Christmas Eve, Christmas Morning... In the Desert
5 Days in the Desert travelog #9
Barstow, CA - Sun, 25 Dec 2022, 7:15am
Okay, I'm running behind on getting pictures from this trip ready to blog- as always. I'm going to pull this entry forward since it's topical to Christmas and I don't want to leave it in the queue until the 27th or whenever.
Let me start by saying Christmas isn't a big deal to either me or Hawk. Hawk is Jewish, so she never celebrated Christmas. I grew up in a Christian family but have been atheist for... decades now. As part of my atheism I have no interest in celebrating Christian holy days... of which Christmas is one, despite modern American society's efforts to redefine it as a weeks-long secular holiday all about having parties, drinking, and exchanging gifts. ...Which is basically what the ancient Roman celebration of Saturnalia was, BTW.
So we don't celebrate Christmas. We do other things with our time off from work instead. Like, travel! That's why we're doing this 5 Days in the Desert thing. Traveling over Christmas means, though, that lots of stuff we might otherwise depend on shuts down for a day or two. We don't begrudge businesses shutting down to let their employees enjoy the day off. We just plan around it.
For example, we shopped for groceries ahead of time to stash in our hotel room so that we could eat dinner on Christmas Eve and all day on Christmas out of our own supply rather than depend on finding restaurants that are open. Not everything is closed, though. As we drove back to Barstow from a beautiful hike at Hole-in-the-Wall and the Rings Loop (links to come when I publish these entries!) Hawk phoned ahead to several restaurants to find out if anyone's open. Mostly she called Chinese restaurants. It's a Jewish tradition from her upbringing to eat Chinese food on Christmas Eve.
Chinese food is not exactly plentiful in desert towns. It's also not exactly good. We did find one Chinese restaurant open... and as you might expect from the category of "Chinese restaurant in a desert town" it was basically pan-Asian food cuisine plus burgers, steaks, and fries. And it was... edible.
This morning for breakfast we ate in the room. Hawk had leftover chow fun from last night. I didn't bring home my leftovers because they were... no better than "edible". I ate some sliced meat, cheese, and crackers from what I stashed in the room's fridge. As a plus, eating in the room means breakfast has been fast. We're looking to hit the road by 7:30am so we can get in a full day with at least two hikes before dusk.
Barstow, CA - Sun, 25 Dec 2022, 7:15am
Okay, I'm running behind on getting pictures from this trip ready to blog- as always. I'm going to pull this entry forward since it's topical to Christmas and I don't want to leave it in the queue until the 27th or whenever.
Let me start by saying Christmas isn't a big deal to either me or Hawk. Hawk is Jewish, so she never celebrated Christmas. I grew up in a Christian family but have been atheist for... decades now. As part of my atheism I have no interest in celebrating Christian holy days... of which Christmas is one, despite modern American society's efforts to redefine it as a weeks-long secular holiday all about having parties, drinking, and exchanging gifts. ...Which is basically what the ancient Roman celebration of Saturnalia was, BTW.
So we don't celebrate Christmas. We do other things with our time off from work instead. Like, travel! That's why we're doing this 5 Days in the Desert thing. Traveling over Christmas means, though, that lots of stuff we might otherwise depend on shuts down for a day or two. We don't begrudge businesses shutting down to let their employees enjoy the day off. We just plan around it.
For example, we shopped for groceries ahead of time to stash in our hotel room so that we could eat dinner on Christmas Eve and all day on Christmas out of our own supply rather than depend on finding restaurants that are open. Not everything is closed, though. As we drove back to Barstow from a beautiful hike at Hole-in-the-Wall and the Rings Loop (links to come when I publish these entries!) Hawk phoned ahead to several restaurants to find out if anyone's open. Mostly she called Chinese restaurants. It's a Jewish tradition from her upbringing to eat Chinese food on Christmas Eve.
Chinese food is not exactly plentiful in desert towns. It's also not exactly good. We did find one Chinese restaurant open... and as you might expect from the category of "Chinese restaurant in a desert town" it was basically pan-Asian food cuisine plus burgers, steaks, and fries. And it was... edible.
This morning for breakfast we ate in the room. Hawk had leftover chow fun from last night. I didn't bring home my leftovers because they were... no better than "edible". I ate some sliced meat, cheese, and crackers from what I stashed in the room's fridge. As a plus, eating in the room means breakfast has been fast. We're looking to hit the road by 7:30am so we can get in a full day with at least two hikes before dusk.