Q is for Quebec

We visited Quebec several times and have always loved the place. Montmorency Falls lies on the north side of the Saint Lawrence River just across from Quebec City. There is a lower, more modern part of the city, while the walled upper part, Haute Ville, is centuries old and was a battle site in the French and Indian War. The building is the elegant hotel Chateau Frontenac, which oversees a boardwalk and the river.

Chateau Frontenac	Montmorency Falls

P is for Pompey's Pillar National Monument

We had never heard of Pompey's Pillar National Monument, which sits alongside the Yellowstone River in Montana, until our visit to the area last year. Carved on the side are Native American petroglyphs and the signature of explorer William Clark. I walked to the 150-foot summit using the stairway you see in the photo. Although I saw some of the carvings, the lighting didn't lend itself to decent photos.

O is for Organ Mountains

The Organ Mountains are a rugged, gorgeous mountain range separating Las Cruces, New Mexico from the White Sands Missile Range. Wikipedia says it's 85 miles long, though I would not have guessed it was nearly that long. Anyway, it provides a perfect backdrop for the city. When we were new here and still trying to find our way around, we always knew we could get home by heading toward the mountains.

N is for New England

My wife and I grew up there, so it's natural that we have a lot of New England photographs. This is a lighthouse with picket fence in Newburyport, Massachusetts. I took it in the summer of '04, the year before we heard the siren call of the Southwest.

M is for Mount Shasta

Until well into middle age, my wife and I had never been to California. Since '99 we started making up for it, visiting San Francisco, Yosemite, Napa Valley, and much more. A few years ago, we drove our RV up the west coast as far as Oregon. On our way back we stopped near the utterly gorgeous and how-could-you-possibly-miss-it Mount Shasta. When we registered at the local RV park, I asked the clerk where I could get the best view of the mountain. She told me she had no idea, that she had lived near the mountain for so many years, she had stopped seeing it.

L is for Little Bighorn

View from the top of Little Bighorn

We visited Little Bighorn National Monument in eastern Montana in the summer of 2009. Here in 1876 a band of Lakota Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne led by Chief Sitting Bull annihilated the outnumbered U.S. 7th Army cavalry regiment led by General George Armstrong Custer. The photo is taken from the top of the hill where the battle took place. Later, markers were placed where bodies had been found.

K is for Kerouac Park

Beat poet Jack Kerouac lived in Lowell, Massachusetts, and the city created a small downtown park in his honor. It has beautiful granite slabs such as this one with his poetry and excerpts from his prose. It's free and open to the public. Kids enjoy skateboarding there.

J is for Johnson City, Texas

We discovered Johnson City on our long drive from Las Cruces to Austin back in 2007. A very nice lady there bought a whole passel of my books to sell in her gift store. She sold them all and asked me for more, and then did it again. (And then, alas, the recession hit.) Can you understand why I am partial to this pretty town? The photo shows a Halloween hay bale just outside of town.

Incidentally, it was the boyhood home of President Lyndon Johnson.

I is for Idaho

Idaho Falls, Idaho 2013

I don't know much about Idaho, but we drove through last year and found it beautiful. In particular we enjoyed the city of Idaho Falls. This photo taken near the downtown shows why the city is so aptly named.

H is for Home in New Mexico

Home. There's no place like it.

Oddly, I didn't come up with many interesting places we've been that begin with H. Luckily, there is always Home. We moved into our little adobe abode back in aught-six, and barring our winning a lottery we don't even play, I expect we'll happily stay here. We do have our windy season, though. Maybe one day a Mega Millions ticket will blow into our yard. I will pick it up to toss into recycling, never realizing it is the unclaimed billion-dollar winner. Alas, because of our missed chance we will be relegated to living out our pleasant lives in our pleasant Home.

G is for Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon, South Rim 1998

We've been lucky to have visited the Grand Canyon at both the north and south entrances. Whatever praise you may have heard lavished on it is amply justified. My daydream is to ride down into the canyon on a burro, but I'm probably a little to heavy for the animal, and I confess to be a bit squeamish. I can imagine the awe Ferdi Grofe must have felt that inspired him to write the Grand Canyon Suite, which nearly does the canyon justice.

