2026 Southwest Meander - Days 1, 2, and 3

Our latest adventure was a roadtrip through the southwest desert and our old California stomping grounds in Oxnard and Cambria.

Day 1: Dodge City, Kansas

We left on the Monday after the end of the winter olympics.  I based our stops on the experience we had on our last road trip to Key West in 2023.  During that trip we drove too long each day and often arrived in the dark.  On this trip I kept the days shorter, rarely going over eight hours.  This dictated our first stop to be in Kansas and I picked Dodge City figuring there would be something interesting in the famous cowboy town.  Turns out I was wrong.

Dodge City probably is an interesting, if not touristy town, during high season, but in February it is not.  Most of the downtown area was torn up with construction and the hotel I'd picked was ... adequate but not awesome.

The sign that welcomes you to Dodge City.

We drove around to find something interesting and found a few things.  Just outside town is a cross marking the point reached by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado.  Next we stopped at an overlook expecting a view of the Kansas plains or Dodge City, but instead got a view of a large cattle feedlot.  The Wife and I shook our heads at this.  We stopped to get a picture of the impressive sign as you entered Dodge City and took pictures of the various statues of gunslingers and famous cowboys, real and fictional that dot the city.  We ended the day with what I consider to be a mediocre meal at a local restaurant.

We did avoid going to the Mid-point between Los Angeles and Cleveland that is listed on the internet as a five star attraction.  The one photo showed an empty field with no marker or anything.  I think it might have been a joke.

Day 2: Albuquerque, New Mexico

Another seven hours driving got us to our next stop along the way, Albuquerque.  Our newly refurbished hotel was nice and within easy walking distance to the old town.  But, before we could enjoy the old town, I had to find a Toyota service place.  A plastic shield in the front driver's wheelwell had come loose and was making a racket.  They ended up just cutting out the shredded plastic shield.

After that racket was stopped, the Wife and I walked to the old town and did a little shopping and sightseeing before finding a nice restaurant to eat at.  The few hours we spent in the old town were relaxing.

Day 3: Oracle, Arizona and Biosphere 2

This was a shorter driving day but it was also very interesting and beautiful.  Part of the way took you down into colorful canyons and back up the other side.  While the Wife didn't enjoy the twisty-turny road, I always find this type of driving exhilarating.

Biosphere 2 near Oracle, Arizona.

We arrived at Biosphere 2 which is located fifteen minutes outside of the small town of Oracle, Arizona.  After entering the visitor's center and downloading the app, we followed the self-guided tour through the larger than expected facilities of the 'self-contained' habitat. The structure has spacious living spaces, farm fields, jungles, deserts, swamps, and even an ocean.  Everything is maintained, tho the ocean did die out and is in the process of being restored.  Ultimately, Biosphere 2 was a failed experiment when the oxygen levels within the habitat could not be maintained, but it was a fascinating attempt at creating a self-contained environment similar to what a Moon or Mars base might be like.

We spent the night in the only place to stay in Oracle.  The sprawling 'ranch' had many rooms/cottages that were very comfortable.  The property had trees and gardens though they were not ready for the high season yet.  There were only a few guests there in February.  The Wife enjoyed a go on a tire swing outside our room.  The pool wasn't ready yet but the hot tub was and the Wife and I soaked before the sun started to go down.  We had dinner at an italian place which, most likely, made most of its money from pizza sales.  The chicken parmesan we ate was very good.

Next ... Kanab, Utah.

Photographs can be found in my 2026 Southwest Meander Google Photos album.

Weekly Ephemera #171

Just a quick note this week.  We are back from our Southwest meander. It turned out to be an interesting trip with Biosphere 2, interesting rock formations, battling robots, expanded movie classics, and old haunts.  I will try to start posting later this week. 

Our Next Trip: A Southwestern Meander

Next week we will leave on the first trip of the year.  It is a road trip throughout the southwestern US that will take us through some beautiful places, weird places, and old stomping grounds.

Our first stop will be the Biosphere 2 in Arizona.  The Biosphere is open for tours.  I was hoping to stop at Petrified Forest National Park along the way, but it doesn't look like we will have the time due to the Biosphere 2 closing times.

Our next stop Will be in Kanab, UT.  We will be here for three nights.  We are hoping to hike to see the Wave.  Access to the Wave is strictly limited and you get permits via lottery.  We have heard stories of people trying for over five years without getting a permit.  The company we are working with will send people to the Bureau of Land Management office to see if there are cancellations.  If there are none, the company offers hikes to similar wind carved features in the area.

After a couple days of hiking, we will drive to Las Vegas.  Here we will attend two shows.  The first is the BattleBots Destruct-A-Thon.  The second show is "The Wizard of Oz" at the Sphere.  This is more of a way to see what the Sphere has to offer than watching the movie which we have seen umpteen-zillion times already.

After las Vegas we drive to Chinatown in Los Angeles and visit with friends in our old Ventura County stomping grounds.

We then drive up the coast, spending a night in one of our favorite places, Cambria, CA.  Here we will have tri-tip sandwiches and enjoy the shops and the beeches.

Our last planned stop is the World Famous Clown Motel in Tonopah, NV.  We reserved the Exorcist room.

We were hoping to go to the speed trials at the Bonneville Salt Flats but there are none at this time of year.

