Arizona 2020 Friday, 2/28/20

Friday dawned with much promise here in Omaha.  High today expected to be 48F and sunny.  Much to be done at the humble abode in preparation for our day of travel.  Laundry needs to get done, sheets changed, birds fed, bird bath cleaned, cat pan cleaned, trips to the bank for traveling cash, paper still to be read.  How do we ever get out of town?

Darcy arrives at 1:00 to ferry us to the airport for our 2:25 flight on Southwest, our favorite airline.  As we stand waiting to board, we remember the only thing we forgot - free drink chits for our flight.  Oh well, we do have cash and credit cards.  An uneventful flight to Phoenix, arriving with a thud at the huge Sky Harbor Airport.  A walk to claim our checked bags then drag them out to the rental car shuttle station.  The busses to the rental car are huge and packed.  We soon found out why.  It is a 25 minute trip to the rental car terminal - basically the old airport.  This old structure has now been turned over to all the car rental companies.  Where, before, you stepped up to the airline ticket counters, you now step up to your chosen car rental company. In our case today, Hertz. We take the escalator down to the former parking garage, now given over to rental vehicles.  We pick out a small white Buick SUV as our chosen chariot and fight our way out to I-10 East for the 100 mile trek south east to Tucson.

Traffic at 5:30 on a Friday evening is almost a gridlock.  We finally clear the heaviest and join the flow south, eventually hopping off the three lane rush onto Tangerine Way. This quiet, two lane road leads us another 20 some miles to our final destination, the new home of Tom Nielsen and Kevin Rose, recently transplanted Omaha natives. Oh, yeah, also their master, Liam the black Scotty.

Sunset along the highway, courtesy of Deb Covert’s ever present eye on the sky.

Although it is 7:45 by the time we arrive, the wine is open and breathing, Kevin has plated up two salads and prepped some wonderful Omaha Steaks for the grill, and we sit around chatting, lamenting the fool in Washington, and generally trying to set the world right.  Needless to say, this  discussion will continue for quite some time.

We finish up our repast and then step outside into the cool evening to admire the encircling mountains, admiring the huge cacti in their rear yard, surrounding the pool and the hot tub of which we expect to partake in the coming days.  Tucson is a designated “dark city.” This means very few street lights, all evening lights must be down-pointing and very little light pollution. This makes for gorgeous nighttime skies with stars the likes of which we have not seen in years.  The weather this time of year is cool in the evenings and 70F in the day.  We are looking forward to our time in this high elevation city.    

Journeys Blog so far - 2/24/20

Blog so far -

This is the first blog post I have created using the actual Blogger.com site that my wonderful children created for me as a 2019 Xmas Gift.  It has taken me some time to get the gist of it as I’m not a great techno-geek, more of a technophobe, really.

We now intend to log our adventures and thoughts on our journeys using this medium and letting you hop on whenever you desire to read what’s happening.  I will send out an email to all of you when we head out for a trip, but beyond that, I won’t be clogging your in-boxes with all the emails and accompanying PDF material as in the past.  All you need do is log on to the Covert Journeys blog (covertjourneys.blogspot.com) and read at your leisure.  As I become more familiar with the tools they should take on a more polished look.

If you scroll through the previous 160 posts already on the site, you can go back to when we started this escapade in February 2014, when we journeyed to Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands to visit Darcy during her semester abroad in Quito, Ecuador - you can find these by tapping on the label “Ecuador” in the list along the right side of the screen. Likewise, if you are looking through past postings, you must remember that the most recent post is always at the top; therefore in the aforementioned example of Ecuador, once you have all three on the screen, you must scroll to the bottom to read the first day, then upwards to the next and so on.  Clear? Probably not but you will soon get the hang of it.  As we move forward, we will create labels for each trip. So you can more easily find past trips if you wish.

Credit for posting all of these articles rests with Abigail, who has tirelessly saved each one and figured out a way to post them all to the blog in order to give it some much needed heft. The heft is her choice - the wordiness is all mine, and she should take no blame for that. Almost all photos you will see are taken by Deb (not the one below; that is by Mark,) and most of the heavy editing “do you really want to say that” is also by Deb. If you decide to ramble backward through time, you will see that certain of the trips, China for example, were done entirely by Deb as I was left behind to watch the house.  This is also why the China blogs are demonstrably more humorous than those that Mark writes.

