William and Mary Won't Do

Guadalajara is located in the Atemajac Valley, Jalisco, Mexico, an area of great volcanic activity in yesteryear. The city itself is surrounded by many cinder cones and composite volcanoes, the last eruption being ~ 30,000 years ago. Colima Volcano, about 75 miles south of Guadalajara is the most active volcano in Mexico today. The name of Guadalajara is derived from the Moorish Arabic via Spain, meaning Valley of the Stones.

These eruptions ejected vast amounts of pumice, volcanic ash and dust. Over hundreds of thousands of years this debris was washed into silt beds where it joined similar older eroded debris and became what is now known as Cantera stone.

The properties of Cantera stone allow for detailed cutting and carving. As such, cathedrals, haciendas and many other buildings have stood for centuries around Guadalajara. Now days Cantera is used in new construction, shopping malls and nice hotels.

In the picture above, a wall of of an old cathedral, you can see the pieces of  pumice and gravel embedded in the cement-like volcanic ash.

The geologically minded wanderer in Guadalajara will also notice Tezontle, a pumice like cinder rock, colored reddish by iron oxide, also used in many of the colonial buildings. 

Gentle reader, shall we stop for six short minutes and have a little sing-along?

I remember the thirty five sweet goodbyes

When you put me on the Wolverine up to Annandale

It was still September

When your daddy was quite surprised

To find you with the working girls in the county jail

I was smoking with the boys upstairs

When I heard about the whole affair

I said oh no William and Mary won't do

Well I did not think the girl could be so cruel

And I'm never going back

To my old school

Oleanders growing outside her door

Soon they're gonna be in bloom up in Annandale

I can't stand her

Doing what she did before

Living like a gypsy queen in a fairy tale

Well I hear the whistle but I can't go

I'm gonna take her down to Mexico

She said oh no

Guadalajara won't do

Well I did not think the girl could be so cruel

And I'm never going back

To my old school

California tumbles into the sea

That'll be the day I go back to Annandale

Tried to warn you

About Chino and Daddy G

But I can't seem to get to you through the U.S. Mail

Well I hear the whistle but I can't go

I'm gonna take her down to Mexico

She said oh no

Guadalajara won't do

Well I did not think the girl could be so cruel

And I'm never going back

To my old school

Now then, doesn't everybody feel better?

I left Honolulu on Labor Day Weekend and headed to visit my daughter and her fiance Jake, in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Went out for a hike and to walk their dog Caddy at the Horsetooth Reservoir, about 45 minutes from Fort Collins. Like most of Colorado's urban areas, Fort Collins faces the Eastern side of the Rockies, an area known as the Front Range.

Caroline and Jake had a friend from work take some pictures for their engagement announcement.

Caddy really wanted to be included.

Wandered around the competitive flower gardens on the campus of Colorado State University.

Caroline and Jake both worked at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado. This sprawling 860 acre operation has over 250 cabins, 500 hotel rooms and nine lodges offered at reasonable family rates. This spot here had an elevation of ~9000 feet.

We were right in the middle of the annual elk rut. It begins in mid September and lasts about a month. The elk bulls come out of the mountains by the hundreds (thousands?) to bugle, grunt and snort to attract  the cows. They then herd the females and also fight off any other males that might want a little hanky-panky with one of the cuties in their harems. It is not unusual to see a harem of 30 cows, tightly supervised by one or two bulls, sprawled across the lawns, parks and golf courses of Estes Park.

After all the YMCA is a  Christian organization, right? This chapel is at about ~9000 feet.

Wandered around the little town of Estes Park, the gateway to the gigantic Rocky Mountain National Park. We also drove up to Cheyenne, Wyoming one day and wandered around the very cool Wyoming State Museum.

I had a request from my elderly Airbnb host while in Fort Collins. She knew I was a retired chef and as such, asked if I would help her out with her contribution to a neighborhood shindig.

 "Uh...yeah...sure". 

Here is a little clip before it got started. I was grilling some kebabs, listening to the heavy metal band warming up and shooting the shit with a guy (the cameraman) who had worked for several years for the University in Charlottesville. Random PeopleFlow in random Fort Collins suburbia.

After a month or so, it was time to wander on off to:

To visit the Leake family. On Halloween, there is a street in Boise, in a wealthy neighborhood, that takes this pagan holiday deadly serious. Thousands of white people, mainly young families or in our case young families with grandpa, tour the houses that are decorated to the nines.

Here was just one of dozens of houses that participated in the scariness. It riffed on the creepy twin girls from the movie The Shining. By the way, we drove by the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, which inspired Stephen King while he was writing The Shining.

Olivia is as cute as ever.

Early evening hikes.

Went to the The Springs, about an hour northeast of Boise one afternoon. Nice and hot spring water in a very clean environment. Five Stars.

One day I poked around the Old Boise Territorial Penitentiary  I arrived at about 3:30 and was the only person wandering around the sprawling complex. After paying my $8.00 at the prison entrance, I had to walk down a dark corridor and open this big steel prison door that led to the prison yard. It had a sign that said to pull hard because the door gets stuck in cold weather; more on that later.

This was the oldest cellblock, built by the inmates in 1899. There was no plumbing in the cells, only honey buckets. Signs said that said the stench was awful. The prison closed in 1973 after scandals, escapes and increasingly violent inmate riots. During its 101 years of operation, the prison followed Boise's path from wild west to mid 20th century capital city.

 It was pretty chilly the day I was visiting and the cells seemed even colder. I didn't see any heating system, so the Idaho winters must have been brutal for the inmates. I wandered around the complex for a couple of hours, looking at the dark segregation cells, called Siberia, death row and the actual gallows.

