32 posts tagged “adventure”
Here's some more random shots I've taken while driving around the state in the last few months.
I have no words for this except "Wow!"
What an outstanding movie! And to all those who don't like the fact that the script makes use of an alternate timeline in the Trek Universe, get over it. It's a time-honored sci-fi convention.
The casting could not have been more perfect for any of the characters. The sets were updated using modern special effects while still paying homage to the original designs. I can't imagine a better rendition of this story, and I sincerely hope they consider making more movies with this cast.
For a long time now, it's been on my list of things to do to check out some of the ghost towns of New Mexico and Colorado, so last night I went searching for some resources online and found one called Juanita in Colorado just across the border from New Mexico (Lat/Long N37 1.634', W107 9.036') at the best website I found. It is, oddly enough, www.ghosttowns.com. It's a great site, except for the really annoying MIDI music on the homepage that made me turn off my speakers.
So today, Strix and I loaded up the truck and headed toward Juanita. It's a three-hour drive, or at least it would be if it weren't for the crappy roads past Dulce, NM. I knew it was going to be a problem when my Tomtom said, "Do you want to avoid unpaved roads?" Pressing "Yes" resulted in, "No Route Possible." Sure enough, the roads got muddier and muddier after we got into Colorado where it had been snowing, and eventually I felt it was just too unsafe to go on. I own a truck, but it's a little Dodge Dakota with two wheel drive and ground effects. It's not made for driving through a foot of mud.
So our outing was a bust, but now that I've found the website, we'll just have to try again some other time, with some other ghost town. Or, with some other vehicle.
We went geocaching today, but didn't get to the cache. The road was way too rough. While we've been down here in Truth or Consequences it has rained nearly non-stop, and the dirt road to the cache was a slimy, slick, red clay mud. There was more than one time that I hit a washed out rut in the road a little faster and harder than I should have, but I was afraid that if I slowed down, Strix's little midnight-blue PT Cruiser was going to get stuck, and then we'd really be screwed. You haven't been stranded until you've been stranded in rural New Mexico. Finally, the road got so rough that we turned around and came back, only about a half mile from our goal. We could have walked the rest of the way, but we would have looked like mud-creatures when we were done.
In case you've ever wondered, now you know. PT Cruisers make lousy off-road vehicles. We really need a Jeep.
On Friday night, we ate at a restaurant called Bella Luca, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. First of all, this is an Italian restaurant here in this little resort town of less than 2,000 people. Farmington, which has a population of about 50,000, doesn't have a decent Italian restaurant. And, my God, was this good Italian food!
I had penne puttanesca (yes, Patricia!) so full of deliciously roasted seafood that I simply purred through the entire meal. Strix had roasted grouper that looked delicious, as well. For dessert, we shared tiramisu, which was served different than I had seen it before. It was basically the lady fingers, mascarpone cheese, and chocolate shavings on a plate. The espresso and brandy sauce was served separate, so that we poured it over the desert ourselves. This had the effect of keeping the lady fingers from turning to mush before we ate it. Excellent!
Hey, long time no blog, right?
A couple of weeks (okay, more like a month ago), we watched From Russia with Love, the second James Bond movie in the series, this one from 1963. The evil terrorist organization with no apparent raison d'être SPECTRE is the bad guy (bad guys? bad people?), and Bond is trying to save a beautiful (of course) Russian woman who is ostensibly smuggling a code cipher machine out of Russia to hand over to the British, but actually is an unwilling double agent and an unwitting triple agent (she thinks she's working for Russia, but actually she's working for SPECTRE).
I really like the plot. It's complex and requires some attention to follow, which is more than you can usually say for Bond flicks. On the other hand, they didn't exactly have the "action" part of "action movies" down back in 1963, and parts of it really do drag.
Strix had never seen this, so it ended up on our Netflix list. What a silly, campy little movie this is, very much a product of the 80's (1984, to be exact). Still, it's a fun little movie, and the plot makes more sense to me now that I'm no longer 12. And hey, Kathleen Turner actually looked good, even though even then she had that voice that made her sound like she really enjoyed cigars and whiskey.
Completely off topic, but it was snowing like mad here earlier. It was hard to even get home from rehearsal... near white-out conditions.
Come to New Mexico, they said. It's beautiful and tropical, they said. Lovely.
We watched this tonight while eating a wonderful spaghetti pomodoro that Strix made with a home-grown tomato given to her by one of her co-workers. The food has nothing to do with the movie; I just thought I'd mention it.
Anyway, Dead Man's Chest is full of some incredible Rube Goldberg-like fight and chase scenes. The plot makes very little sense, of course, but it's not really meant to. Now we have to see the third movie.
Also, I need to work on my Jack Sparrow impression.
I worked early this morning, and when I got home we went out geocaching. We only got two accomplished, but they were both multi-caches, which are usually a lot of fun.
For the first cache, we parked on the wrong side of the highway and ended up going under it in a storm culvert. It's not something I recommend, but hey, life is an adventure. We found the first cache, which was just coordinates to the second cache, and had a nice little hike on BLM land when we got there.
Do we always regret the path not taken?
The next cache was actually at San Juan College, and it was very interesting. The cache page actually gives several different coordinates, where you are supposed to gather clues to be used in conjunction with a decoder on the cache page to figure out the coordinates of the actual cache. Unfortunately, this led us to the middle of a sand lot in the back end of the college campus. The cache hasn't been found by anyone since May, and I think it may have been moved and/or destroyed during construction.
Haven't got a clue what I'm talking about, Muggle? Follow the link:
This is the original Scarlet Pimpernel, 1934. The sound quality was rather poor, but it was still fun to watch. It's a masked avenger adventure along the same lines of Zorro, if you aren't familiar with the story. Set during the time of the French Reign of Terror, this is a story about an upper-class British peer who in his spare time sneaks into France and helps smuggle noble families out before they can be marched to the guillotine.
The Reign of Terror was a horrifically bloody time, in which about 40,000 people were executed in France. It makes you wonder why more fiction hasn't been based on this time period.
On our way to Las Vegas, we took the route that takes you through the southern edge of Zion National Park. I was unprepared for exactly how beautiful this drive would be, and we will definitely be going back to Zion for a longer visit sometime in the future.
I actually found myself feeling fortunate that we hit the park on a rainy day. I don't think the clouds would have been as dramatically low as they were, otherwise, shrowding the mountain tops.
The park as seen from space in Google Earth. The red lines are hiking trails. Oh, the places I'll go!
