Zone Change

For Sale in Santa Fe

Sunset over Motel Parking Lot, Santa Fe NM

Note Bread Choices for French Toast! Tecolote Cafe

Our travels today brought us across two state lines and one more time zone. We now find ourselves in Oklahoma City and have set our various devices (those, that is, that don’t set themselves) to Central time. This morning started in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and if that seems a world apart from OKC, it is, both figuratively and literally. The nicest thing about revisiting old haunts in Santa Fe was to find them fundamentally unchanged. So the green chile bowl at Sophia’s was as tangy and aromatic as ever, with lean chunks of pork and a couple of perfectly cooked chunks of potatoes. La Choza did not fail with its fiery red chile, and even the rooftop Canteen at the Coyote Café delivered flavorful, zesty, original preparations (although we did have to send the salad back, which then returned with very fresh greens instead of the ones slightly tinged with brown.)  This morning started with breakfast at Tecolote Café, and again, there has been no deterioration in their cooking and quality; Andrea had a single Blue Corn Pinion Pancake, which takes up an entire plate, and I managed a combo of two eggs with Pork Adovado, which cranked up the heat of the red chile to the highest we experienced in Santa Fe. It could be easy to dismiss old Santa Fe as a tourist trap, but that would overlook its remaining charms. Sure, there are too many places selling crappy artifacts and ugly tee-shirts, but the core values remain. There are gems to be found, both literally at the venerable jewelry outlets, and in the many galleries sprinkled around the city. And of course much of the food is simply superlative, at least if  you share our values, which consist of shunning the fancy and going for the earthy and simple. The attraction of this food (New Mexican) could wear off if it was all you ate day after day, but we could easily have put up with a couple more rounds of it, no problem.

Cadillac Ranch, Then . . .

. . . and now

But we’re told all good things must come to an end; at any rate it was time to push on. Oklahoma City was selected as a destination simply because it represented the maximum number of miles we were likely to be able to tolerate in one day, in our relentless eastward push. So the drive consisted of many hours of not all that fascinating terrain, although I did learn about the Llano Estacado (a.k.a. the Staked Plain,) visible from I-40, which (along with other features it blends into) covers about 37,000 square miles, spread over parts of New Mexico and Texas. It is enormous and rises as much as 450 feet above the surrounding land. It is one of the flattest places in the U.S. So much for that. We decided to break up the I-40 roll with a couple of diversions. First was a stop at the Cadillac Ranch, where a number of Cadillacs have been buried nose down in the ground. This art installation has gone through several iterations, and right now is a do-it-yourself project; bring your spray paint and add whatever you’d like to the layer upon layer of paint. I only counted one swastika, so I thought that was pretty good; mostly young people were adding their name, thereby wiping out the handiwork of those who may have come only minutes before. After that we dined at the Country Barn, noted for their use of naturally-raised Bonsmara beef, a breed developed in South Aftrica that somehow produces tender steaks without the high levels of fat typical of American cattle. We shared a small New York Strip, and the flavor was delicious; the accompanying onion rings may have been the best ever. However the highlight of the afternoon was the bathroom; where else can you find an all-black décor with sink bowls shaped like the state of Texas? The rest of the interior was similarly inspired, with walls of movie posters featuring Texas and no end of stuffed heads and corny Texas-themed paraphernalia.

Texas gave way to Oklahoma. In search of further diversions I at one point turned onto old Route 66, and fortuitously stumbled upon the Conoco Tower, an old-fashioned gas station and garage that remains from the old days. But the rest of the old strip was ugly and not particularly timeless or preserved. At another point I decided that I could not pass through western Oklahoma without visiting at least one town to get the flavor of the state. I chose Sayre, since I-40 Business made a quick loop through the ‘city.’ This place mostly consists of boarded up stores, abandoned gas stations and sagging houses, and appears to have no vitality whatever, not to mention a complete lack of charm. It was actually a relief to return to the Interstate.

The long distances were made shorter by the podcasts and music that Andrea loaded her iPhone with. Several hours of listening to oldies and Moth storytelling, followed by NPR news on Oklahoma Public Radio, made the miles melt away. We’ll have to reload in the morning.

Cocina Guatelinda

The Reflecting Pool and Sunset, OKC

Memorial Graveyard

After checking in we headed out to our dinner destination, Cocina Guatelina. There is an active and seemingly large Latino community here, and this Guatemalan restaurant is one reflection of this. While the food was not over-the-top great, it was an unexpected pleasure to find honest home cooking in this corner of the world, and the place resonated with the slapping sound of hand-formed, fresh tortillas being grilled to order on the flat top. After that we decided to take in the National Memorial to those who died in the Oklahoma City bombing incident that destroyed the Federal Building. Normally I would avoid such places like the plague, but someone (of course we can’t remember who it was) told us that it is a particularly moving presentation. And so it is. Two massive end structures enclose a reflecting pool that mirrors the changing Oklahoma sky as well as surrounding buildings. A stylized ‘graveyard’ has 168 identical markers, one for each person who died in the bombings. The overall effect was solemn yet elegiac and transporting. We walked the entire perimeter of the reflecting pool, and then returned to our hotel first through blocks of brand new reconstruction and reimagining of the downtown core, followed by miles of dingy industrial streets. There’s a new vitality and elan to the center of town, but much of the city seems bogged down in poverty and tired, aging housing and infrastructure.

Tomorrow we move on to Arkansas and Hot Springs, and the ride will be quite a bit shorter than today’s. It’s time to put the hood down on the computer and get some rest.