BOXES 189-190: Midwest and Out West.

Nobody, including the cop, seems to notice that Aron, Becky and Michelle have taken possession of one of the lions outside the Art Institute of Chicago. This is in the late summer of 1992, after we had gotten back from our first trip to Hawai'i. (See previous two BOXES.) In the seasons that follow, my slide photos fall into groupings: Halloween, Christmas, certain parts of a trip out West that we took in the summer of '93, and then, the kids' participation in the wedding of their former babysitter.

But before all that, I took a few photos during a wine-tasting visit to the Napa region. My friend Wayne, from Northwestern days (he appears briefly in BOXES 93-95), had moved to the Bay Area, and since my slides of Napa appear right after the ones of Hawai'i, I'm guessing that I stopped over in San Francisco for a day while Anne and the kids continued on to Wisconsin. In any case, I have a vague memory of Wayne picking me up at the airport and that evening dropping me off at a hotel before he drove home to Mountain View.

So it was a short visit but a really great day, since Wayne was a wine aficionado and had been exploring wine country close to San Francisco. In those days tastings were free and the atmosphere was more casual than it became in more recent years. Our first stop was at the Artesa Winery in the Carneros region, not so much to sample their wines as to get some lunch and enjoy the vistas from their newly built hillside complex. In the four photos below you can see some of the grounds and statuary (unfortunately underexposed in the first pic), the picnic dining area, Wayne standing near a fountain, and posters from the complex's art gallery.

I think we next stopped at the nearby Hyde Winery, and eventually made our way into the Napa Valley and visited several of Wayne's favorite places. I remember going to St Supery's, and I took some photos of the postmodern architecture of Clos Pegase in Calistoga:

And here is a view of the beautiful valley stretching into the distance, with (of course) vines filling the foreground:

As for that trip to Chicago later that summer, I took more photos of the kids on the lion:

But my only other photos from that weekend are of some modern furniture that must have been in the Art Institute's collection:

I continued to take food photos of stuff Anne and I made at home, like these summery salads:

In October we went to a pumpkin farm near Sheboygan:

. . . which led to these carvings:

I took quite a few Halloween photos that year, including one of Aron, one of Anne with the girls in the kitchen with a friend of one of them, plus several of Anne with Michelle, who was dressed as (I assume) Catgirl that year:

My next cluster of photos is of Christmas 1992. Here you see our tree in the alcove, then a couple of shots of Aron, Michelle and me. I'm not sure what Michelle is holding up in the third photo.

And here are two more front-of-the-tree shots, presumably on Christmas morning, this time with Cotton and Stony:

Several of Becky's friends came to visit one evening:

And here, seen for the first time anywhere (since the slide, the last on the roll, was not mounted by the processer, and lay in the box until I recently scanned it), are Aron, Becky and Michelle each with a friend or four:

But back to travel! In the summer of '93 Anne, Aron, Michelle and I drove out to visit our friend Dave (see several previous BOXES), who had moved to Paonia, Colorado. As with our drive out West in 1990, we took snapshots as well as slides, but since these posts are, for better or worse, a record of my slide collection I'll show only the latter. We drove out through Iowa and Nebraska on I-80, as on previous trips, but this time continued west from Denver on I-70 instead of heading south to New Mexico. At Greenwood Springs we drove south and west on extremely scenic roads toward Paonia:

I don't have slides of Paonia itself or Dave's place, but I do have some of a trout stream that he took us to, where we had a picnic. I don't remember if Aron or Michelle caught any fish.

Here's the Pontiac 6000 at the foot of the mountains near Paonia:

And here it is again, with Mount Lamborn (I think) in the background:

Time for another pic of Michelle holding an animal, a puppy this time, presumably Dave's.

After Paonia we continued south toward New Mexico. Our first stop was the town of Silverton, at the top of a winding highway that I would not have driven if I'd known in advance how scary (guardrail-less) it would be. Here is a late-afternoon mountain view as we approached the old silver-mining town:

And here is Silverton itself, as close to an old-time, still inhabited Western town as I'd ever expect to find:

We stayed at an antique hotel along the row of buildings you see above. (Ask me for details if you like.) From there we drove down to Durango, where we swam in a hot-springs swimming pool and saw the Durango-Silverton train, though if we took the excursion I don't recall it:

From Durango it's a short way to Mesa Verde National Park, which Max and I had visited in 1978 (see BOXES 120-121). Since I'd taken a good number of slides during the earlier visit, I took very few this time. One is of some deer that approached our campsite closely:

The other is a very wide view in which you can see the largest ruin, called Cliff Palace, at the top center of the photo (if you look very closely):

From Mesa Verde we drove to Albuquerque. It could have been anywhere along the way that we saw this striking rock formation:

In Albuquerque we stopped at the 66 Diner--a touristy but fun reminder of the legendary Route 66. I'm pleased by the neo-noirish lighting in the photo of Anne I took:

We next headed north toward Abiquiu--Georgia O'Keefe country--where we were scheduled to camp at Ghost Ranch. Along the way I took the next four photos; the fourth one gives some idea of the huge ancient Valles volcanic caldera we were driving across:

The Ghost Ranch had relatively expensive accommodations but also spots for camping as well as various activities; as campers, had the use of the swimming pool and could visit the main buildings:

But the highlight for us was the spectacularly clear night sky; we were there during the first nights of the Pleiades meteor showers. Here is our campsite, with the Pedernal Mesa (often painted by O'Keefe) in the background:

Here's another view of our tent, and one of some bluffs lit by the afternoon sun:

And finally, here I am standing below some cliffs of the sort O'Keefe often painted:

We drove from there to Santa Fe, and as I recall had some excellent dining experiences, though I took only one photo, from the central plaza:

My only other slide from this trip is of the Mississippi River, when we stopped to have lunch in a cafe on the Iowa side; the other shore is possibly an island, since the river doesn't look spectacularly wide at this point.

Soon after we got back to Sheboygan the kids all participated in the wedding of Tory and Derek--Tory was their babysitter when they were very young. I'll finish this post with pics from the wedding; those of you who are mainly interested in travel pics will have to wait until my next post, which will begin to cover our second trip to Hawai'i, in the summer of 1994.

Some of these may be all-too-typical amateur wedding photos, but I like the ones of the girls and the one of Aron with Anne in her tropical dress. In any case, on to Hawai'i next time.