Grand Canyon, North Rim 2010

F is for Front Yard

Here's a place other bloggers haven't been, although many of you would be welcome. Today, F is for my Front yard, which I selected only to show off this lovely cactus Flower next to my driveway. This is one of many reasons I love the Southwest, even while I miss Massachusetts for its greater floral variety.

Since you've stopped by, please leave me a note in the comments section. I'll make a point of returning the favor.

E is for El Paso

Copyright  © 2010 by Maritza Neely

E is for El Paso, the West Texas city that until my retirement I had never expected to see, let alone visit once per month for the El Paso Writers' League. To its north, it's smack up against the Franklin Mountains; to its south, the Rio Grande and Ciudad Juarez. My friend Maritza Neely painted this wonderful impression of the city back in 2010, and it captures the essence of El Paso and its cultural connection to Mexico.

Since you've stopped by, please leave me a note in the comments section. I'll make a point of returning the favor.

D is for Deming

D is for Deming, New Mexico, an hour's drive west of Las Cruces on I-10. It's small and quiet, and exists, I believe, because it was a convenient place for trains to stop for water. On the outskirts of town are the remnants of an old WWII army base and POW camp. Nothing much of it remains. But the city has the Deming Luna Mimbres Museum, which is worth an hour of your time if you're passing through town.












Since you've stopped by, please leave me a note in the comments section. I'll make a point of returning the favor.

C is for Chihuahua Desert

Poppies in bloom near Deming, New Mexico
March 2012

Since 2006 we've lived in the Chihuahua Desert, which extends from the Mexican state of Chihuahua into west Texas, New Mexico, and eastern Arizona. No one photo captures a typical scene, but the photo on the right suggests both its harshness and its beauty. It's a far cry from New England, where I lived most of my life.

Since you've stopped by, please leave me a note in the comments section. I'll make a point of returning the favor.

B is for Beantown

John Hancock building, downtown Boston

Continuing with the theme of places I've been, there are so many possibilities: Bedford, Beverly, Billerica, Burlington, all places I knew in my salad days. But I'll go with Boston (aka Beantown), Massachusetts. Boston is called Beantown for a reason I had to look up, and it has something to do with the city's part in the 18th-century slave trade if you believe the Internet (and who doesn't?).

The city has changed a lot since as a 12-year-old I took the B&M train into the city to meet a pal. There was a hole-in-the-wall diner called Joe and Nemo's, the combat zone with its offerings we didn't dare approach, Scollay Square where we heard the burley shows were. We were both too poor and innocent to check out any of those places. But we did eat lunch at Durgin Park, where the food was plentiful and the waitresses infamously brusque.

The streets downtown are rumored to have been laid out by cowpaths, which seems as good an explanation as any for the lack of a sensible grid. Today the city has a new look with buildings like the Hancock and the Pru. The old Boston Garden is gone, where the Celtics and Bruins used to play. But Fenway Park hasn't changed in a century, and the Boston Pops still gives free summer concerts along the Charles River.

Now we live more than 2,000 miles away, but Boston will always be my favorite city.

Since you've stopped by, please leave me a note in the comments section. I'll make a point of returning the favor.

A is for Arizona

Zzzz...Huh? Oh, hello. I'm just waking up from hibernation in time for the A to Z Challenge. Actually, I'd originally been planning on writing about books, but at the last minute I changed my mind. It should be more fun to write about places I've been because the pix will be prettier. Okay, I haven't figured out Z yet, but there's time.

Sedona

Arizona was the first Southwestern state I ever visited, back in 1997. We went to Tucson in February of all months, and the temperature was warmer in our home city of Boston. Television weather reports said that the roads to Sedona were snowbound. We went into a Burger King in Apache Junction, a city noted for its retirees, and all the customers seemed to have white hair. There was a news account that a young kid tried to rob a Burger King (not while we were there), and an 80-year-old man took out a gun and shot him.