Deb C’s Birthday cake on Friday, 2/21/20, courtesy of Deb D.

Somewhere in the middle of the 160, I began adding photos of our journeys. Unfortunately, Abigail could not find a way to add the photos in her copying.  If we can get them back, we will.  We will however be adding photos as we move forward, as I have figured out (I think) how to accomplish this.  Enjoy our trips; if you don’t want to bother, you now can just stop reading and ignore the single email you will receive each time we head out.  Thanks for reading.

Denver, Saturday, January 25, 2020

Denver 2020

Denver Art Museum Trip

Saturday morning and a day filled with possibilities.  Since our main focus of this trip, the Monet exhibit at the Denver Art Museum was completed, we had this morning to relax a little.  Howie was up an at ‘em at the workout facility this morning early, shaming the rest of us, and then we met at the fourth floor restaurant for breakfast, alas - no room at the inn. We picked up a recommendation for a breakfast/brunch place around the corner from the museum - The Dozens. It turns out we had noted it on Friday, it is right across from our Pints Tavern lunch place of that day.

We called, they don’t take reservation but there were open tables.  We stopped back at our rooms for coats and then walked to the restaurant.  We should have been quicker, by the time we arrived, this little house diner was slammed.  The wait was anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.  Assessing our chances to find any place else in that time frame, we opted to wait our turn.  Lucky we did.  When we finally got a table after 20 minutes, we were treated to some of the best breakfast food ever.  We each tried a different omelette, one with spinach, two of the namesake Denver variety and one with cheese and sausage.  Excellent, served with hash potatoes and an English muffin.  Coffee was good and hot. Another great food stop in Denver.

Over breakfast we discussed our plan for the day resulting in our returning to the hotel, checking on our packing and negotiating a noon late departure.  We then rested for a bit, returned to the lobby for checkout and left our luggage with the door guys and gals for our return as we had booked a scheduled Lyft driver for our airport run for 3:00 pick up at the hotel.  We then took a free ride from the hotel to the nearby Denver Botanical Garden, a pleasant surprise being that, due to our memberships in Lauritzen Gardens in Omaha, we were allowed free entry! In near perfect weather of 57F, we wandered the grounds, which were surprisingly compact but picturesque in the winter doldrums.  Denver’s higher altitude allows a somewhat milder winter than in Omaha. This is really a high plains/arid climate.  There were wonderful Pondersa Pines, moved from the nearby higher elevations down to the garden and trained in Bonsai configurations.  Some of these trees were near 400 years old, but no taller than 6-10 feet.  We had a discussion with one of the volunteer gardeners who was busy pulling old needles off a pine near the frozen pond in the Japanese garden. We learned a lot about the garden and its winter work. Although there were not a crowd of visitors, there were a good number wandering the grounds and taking in their share of vitamin D.

We left the garden around 2:45 via Lyft and headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags and meet our ride to Stapleton Airport. This Lyft driver was one of the most interesting characters we met during our entire trip. He regaled us with his stories of travel, his time in the Israeli army and his work on placing multi-million dollar art collections in museums around the country.  Left unanswered is why this guy from Israel, who handles $150 million dollar art collections, was driving a Lyft car in Denver, Colorado - one of life’s great mysteries.

 We arrived back at the airport around 3:45 and arranged our check in, luggage drop and security clearance. We then headed for the Pour La France restaurant by our gate.  We enjoyed our last meal in Denver of wine, beer, a pair of cheeseburgers and a pair of Crocque Monsieur sandwiches, all accompanied by fries.

 We finished and headed a short distance to our gate where the flight to Omaha was already boarding.  A large 737 and sold out.  We claimed our seats, leaned back and spent a quick 65 minutes on our return, touching down in chilly Omaha at 7:45.  An hour later we were home, unloading our suitcases, tossing dirty clothes in the hamper and listening to the dog and cat complain about their caretakers while we were away!! Another fun experience that went off with nary a hitch.  Good traveling once again.

Denver Friday, January 24, 2020

Denver 2020

Denver Art Museum Trip

The morning arrived sunshine and bright. The high temperature today was 57, and the weather was almost balmy.  We gathered at 8:30 this morning in the restaurant for breakfast of Bagels, Oatmeal, mixed fruit, Wheat Toast, juice and the all important Coffee. Today is the whole purpose of this jaunt, a viewing of the Monet show - A return to Nature, at the Denver Art Museum.  Our timed tickets were for 10:15 entry, so we presented ourselves at the entrance at 10:00 and used the few minutes to reconnoiter the ever present museum shop.  This one was a notch above the many we have visited over the years.

