Not Quite a 50 for 50 -- Apple Picking in Oak Glen

Now, see, this one could have been a 50 for 50, in that "berry picking" was actually on the list.  But Jacob took it and it was sweet and fun, so this was just a bonus trip with a group of friends.  (The fact I've been trying to sneak in a 50 for 50 with them, and there aren't a whole lot of options left on the list, is the bit that gets me.  The fact that "Old Timey Photo" IS on the list -- and that Oak Glen has Old Timey Pretty Much Everything Else -- was frustrating.)

ANYWAY, this was actually Val's plan -- Val wants to do more fun stuff with friends in SoCal, and I totally get it.  I mean, in general, I get wanting to do more fun stuff.  But this seems sort of akin to my Project Buy Happiness of a decade ago -- when my job was super stressful and I was unable to sell the condo (because of the mold, and the association wasn't repairing it quickly, and the way the market was going, I was losing out on thousands of dollars with every delay, and, and, and...) and YEAH, I get it, when you're in a stressful unhappy place, you need to forcibly DO SHIT to bring yourself a little joy.  And Val wanted to road trip out to Oak Glen to pick apples, and I've never been out to Oak Glen, and the whole thing seemed like a fun idea.

And when the day actually rolled around, waking up early to drive out there seemed like a lot more of a pain in the ass, but I figured I had signed up for this and I might as well get my butt off the couch on a Saturday and do stuff with this group of people.  Most of whom were somewhere between "friend" and "friend of a friend," and all of whom seemed decent enough to get to know better.  Over fruit.

A coupla text messages later, I was carpooling out to Oak Glen with Val and her mom.  (I thought this might be a nice chance to learn something about her mom, but Val and I ended up dominating conversation on the road.  I'm going to find myself at New York Comic Con in a coupla weeks, and Val has done that Con quite a bit, so I was pumping her for info.)

We planned to meet up with some friends for brunch at Apple Annie's at 11:00 before moving on to the actual apple picking part of the day.  There were two main flaws with this plan:  (1)  no damn cell phone reception, so coordinating with the other folks was problematic; and (2)  they stopped serving breakfast at 11:00, and we're stuck with the lunch menu of sandwiches when we had all been in the "apple pancake" mindset.

Val's mom had reception, even though Val didn't.  (Insert here Val's mom stepping away for a moment and her phone locking.  Val gets the password on the first guess.  Insert here memories of me, at an internet cafe in Italy, needing Facebook for something, and not having a Facebook account, so breaking into my mom's account with a good first guess at her password and a just-barely-good-enough effort at the facial-recognition-of-her-friends thing.  Clearly, knowing your parents well enough to guess their passwords is a Thing.)  So we got enough text messages through on AT&T to get all of us together at a nice big table at Apple Annie's.

If you haven't been to Oak Glen (I hadn't), Apple Annie's gives you a pretty good indication of what you're in for.  The portions are massive.  Massive.  They have signs up about offering "free seconds" so you don't leave hungry, but most of us couldn't even finish our "firsts."  There was nothing healthy on the menu.  (It was the sort of place which might offer a "diet plate" of cottage cheese and fruit, but didn't.  But you COULD swap out your french fries for mashed potatoes and gravy.  The gravy looked really good.)  Yeah, massive portions and gravy, is what I'm saying.  The restroom is two single-stall units which are non-gender-specific.  Pretty sure this was a change in accordance with recent state law and not, like, an affirmative attempt to be open to their trans guests.

(Wikipedia tells me that, according to the 2010 census, there are 638 people who actually call Oak Glen home.  Of the 190 households, two are same-sex partnerships.)

The shops right around Apple Annie's include the bakery (pies were ordered), a General Store, a turquise shop, an Old Timey Candy Store, and a bunch of craft faire type tents selling jams, wood craft things (many crosses), tea towels with ducks or geese on them, and pretty much any fabric thing you might want with the logo of your favorite NFL team on it.  And a little tent selling interchangeable jewelry with an "as seen on Shark Tank" sign -- and I'm thinking, "You didn't get a deal on Shark Tank, did you?"  (They did not.)

I'd read that Oak Glen was pretty conservative.  One of the dudes who runs one of the farms tweeted some pretty racist, misogynistic crap in the context of being Pro-Trump.  Whereas one of the other guys, in trying to distance himself from the first guy, said that he keeps his politics to himself and prefers to just spread "a Christ-like love to all."  (Which is a nice sentiment, to be sure, but, as a Jew, I sort of notice when your statement of inclusiveness invokes Christ -- because we ALL love Jesus, right?  RIGHT??)  So, I mean, I was sort of expecting this to be a trip into MAGA-land.