At Sky Ranch in Sedona

Welcome to the Wild West. But we were still entranced by what we saw, and we came back in better weather. It was the beginning of our love affair with the
Southwest; less than a decade later, we moved to next-door New Mexico and take fairly frequent trips to Arizona. We've parked our RV next to orange and grapefruit trees ripe with fruit, and we've seen breathtaking landscapes. No doubt we'll keep going back for many years to come.

Since you've stopped by, please leave me a note in the comments section. I'll make a point of returning the favor.

A to Z theme reveal: Books, Books, Books

This is my second year at the A to Z Challenge, and the theme is novels I've read and reviewed over the last decade. I had to improvise for U and Z, since nothing seems to fit the criteria.

This is going to be fun. I look forward to visiting people's blogs to see what they come up with.

A is for All Necessary Force

B is for Brotherhood of Fear

C is for Crimes in Southern Indiana

D is for Dark Side of Valor

E is for Eyes Wide Open

F is for Fighting in the Shade

G is for Ghosts of Bungo Suido

H is for House of the Hunted

I is for It Happens in the Dark

J is for Journey into the Flame

K is for King’s Man

L is for Love Among the Particles

M is for Mastering the Art of Quitting

N is for No Way Back

O is for Our Frail Blood

P is for Papers in the Wind

Q is for Quinn

R is for Rain Falls Like Mercy

S is for Sandrine’s Case

T is for Tatiana

U is for Uncle Tom’s Cabin

V is for Visitation Street

W is for Wendell Black, M.D.

X is for Exit Plan

Y is for The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
Z is for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

A visit to Columbus and Palomas

La cabalgata binacional--the binational cavalcade

Last weekend we went with friends in our RV group to Columbus, New Mexico, for Camp Furlong Days. The event commemorates the raid on Columbus by Pancho Villa and his men in 1916, but the focus is purely on the friendship between the United States and Mexico. Riding on horseback from Deming to the north and Chihuahua to the south, Americans and Mexicans join together in a cavalcade, bearing the flags of both nations as well as New Mexico and Texas. Then gaily dressed people put on a show of singing and dancing in the small plaza, surrounded by a small audience of couple hundred people. And then after a few hours, Columbus reverts to its sleepy self.

Our RV in Pancho Villa State Park

A few steps away from the center of town is Pancho Villa State Park, where we hooked up our RVs. If you go to Columbus, plan on bringing your own entertainment. There is a small museum, but there are no motels, no theaters, and only two or three small restaurants serving Mexican food. Yet if you enjoy solitude, you'll enjoy Columbus.

Ceramic frogs on the wall in The Pink Store

Columbus is right on the border with Mexico. If you have a passport, drive the three miles to the border and walk across into Palomas. You'll want to visit The Pink Store--La Tienda Rosa--which you can't possibly miss. It has lots of ceramic crafts and gewgaws, inexpensive liquor, and a decent casual restaura
nt in back.

Señoritas waiting to dance

A couple of minutes' walk takes you to a dentist and a pharmacy. I have no experience with the dentists, but news from my friends has been mixed. At the pharmacy, they once sold me Mexican meds they said was the same as what I asked for. It wasn't. I walked past a barber shop where a young man stood in the doorway offering me a five-dollar haircut. The second time he asked, I agreed--what the heck, I needed one. Well, he went at my scalp with gusto. My friends were amused at the result, which was shorter than I'd have liked, but it will grow back.

There are some colorful people in Palomas, and many of them ask for a dollar if you want to take their photo. That's fair. There is a small group of very young children who dress up a few yards from the Customs office specifically hoping for tourists to pay them for photos, or just to pay them.

Musicians entertaining diners in The Pink Store

Columbus and Palomas are good places to visit, although they are out of the way of almost everything. If you're traveling through the region on Interstate 10, they're about a 60-mile round-trip detour.

Waiting for the poppies

We've had an exceptionally long, dry stretch in southern New Mexico, but very soon the poppies will be due to bloom. I hope we've had enough moisture. Here is a photo of poppies from last year, looking toward the White Sands Missile Range.