This show was marvellously presented.  Audio devices were distributed and allowed one to enter a room of the show, choose the number and hear some background of the work on display in that area.  It didn’t give you a detailed explanation of each piece but rather an overall view of the time frame and geographical region Monet was exploring, allowing one to wander the room and concentrate on the art.

Although crowded, the room was quiet and the people respectful of one another.  Monet lived to the ripe old age of 86, dying in 1926. During his entire career he was exploring and recording nature as he saw it.  His constant struggle to present the light he saw onto the canvas was readily apparent.

There were a number of his famous Lily Pad paintings on display. We were all agreed that our visit in 2019 to his home and gardens in Giverney was a highlight of our trips and brought these paintings more to life.  We could see what he was trying to do as it matched with our memories of the area, his home and his gardens.

We spent over two hours wandering the displays, revelling in the beauty Claude Monet presented for us.

As it now was lunchtime, we walked a few blocks to the Pints Tavern for a beer and sandwiches.  This British style pub was opened in 1993 and boasted quite a few house brewed or local brewery beers.  They also had the self-proclaimed “largest number of Scotch Whiskys on order.” Based upon the list presented and the number of bottles on display in the bar area, one could easily agree.  Alas, there were no takers of the available water of life on this trip.  Although a couple of the $1,000 per shot whiskys were intriguing, also a number of the more reasonably priced bottles.

Next we wandered into the nearby Denver Public Library Main branch to tour the Red Chair Bookstore, their used book store located on the first floor. We found a number of intriguing titles and enjoyed visiting with the volunteer on duty. Purchases were made. We then headed to the nearby Civic Center Station and hopped on the Free Mall Bus to journey down 16th street and back towards Union Station.  We turned around and headed back a few blocks to the Tattered Cover Bookstore, a huge new and used bookstore that caught our eye. We spent well over an hour wandering the shelves, seeing new and used titles that we had read, wanted to read and were reading.  Eventually purchases were made and we then hopped back on the Mall Bus for the ride/walk back to our hotel. 

We again gathered at the lobby bar for a cocktail.  As it was crowded with no seats available in the room, we wandered out on to the bar terrace and sat next to the unique fire pit to enjoy our drinks and plot our evening.

We picked a Restaurant in the Larimer Square area near University of Colorado Denver campus  - The Euclid Hall.  This old hall dating from 1883, converted to a restaurant, boasted a 2019 James Beard Foundation “Smart Catch Leader” award for the work of its chefs.This is essentially a beer and brat focussed restaurant, but one with amazing food.  First up was an hors d’oevres called Chip and Dip - comprised of a large center dollop of lemon goat cheese, covered by oolong tea smoked rare duck breast, duck confit, house made fresh cut fried potato chips and a sprinkling of dill. It was delicious and we wiped out the small offering in a flurry of oohs and ahs, For mains, there was a Crispy Chicken Sando - a crispy chicken breast on a sesame bun with celery mayo, iceberg lettuce and bbq sauce with pickles, declared scrumptious.  Also a Brat burger, a smoked beef short rib bratwurst, split, on a bun covered with slaw, 10,000 island dressing and Jarlsberg cheese, again deemed like nothing tasted before and one that would be scarfed down again.

The men opted for a “Sausage Party,” a selection of all four sausages available, the aforementioned Beef Short Rib, a Boudin Blanc, a Lamb Merguez,  and a Pork Cheddarwurst, accompanied by an assortment of four mustards, some pretzel bun rolls and a house assortment of pickles. All were tasty and the mustard added to the treat.  For dessert we shared a S’mores pot de creme and a Pecan Bread Pudding.  Coffee topped ended the meal. This was intriguing adventure in eating, nothing like we had ever tried before, and thoroughly enjoyable. We agreed that we could easily recommend this restaurant to any visitor to Denver as a don’t miss stop.

We left the restaurant and walked to Larimer Square to view the lights and walk along looking at the night life. We eventually made our way back to 16th Street, ordered another Lyft and returned to the hotel to retire after a long art, food, and book filled day in lovely 50 degree weather in the middle of January in the mile-high city.  Next time we will probably be stomping through foot deep snow, but for now, the weather was very acceptable.