it had become enough of a habit that the darker hour didn't seem so bad. It is *very* close to being dawn by six am back at home, too, so what I'm doing now is taking a little walk with Brad and then supplementing with the lightbox to help fix my wake time. It is really interesting to compare the towns at six in the morning when they're still asleep to later in the day when they're busy.
I woke a bit early today but that's because I slept almost all day yesterday so just couldn't quite sleep through the night; hopefully this will even out as I recover from all the travel. As usual I was taken a bit by surprise from how tired I was when I got home; I tend to be less crashy on trips because I am on the spot, so I take out a mortgage on spoons and then that comes due when I get home. I think part of me always hopes the bill will never arrive. But the rest time afterwards also seems like a small price to pay for being able to get out, see family, and see new places and things and sights. I just make sure I don't plan to do much of anything right after. (I sort of surprised myself by just how tired I was right after the trip, as Brad keeps having to do most of the cooking because I'm often not even coherent enough to formulate a good plan. Luckily I've had some clear periods to do a few things that he wouldn't enjoy cooking as much, or shouldn't cook, like his birthday cake.)
The most sightsee-y part of the trip was a day trip to Bandolier, which had a great nature trail (it went through a lot of different microclimates and was easy enough that it wasn't challenging even to my un-exercised self) and the ruins of some old dwellings, both in the cliffs and a built-up expansion in the valley below the cliffs. It was fascinating to wander through those and imagine what it would have been like walking up and down those cliffs every day, what they ate, how they lived.... The landscape is so beautiful there, all that eroded stone. It makes me think of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series, which is in many ways a love affair to stone. I don't think I'd make a good Red Martian either, as I loved the tenacity of life out there. The plants were fascinating since so many of them were unfamiliar to me; there's a kind of whitish shrub that looks very hardy that I can't even guess at, and trees that were likely cottonwood, some just beginning to bud out, some still gray, and various cacti.
We visited Santa Fe for about a week, and Olympia for several days after that. There was a LOT of traveling in there, and I made some hilariously poor packing decisions that resulted in me having to do a lot of crash-shopping, and a lot of shivering before that. I might have neglected to look up simple facts like the altitude of Santa Fe (7000 feet!) and the fact that it was windy and even still snowing a bit there. You know that joke about how the coldest winter Mark Twain ever spent was a summer in San Francisco? Well I packed for San Francisco and it wasn't enough. I also sort of forgot that deserts mean I want to wear long sleeves so I don't have to slather myself in sunscreen. I didn't have a packable sun hat so at least that wasn't an omission. Luckily there were plenty of stores delighted to sell me practical clothes and also fripperies like some pretty skirts, and Brad's mother and sister really helped me out by scouting some of them ahead of time and finding good stores for what I needed. (I got some awesome long-sleeved travel shirts that are immune to packing and don't feel horribly synthetic, though some of the fiber is definitely manmade, but if it breathes AND I can pack it, AND it can run the gamut from a nice restaurant out to a hike in the desert, I am definitely not complaining; these are the ubershirts.)
I really liked this format as a way to visit with Brad's family, as it wasn't around the usual hustle of winter holidays (typically we visit Seattle for Thanksgiving or Christmas) and it wasn't as COLD as it is in Seattle in the winter. Well, it was pretty cold in Santa Fe, see above, but by the end of the trip it had decided to be for-real spring, and even at its coldest, Santa Fe was a gorgeously walkable town. I also really loved being in such a walkable area; Brad and I had wonderful walks every morning but one, and that was the one he was suffering from food poisoning and I decided that a rest day wouldn't be such a bad thing for me, either. Teresa also recommended a great downtown hotel in Olympia, so we could wander around the waterfront for our morning walks and then walk to breakfast.
Food has just gotten much easier for "my kind" in only the past five years, too. Instead of no one knowing what I was talking about, every server I talked to had heard of celiac and went to great efforts to identify things I could eat. I was able to find something easy to eat on every menu I came across, including the incredibly challenging Sonoran Mexican restaurants. (There is wheat or corn in nearly every dish there!) I did run right through my supply of benadryl so I could have been more careful, but if I had any gluten exposure it was mild, and some of the allergen exposure was willful: corn starch in powdered sugar to satisfy my meringue fixations, and milk in various dishes. I have managed to narrow my milk problems down as well; if it's fully cooked as in a flan, or cultured as in cheese, it's fine, but I have trouble with more lightly cooked dairy as in buttercream, cream sauces, and ice cream. I also tested goat milk and it works just fine. Soy milk was a good alternative in cafe drinks, though I don't want to make a daily habit of it; it's great for when I just really want a chai or a latte without asploding from allergies later, or nonfat milk seems fine as well if I want to stick with dairy.