It was starting to get dark and cold and I still had to ride my bicycle six or so miles home. I went to open that big steel sliding door leading to freedom and it wouldn't open. For a second, I thought the staff had locked up gone home and I was going to spend the night in Creepyville. After about 30 seconds of panic, I remembered the sign that said to pull hard because the door gets stuck in colder weather. I pulled hard.

Followed the Ponderosa Pine Scenic Highway (Idaho State Route 21) to Garden Valley where we rented this Airbnb.

Photo-op at the Sawtooth Recreational Area and then on to scenic Stanley, Idaho.

Stopped at Kirkham Hot Springs

I was a little stiff and the climb down was uneven, slick and crowded. I didn't want to schlep down there and be too close to those strangers......

so I opted to hike inland a bit and found a private pool. A little unsociable I know.....YOU KIDS GET OFF THE GODDAMN LAWN!!

And another month gone and Boise was a wrap.

Going to head to the East Coast soon to catch up with Mr. Owen in Virginia.

I left my quiet suburban Boise Airbnb in the cold darkness at 3:00 AM wrapped in two sweaters. Guadalajara is at 5138 feet elevation, so the weather can be like a perpetual spring, but not on the day I arrived. Several hours later I was sweating bullets in those sweaters in a Cumbia blasting taxi, leaving the Guadalajara airport for the neighboring municipality of Zapopan.

I knew Lilly would like the cool Airbnb I booked in Zapopan because of the orange tree in the front garden patio.

Parque Metropolitano in Zapopan.

Parque Agua Azul in Guadalajara.

Colonial Guadalajara looks a lot like Europe. Which means it has lots of boring churches, temples and cathedrals. Yawn.

Tapatíos (people from Guadalajara) take Christmas very seriously.

Checking my records, I notice that Christmas 2023 marks our third holiday season in Mexico. 

Time flies. Merry Christmas, ya'll.

One day we took a tour to the town of Tequila, about an hour away from Guadalajara. It was a touristy, commercial affair and we knew what we were getting into..... but WE WERE KIDNAPPED!

We were told to meet the bus at the travel agency at 9:00 AM, about a 30 minute walk from our casa. We then spent the next two and a half hours picking up other tourists from their respective hotels and waiting in an industrial parking lot for Sprinter type vans to bring other passengers from somewhere, until the main bus was filled. It was then about an hour's ride from the outskirts of Guadalajara to the town of Tequila.

We then stopped at Rancho Tequila Convivencia which was in the middle of nowhere. First there was a free tasting of their tequilas, offered in miniscule amounts. The crowd seemed to be Mexican tourists and they were into it, buying Panama type sombreros and expensive Cantaritos, a citrusy tequila based Jalisco drink served in a clay jar. As the tequila began to work its magic and the crowd got warmed up, it was time for the tour of the distilling equipment, aging room and of course, the gift shop.

I am not convinced that the distilling equipment and aging room were not giant props and the tequila was made elsewhere, but who knows?

It was then Mariachi time. We are not day drinkers, so for us, a little Mariachi goes a long way. And this was a lot of Mariachi. Not to be grumpy gramps about it, because the other 99% of the crowd loved it, dancing and singing along, knowing all the words.

By this time it is like 3:00 PM and starving, our only choice to eat was to partake in their expensive, meh and lukewarm buffet.

At about 4 we headed into the town of Tequila, another half hour away, where we were given two hours to mill about. Tequila is about all things tequila. No open container laws, wandering Mariachi bands, dancing in the streets and very happy tourists.

It was the time to head back and the only sounds on the bus were the snores of the revelers. We got back at ~9 and they dropped us off next to a dark park, which made for a long day. It was a fine day but too much time on the packed bus and too much time at the isolated rancho. 

Gentle reader, to do over again, I would suggest getting an Uber and doing your own thing in Tequila. Plenty of authentic restaurants and plenty of other distillery tours if you just wander around town.

Stranded in the agave fields outside of Tequila, Jalisco searching for my lost shaker of salt. 

Salt! Salt! Salt!

When we want a real tequila tasting we go to this cantina in our neighborhood called Los Famosas Equipales We frequent it because of the swinging saloon doors, the dark interior and the desperados eyeing each other with larcenous and murderous intent.

I have often sung the praises of first class bus travel in Mexico and South America, compared to the humiliation of flying these days. This picture is not the best but just look at the leg room on this bus! There were only about 6 seats on the whole first floor of the rig. At times I thought I was on a train.

After two months, we headed ~300 miles north from Guadalajara to the beach town of Mazatlán (bus fare was ~$60.00). The coastal road of Mexico 15D passes through The Marismas Nacionales an interconnected complex of lagoons and wetlands on a gigantic alluvial plain. Beach ridges separate the wetlands from the ocean. 

The movie playing outside the bus window also included endless agave fields and avocado plantations. I read that the cartels are getting involved in these endeavours, illegally slashing and burning these protected wetlands and bird sanctuaries to provide the agave for Jose Cuervo and avocados for the seven layer dip, served at Super Bowl parties across the border in Gringolandia.

A malecón in Latin American countries is a embankment or esplanade along a waterfront. In the case of the malecón in Mazatlán, the embarcadero is built between lagoons and the ocean. I don't know if it was originally a beach ridge, like in the national marsh areas of Nayarit or they built the whole thing. 

In any case, they claim it to be the longest malecón in the world, it stretches about 13 miles.

Evidently Mazatlán is quite the bicycling town with many mountain bike tours and international competitions; who knew? Some of the bikes in the shops I was snooping around in were like $8000. I bought this one for $300. Since I won't be biking off cliffs up in the mountains or anything, this one was perfect for tooling around the malecón. 

Nice view of Islands Pajaros and Venados from the malecón at sunset.

Thanks for stopping by