Mostly, it wasn't.  I mean, sure, there was a bit more pro-military stuff than I generally see on a daily basis.  Ditto that baseline of Christianity.  (I didn't even see a small corner of products "for our Jewish friends.")  But, mostly, it was just that down-homey, big portions, extra gravy, General Store, we-love-football type of America.  Everyone asks how "you folks" are doing.  The woman who sells you your U-Pick apples is a bespectacled white older woman with red curls, who looks like Central Casting sent her after Oak Glen requested a "Grandma."  It's THAT America.

We drove over to Riley's Los Rios for apple pickin.  They also had a shop (and free hard cider tasting!) and a restaurant and hayrides and a corn maze.  But first, the restroom.  Separate building, men's room on one side, women on the other.  HUGE line for the women -- not just because women take longer, but because about half the women in line had kids in tow, and were cramming multiple people into those stalls.  The first stall had run out of toilet paper, and the women leaving that stall were all warning the people in line:  "There's no toilet paper in there, but you can use the seat covers."  And, at first, I thought this was part of the whole friendly spirit of the place -- warning people about the dangers of the situation and providing advice on how to deal with it.  But later, I was puzzled as to why NOBODY in any of the other stalls was sharing a little TP.  Seriously, man, each stall had two rolls in it -- like you couldn't spare one and share it with the stall that didn't have any?! 

Probably too close to socialism.

I digress.  (Frequently.)  Over at Los Rios, we tasted cider, checked out the shop to plan our purchases later in the day, and taste tested apples, so that we'd know which variety we'd want to pick.  Of course, the U-Pick for our favorite was across the street.  And up the hill.  (The closest were Red Delicious.  Who the hell eats Red Delicious anymore?)  We hiked over to the U-Pick area, got our little pickin' bags, and further hiked up to the Jonagolds.  (A cross between Jonathan and Golden Delicious.  Good for eatin'.)  The orchard was pretty well picked.  (I would've settled for Galas, because they were closer, but the trees were just covered with tiny little ones that weren't ripe yet.)  But I found a nice tree of Jonagolds and filled my bag from it.  I even ran into some friends who took the obligatory apple picking photo for me.

Then we all posed for the TRULY obligatory selfie.

Then we trudged back down the hill to pick some raspberries.  It was at this point that my knee started objecting.  Going uphill I just get winded, but going downhill, it puts too much pressure on my knee and there's actual pain and stuff.  (The fact that I CONSISTENTLY go uphill anyway, finding myself trapped in a place I can't easily get down from, is probably why I get along so well with cats.)  We also had to walk on the sloped dirt by the side of the road, in order to get out of the way of farm vehicles.  And at THIS point, I thought that maybe walking downhill on uneven surfaces was precisely the WORST thing I could do for the recently re-sprained ankle, and maybe I should have just bought the damn pre-bagged apples in the shop.  Because, seriously, we were paying MORE for the privilege of picking them ourselves, and after a half hour of this sort of fun, I'm pretty certain that whatever we (as a society) pay the (probably undocumented) people to stand out in the hot sun and do this for us is totally inadequate.

We stopped to pick raspberries on the way back.  They, too, had been pretty much picked over.  I was happy to just take a break in the downhill progress and walk along the relatively flat raspberry rows, but when I'd see, like, a single ripe red berry dangling from the bottom of a vine -- particularly if a bee was nearby -- I questioned whether it was worth bending down to get it.

I'm old, is what I'm saying.

I ended up with a smallish tray of raspberries.  When we were out there not finding too many berries, I wondered aloud to one of my friends exactly how few berries I'd have to have in my bag for them to say, "oh just take 'em" without charge.  Turns out I had precisely that amount of berries, and the nice grandma just let me take 'em.

Across from the weighing/paying station, they were selling kettle corn and Old Timey sodas.  (No fructose; sugar all the way!)  I downed a black cherry soda in the time it took to wait in line to weigh my apples -- Val had suggested I looked a little dehydrated and she was totally right on that.  32 ounces of sugary goodness took care of that problem right quick.

Back to the store to buy stuff.  (I got a big bottle of a dry-ish hard cider.  Who wants to get buzzed on apples with me?)  Snacked on some corn-on-the-cob at an outdoor table.  (Discovered that one of Val's friends is as skittish around bees as I am, which was kind of comforting because I'd thought grown-ups had to hide that.)  Then back to the bakery to pick up the pre-ordered pies, and the Old Timey candy shop.  I had planned on getting an apple cider float, but was too full of black cherry soda and corn-on-the-cob, so had to take a pass on that.  Looked nummy, though.

