Big Change of Scenery, Temperature and Altitude!

HEY! Sorry I straight up disappeared on y'all for a loooong stretch there. Things have been pretty much whacked for us for a few weeks. In a nut shell.... we made the tough decision to leave California and come back to New Mexico. California was not working for us at this moment in our lives.... and obviously we are not alone in saying that. California is not working for barely anyone who is inside the state lines at this point in time. California is a hot mess. The art scene in Carmel that Billy was striving to become a part of has pretty much tanked over the past year and the once interesting galleries are now one inch shy of selling paint by numbers of baby horses. It's not the time to be workin' that scene. Unless of course you are a paint by numbers pro who specializes in cute baby animals or ugly Tuscan landscape scenes overflowing with red flowers and water fountains. Yikes.

Besides the big move we just made I have been seriously ill with my thyroid situation. I am starting to get a handle on it again but it is going to be a slow process getting my body back on track. I will write more about that later in a separate post.

We left Mendocino and took the route through Sonoma and Napa. We stopped off at Bouchon for a farewell lunch and to grab one last box of macarons from their bakery. I am tellin' ya people.... the food there is stellar. It blows my brains out every time. Check out this cucumber salad....




I'm talking 'bout a smoked paprika infused creme fraiche with marcona almonds, green olives and juicy little sweet blanched tomatoes all piled up with the cucumber slices. It was fabulous. Billy had the mussels again and I had the gnocchi (again) but both were prepared differently than we had them before. The giant cone of salty fries that come with the mussels were the same though....



Those fries are dangerous. You can't stop eating them and they give you a TON of them.

From Napa Valley we booked it straight to our friend's ranch in Paradise Valley to stop off and say goodbye and then moved on over to Clarksburg to see Bill's family. We only stayed one night each place and then hit the road south and made it all the way to Needles on our first day. It was like a 12 hour day of travel and it suuuuuucked. Needles had kicked a high temp of 119 degrees that day and it still felt like the inside of an oven when we got there. Thankfully our campsite was on the Colorado River so we all went down for a twilight swim.






In that last shot I am The Colorado River Monster. Clearly. And yet somehow Billy is unfazed and Rudy is utterly distracted. Also... check my luxurious Mendocino Fog Tan. White as snow baby... white as snoooow.

The next day we got hung up in Flagstaff for 5 or 6 hours at the Camping World getting some repair work done on the trailer. We had a new vent fan dropped in to the space above our bed where the old vent cover had blown off... finally getting rid of the garbage bag and duct tape we had be gazing up at for over a month. We also had a new electrical plug installed because we were having problems with our connection and kept blowing our breaker. I love Flagstaff so it was kind of nice to spend the afternoon downtown while the trailer was getting fixed up.

We made Santa Fe the next day and boy are we STILL pooped from the drive. I am struggling with really bad altitude induced headaches.... yuck. So we have pretty much been laying low waiting to get acclimated. I am glad to be back home in Santa Fe... the drive in was spectacular as always. We passed through this storm coming up from Albuquerque.




The New Mexican sky never let's ya down. So there you have it... for now. I will try to get some more posting in this weekend once I can sit at the laptop for a bit longer without feeling like there is an angry gnome hammering away at my head with a pick ax. Ahhhhhhhhhh.......