Santa Fe is a surprisingly food-oriented town; I'd expected it to have great New Mexican food but not as many options elsewhere, and I was delightfully incorrect. There were even several restaurants oriented towards using local produce wherever possible; we ate at an upscale one and had a wonderful meal. It's also a very arty town; there were more local artists than I could have possibly visited even in a week, lots of fabulous pottery, the Georgia O'keeffe museum (which I did make it to, and liked), and the oldest operating playhouse west of the Mississippi (we saw a cute little morbid comedy called Dead Man's Cellphone there.) There was even a very nice food co-op right next to an ayurvedic vegetarian restaurant with really good lassis and chai. There was a cafe right across the street from our hotel with free wifi and great chops for accommodation: they made plain ginger tea with lots of fresh ginger for Brad when he was still sick from the food poisoning, and I got to eat house-cured lox with gluten-free bread instead of bagels. I can't decide what my favorite restaurant was; that little cafe (Tarts and Treats?) was so homey and accomodating, with really delightful lox, but Amavi just had mind-blowingly good food (including a dacquoise cake that I was almost afraid to eat, since its texture was so cakelike), and Tia Sophia's had a bowl of great HOT green chile stew that I want to try to replicate.
Olympia is also highly food oriented; we ate out for almost every meal, which was embarassing when I realized that we had bought more to eat in our hotel than we could possibly manage. There was a lovely little restaurant near our hotel that I want to try again for real (we just had appetizers since we'd eaten at the airport), a bakery that fed me lovely meringues and poached eggs, a breakfast place that would not have been out of place in Scruz, and a restaurant with a great view of the water and great drinks where I got some yummy yummy lamb. We didn't have time to really dig into Olympia, but it's a fun little city and I really like how it's so close to the water.
I got up at six in the morning almost every day and walked around with Brad; this was made very easy by the time zone difference in Santa Fe, because the sun was already up there at 7am. By the time we got to Olympia it had become enough of a habit that the darker hour didn't seem so bad. It is *very* close to being dawn by six am back at home, too, so what I'm doing now is taking a little walk with Brad and then supplementing with the lightbox to help fix my wake time. It is really interesting to compare the towns at six in the morning when they're still asleep to later in the day when they're busy.
I woke a bit early today but that's because I slept almost all day yesterday so just couldn't quite sleep through the night; hopefully this will even out as I recover from all the travel. As usual I was taken a bit by surprise from how tired I was when I got home; I tend to be less crashy on trips because I am on the spot, so I take out a mortgage on spoons and then that comes due when I get home. I think part of me always hopes the bill will never arrive. But the rest time afterwards also seems like a small price to pay for being able to get out, see family, and see new places and things and sights. I just make sure I don't plan to do much of anything right after. (I sort of surprised myself by just how tired I was right after the trip, as Brad keeps having to do most of the cooking because I'm often not even coherent enough to formulate a good plan. Luckily I've had some clear periods to do a few things that he wouldn't enjoy cooking as much, or shouldn't cook, like his birthday cake.)
The most sightsee-y part of the trip was a day trip to Bandolier, which had a great nature trail (it went through a lot of different microclimates and was easy enough that it wasn't challenging even to my un-exercised self) and the ruins of some old dwellings, both in the cliffs and a built-up expansion in the valley below the cliffs. It was fascinating to wander through those and imagine what it would have been like walking up and down those cliffs every day, what they ate, how they lived.... The landscape is so beautiful there, all that eroded stone. It makes me think of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series, which is in many ways a love affair to stone. I don't think I'd make a good Red Martian either, as I loved the tenacity of life out there. The plants were fascinating since so many of them were unfamiliar to me; there's a kind of whitish shrub that looks very hardy that I can't even guess at, and trees that were likely cottonwood, some just beginning to bud out, some still gray, and various cacti.