I am always learning. I take the liberal arts "life-long learner" thing to heart. I've made it my job and purpose in life. Only sometimes, though, do I apply this learning to my life. By now, I know that I must travel the first week of January. It doesn't matter where I go; I can't be home that week. This year, I had a chance to travel for New Year's and parlayed a flight to the West Coast into a research week in Tucson.
We started in Vegas a few days before the New Year. I was willing to visit Vegas if we left before New Year's Eve. Last year, on my first adult visit to Vegas, I found it genuinely bizarre. But this time, I embraced the absurd and endless adult playground (...with far too many children around). We landed late in the evening, took a taxi to the hotel, and had a snack at a bar inside our hotel.
The following day, we had reservations for brunch at Esther's Kitchen in the Arts District. Brunch was excellent, and then we walked back to the Strip, via a stop to see the Sphere. The walk certainly lets you see a slightly "more real" version of the city. We had dinner at Best Friend in the Park MGM. The restaurant is a Korean Mexican fusion restaurant, and the food was very good. We didn't have a reservation, but there were spots at the bar. Then, I had the idea to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Again, I've embraced the weird high-up tourist spots. The nighttime view was actually very cool; really, the Sphere, adds quite a bit of interest to the skyline.
The next morning, we took the open-air, hop-on-hop-off bus to the old downtown. In November, we did this tour in Philly, inspired by Robert Frank's "From the Bus" series in New York. I highly recommend the Philly tour, but do not recommend the Vegas version. Seemingly, it helps if the city has hundreds of years of well-documented history to discuss; the Vegas tour was slow and uninformative. So, we got off the bus at the northernmost stop and had nachos and giant margaritas at Nacho Daddy. Honestly, excellent and hokey. 10/10, no notes. It was a weird, pre-New Years-ish day, and being in a weird bar in Vegas felt appropriate.
Then we walked to the Neon Museum for tickets right at sunset. The museum collects the old, discarded signs from the town. It's a gorgeous graveyard that you can't bring cameras in to photograph; nope, only phone photos are allowed. Then we walked through Freemont Street, which was another truly strange experience. It's like the Wildwood Boardwalk to the max but more liberal. We bought donuts and went home for the night.
We left town on the 30th, and it was already seeming busier for NYE. My personal expiration date for Vegas is around 48 hours. You can embrace it for that time and spend whatever you want on whatever you want for only so long. I wish it had been a bit warmer, but that's okay. After a quick stop at In-N-Out-Burger, we drove to Flagstaff for a three-night stay. I love Flagstaff and would love to live there. On the first night, we had beers at Mother Road Brewing before dinner at Pizziceletta. The pizza was pretty good; I recommend it. But, the homemade gelato was actually a bit more memorable than the pizza. Then, we randomly played bingo at Dark Star Brewing.
On NYE, we went to the Grand Canyon after a stop for breakfast and coffee at Single Speed Coffee Roasters. I don't know why, but it felt nice to be in the park on that day. It felt like a kismet thing. I've been to the Grand Canyon three times before, but it always lives up to the name. New Year's-wise, I don't put much thought into the concept; my only goal is not to work. Before the Grand Canyon, we stopped at Wupatki National Monument, a pueblo occupied from the early 1100s to the mid 1200s CE: a place I had on my map for a long time.
After sunset at the Grand Canyon, we drove back to Flagstaff. This random town seemed like the perfect small town for NYE. Only a few days before the new year did we learn that Flagstaff has the 5th-best NYE "drop" in the US. They drop a Pinecone three times in the town center: Noon, 10 pm, and midnight. I must admit, I appreciated the 10 pm drop. It was packed; we did the countdown and went home. Honestly, no regret. Time is a flat circle.
On New Year's Day, we drove down to Sedona. I'd been through Sedona as well but never hiked. We did a 6-mile flat loop around Cathedral Rock. It felt nice to start the year with a long, warm hike in the desert.
The next day, we made it to breakfast at Martanne's Breakfast Palace, the most memorable meal from my last visit. A solid Mexican-American breakfast place that doesn't exist in the same way on the East Coast. Then, my travel partner flew home from Phoenix, and I drove to Tucson for a week of research at the Center for Creative Photography. I was so excited to return to Tucson because I'd enjoyed my past two visits: one for yoga and one on a roadtrip. It's simply a reasonable city with nice weather in the winter, ample hiking, and regular people. I'll continue to make the argument that it's the smaller, southwest version of Philly.
I arrived in Tucson on a Thursday so that I could enjoy four days of hiking. It was a rather cold winter in Philly, and it killed my daily hiking resolve. I picked an Airbnb on the very east side of town with views of the mountains and proximity to the trailheads in East Saguaro National Park. I found a hike each day. I also found myself unprepared for hiking in 80-degree weather. On one of the cooler days, I managed a four-hour hike; I kept the rest shorter. These four days were quiet: an intentional rest in the desert.
For the work week, I moved Airbnbs to within a mile of the archive. I had been to the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in 2020 and never, at that time, imagined I'd return for research purposes. So much has changed in the last five years. I spent a week researching in their small reading room, Monday through Friday. As far as archival research experiences go, this one was great. I gathered research for a new chapter on photographer Edward Weston and collected information to add to two other chapters. After the archive closed, I'd walk around before sunset, take photos, and stop in a brewery: Pueblo Vida, Barrio, and Slow Body.
I was out of town for 15 days. It felt amazing. That's the longest I've been "away" since a summer study abroad. Being warmer than Philly was incredibly important to my well-being. The plan to miss a good portion of January worked; I'll always try to be somewhere warm that week, somehow. Some things still feel possible, despite it all.