Came home, rinsed my berries and tasted them.  Oh, so sweet!  There is nothing like a fresh raspberry.  I mean, seriously, I buy berries all the damn time, and they're bigger and probably more colorful (and perhaps covered in pesticides), but these were so much better.  I understand why we paid more for the U-Pick fruit, now.  Fuck me, these berries were good.  I downed the bowl in record time, and super crashed on the couch.

50 for 50: 41 - Roll with it, with My Parents, part two

Oh yeah.  I'm a Junior Ranger now. 

I promise to only use my powers for good.  

In fact, the oath which I swore (with a surprising amount of solemnity) had me promise to share what I learned about National Parks with my friends and family, so this post isn't JUST a wrap-up of the canyon trip, it's me doing my Junior Ranger duty.  So there.

The morning started with breakfast in the hotel (which, unfortunately, had an answer to, "Really?  How can you screw up eggs?") and then Dad and I met our guide for our trip into Canyon De Chelly -- a local Navajo guy named Frank.  We got in Frank's truck, which had seen better days.  The windshield had several cracks across it, which had some beads of glue in them, and Frank admitted this had happened on prior rough trips into the canyon.  So it was with some trepidation that we set off -- I really had no idea what I was getting into.

A canyon, basically.  Conveniently, we entered at ... an entrance.  Which is to say, we didn't have to do any four-wheel drive action down the side or anything.  There was an opening between the canyon walls at what we'll call the shallow end, and we pretty much just drove across the flat and watched the canyon walls grow up around us.  Frank stopped at various sites in the canyon with historical significance.  There were a good deal of Anasazi ruins in there (I am simultaneously pleased that I already have familiarity with the term Anasazi and ashamed that it's from "The X-Files") and petroglyphs and stuff.  (Frank pointed out the petroglyphs by shining a light on them.  Well, by holding a broken-off rear-view mirror and catching the sun to direct it toward them.  It was a perfect, clever, low-cost solution.)  He also pointed out various rock formations which looked like animals (the turtle one totally looked like a turtle) and others that were just beautiful.  We got lectures on history and information about how Frank and his family lived (his family still lives in the canyon, growing crops) and horrible stories about what happened to the Navajo people during "Kit Carson time" and how some survived (and others did not) by hiding in the canyon. 

I got pictures.

It was a three-hour trip, which was just about enough, because you'll notice that there's no such thing as a road in the canyon, and we were bouncing along the lack-of-road with such enthusiasm that I was trying really hard NOT to watch the cracks across the windshield grow larger.

When we got back, we picked up mom at the hotel and went to Denny's for lunch (where we were reminded what food actually tastes like).  Then we went for a drive around the top of the canyon, stopping off at a couple of the outlooks.  (When we'd been at the bottom, we looked up at people on the outlooks at waved at them.  Now I waved from the other side.)  The coolest lookout is near Spider Rock, which is a free-standing spire where a couple canyons intersect.  We dug the Spider Rock lookout.

On our way back, we stopped at the Visitor Center.  This was our second National Park Visitor Center this trip (the other one being the Trading Post, yesterday).  The Park Ranger at the Trading Post told us about the Junior Ranger program -- and pointed out that most of the people filling out the forms there appeared to be grown-ups.  When we went into the Visitor Center at Canyon De Chelly, I pointed out to my dad the form you have to fill out to get the Canyon De Chelly Junior Ranger badge, and that it looked pretty cool.

Dad said he'd get me the Junior Ranger badge.

We walk in the Visitor Center and I see my dad talking with the Ranger about how he'd like to get he Junior Ranger badge for his adult daughter.  He may have even played the "birthday" card.

The ranger plays this totally straight, tells my father that there's no age limit to the Junior Ranger program, and gives us the worksheet that everyone has to fill out to become a Junior Ranger.

Dad picks up a pencil.  I offered to help, but he said this was on him.

I shit you not, people.  This is my Dad doing the Junior Ranger worksheet.

He was really working at it, too.  I mean, some of it was easy -- and we DID pick up quite a bit of knowledge on our tour that morning -- but there was a lot to it.  Eventually, the ranger said he'd done enough to earn his badge (and a Canyon De Chelly postcard, and a Junior Ranger pencil, and, as it turned out, a 15% discount on that thing I was about to buy while he was doing paperwork).  The had us both say the Junior Ranger oath, gave us the cherished badge, and then Dad proudly pinned it on me.

I cannot tell you how unexpected and totally adorable this whole thing was.  We went to some National Parks when I was a kid, but this was before the Junior Ranger Program.  Dad doing the Junior Ranger worksheet and getting the badge -- when I'm 50 and he's a bit more -- wasn't making up for anything lost, but just picking up on something we'd never had a chance to do before.  It was sweet, and memorialized our morning together, and, honestly, I don't know if I'll ever go to a National Park with my Dad again, but, now, this is OUR THING, and I didn't really expect to get a new thing with Dad for my 50 for 50.

50 for 50: 41 - Roll with it, with My Parents

No, I did not come to Arizona just so I could watch the damn Diamondbacks @ Dodgers game on TV.  It's just an added bonus.

Mom and Dad originally picked a different 50 for 50.  We were going to do a thing called the Pan Am Experience, which looks cool and fun and retro and TOTALLY discriminates against single people, because they only sell tickets in pairs, and if you haven't noticed there's only one of me, and Jasmine doesn't travel well.  This required a change in plans, but since Pan Am Experience INITIALLY led us on about the single ticket thing, I really didn't have much left on the list when I realized we would not, in fact, be dining in First Class on a plane that no longer exists, and I was all, "Screw it.  Let's road trip to one of those canyons you like."

So mom picked a canyon; I flew in last night; and this morning we got up bright and early (for me) and headed off on a five-hour drive into the Navajo Nation and --

-- I'm pretty sure I've never been on Navajo land before.  I've definitely been on tribal land.  As a tourist, I've done a lot of First Nations stuff in Canada and Alaska.  And even here in Arizona.  But I don't think I've been on Navajo land.  It's something you notice because the Navajo go on Daylight Savings while Arizona does not; so you're cruising down the highway and all of a sudden your phone takes note of a time change because you are In A Very Real Way not in Arizona anymore.

On the way, we stopped at a rest stop which claimed to pride itself on having the cleanest restrooms on the I-40.  Now, as it was the ONLY restroom break we had off the I-40, I can't really make any evaluation of the truth of that statement.  I can, however, report that IF these were, IN FACT, the cleanest restrooms on the I-40, the bar is not that high.

We grabbed some soft serve at what looked like the World's Smallest Burger King (wedged in the corner of the rest stop, it was somewhat misleadingly advertised as a Food Court -- dude, one fast food place does not make a food court) and got some soft serve ice cream.  Mom immediately commented that Cleanest Restrooms On The I-40 should, in fact, be the title of my 50-for-50.  I replied that we'd have to take the selfie.

Back on the road to the canyon, our first destination was a stop at the Hubbell Trading Post which is a National Historic Site, and the place was actually taken over by the National Park Service a number of years back.  It is very cool in that it is simultaneously still a legit functioning trading post and also a place with a visitors' center where you can learn about America's history with the Navajo people (hint: we don't come off too well in it).  One of the rangers gave us a quick tour of the Hubbell house, which was made all the more amusing by the fact that we had to wear them little protective booties over our shoes so as not to damage the Extremely Pricey Navajo rugs in there.  The IDEA of protective booties wasn't so funny -- it was the FACT that these booties came out of a big box of used, dirty booties, and if they managed to protect the rugs from any sort of dirt it was more from luck than actual, y'know, cleanliness.  Historic house was pretty cool, though.

When we got back to the Visitors' Center, we had a chat with a second ranger, who was himself Navajo.  (I was tipped off when he talked about the stuff Mr. Hubble had done for "us."  Damn, pronouns are helpful.)  Basically, after The Long Walk (about which America should be seriously ashamed), the Navajo returned to these lands, but there was nothing there.  Hubbell set up the trading post and enabled the Navajo people to get the raw supplies they needed to restart living off the land.  And 150 years later, there are still Navajo people bringing in rugs they have woven and trading them for standard General Store supplies.  (And then the rugs are turned around a sold to tourists.  Everybody wins.)

We continued on to our actual destination:  Canyon de Chelly.  The Navajo ranger at the trading post said he was also a ranger over here at the canyon, so we asked him if he had any recommendations.  He told us to drive out to a certain lookout at 7:30 tonight. 

Dinner (about which the less said the better -- except the Navajo Fry Bread, which was all kinds of yummy and proves that people are truly the same because every culture has its own version of tasty fried bread) took a bit longer than we'd thought.  We tried to make a run for the lookout by 7:30, but we weren't going to make it.  It looked seriously dark.  But when we happened to glance behind us, we saw what the ranger had been getting at -- a genuinely extraodinary sunset.  I'm not just talking colors here, but the way the sun was reflecting off the clouds made the sky look like a landscape.  Seriously.  It looked like ocean and land and horizon, even though it was all just sky, and it was fucking glorious.  I took a picture, but it so completely failed to capture it, I'm not even bothering to post it.  Trust me on this one:  you had to be there.

And... back to the hotel to get some sleep before the actual canyon tomorrow.