The return home from the Clown Motel is currently unplanned.  We may add a stop or two along the way back but we will be playing it by ear.

Weekly Ephemera #170

Another couple of weeks that really didn't matter much.

• We really didn't do anything.  The Wife watched basketball and went to Mass , including one with her little cousin.  I just vegged, napped, and didn't do much else.
• I finally finished "Alien:Earth"  It took me two months to finish the last three episodes.  I liked it but it didn't excite me.
  
  I watched "Jurassic World: Rebirth" with expectations of seeing ScarJo kill some dinosaurs.  Strangely enough, no dinosaurs were killed by any of the humans, as far as I could see.  Several humans were killed by the dinosaurs though.  It was ok but it felt a little flat for me.
• I walked four times over the last two weeks.  I walked 29.8 miles (48 km) since my last Weekly Ephemera post.  On my last walk I must have looked bad as a lady in a car stopped and asked if I needed a ride.

Weekly Ephemera #169

Last weekend was a bit busy so I missed  a weekly update so this one will include some of last week.

• Last weekend the Wife's aunt and cousins visited from Florida.  They treated us to a Creighton men's Basketball game.  Unfortunately, my sports curse which had disappeared seems to have returned and Creighton lost.

Creighton vs Saint John

• This weekend the Wife hosted Bread Camp for her niece's husband and five year old son.  She taught them how to make different types of dough with their bread machine and made homemade pizza for dinner.
• We have finalized the bones of our next three trips.  The first will be a road trip after the Winter Olympics around Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California.  The second is just under two weeks in Cape Town, South Africa at the end of July.  The last is a month-long trip to Paris, northern France, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium.  We have quirky things planned for all three of these trips, which I will document in posts prior to our travel dates.
• Over the last two weeks I walked four times for a total of 30.7 miles (49.4 km).  I missed a couple of walking days due to the visits.

2025 Balkans and Malta Travels - Magnet Edition

We Purchased magnets on our Balkan and Malta travels last fall, as we usually do, and added fifty-two new magnets to our collection.  Our collection now stands at Eight-Hundred-Thirty-Eight magnets.  Here are a few of my favorites from our last travels.

Zeus.

Meteora, Greece.

Communist era pillbox in Tirana, Albania.

Northern Macedonian shoes and dress.

Popeye, filmed in Malta.

You can see our entire collection in our 2006-2025 Travel Magnets Google Photos album.  You can also access them from the Travel Magnets tab above.

Weekly Ephemera #168

The Holiday season has come to an end and, frankly, it felt like the shortest Holiday season ever.

• On New Year's day, after a quiet New Year's Eve, I took down the wreaths, lights, and ornaments from the front yard.  I took down the Christmas tree.  The Wife took the rest of the indoor decorations.  I will be stuffing everything into the furnace room closet this week sometime.
• I didn't walk this week.  I decided to take the last week of 2025 off.
• We watched the finale of "Stranger Things", which was a good end of the series.  Unfortunately it ended wide open for a sequel series.

Best Photo Of 2025

We had a quiet New Year's Eve watching the celebrations around the world.

I looked through my favorite photos I took in 2025.  From the three trips we took, plus a few I took in between the travels, I ended up with twenty-six that I would call my favorites.  Of those, my favorite is a simple one taken in Chichicastenango, Guatemala.  It shows a can of burning incense and flower petals on the steps of a church/mayan temple.

"Smokey Faith"
by Bruce H.
(Taken on the 13th of February, 2025)

I can't wait to see what photos I capture in the coming year.  I just have to keep my eyes open.

A Homer's Travel's Look Back At 2025

2025 was a mix. On the negative side there was politics. It sucked. This year successfully destroyed my news-junky nature.  By the fall, I was no longer paying that much attention to news.  I kept myself informed but I didn't dive deep into it.  An early year, low-grade prostate cancer diagnosis was a cherry on top of the crappy part of the year.

The positive side included a return to Guatemala where I spent my teenage years, the completion of the Wife's Camino, and a trip to the Balkans and Malta.  In general, these trips, and my life in general, were pleasant.  No major drama, no major issues, and a smooth year was a nice change from the last few years of turmoil. 

Let's look back at 2025, shall we:

• January:  Our Christmas cactus bloomed for the first time, weeks later than usual.  It's time sense, like mine, has been way off.  This would persist throughout 2025.  I had disappointing medical test results.  I explained how I rate books.  I avoided news on inauguration day ... but it still happened.
• February:  Despite avoiding the inauguration, I still Doom scrolled, which also persisted throughout the year.  We went to Guatemala for two weeks, a sort of homecoming for me (I documented the trip in March posts).  
• March:  While we were in Guatemala, the first snow and cold of Winter arrived and was missed.  I had a kidney stone removed.  The prostate biopsy done during the stone removal found the presence of low grade prostate cancer.  For some reason, this really didn't bother me.
• April:  Tariffs were announced and we divested.  I kind of regret doing that.  I thought about forming an escape plan.  Our roof finally had the hail damage from last July repaired.  I added more metal sheeting on the she-shed wall to hold our ever-growing travel magnet collection.
• May:  We spent a long weekend in Minneapolis celebrating family and antiquing.  I finally photographed the Great Britain and Guatemalan magnets.  We got a new Pope.  We had a houseguest.  We returned to Spain to finish the Wife's Camino.  The day we started walking would have been my Mom's ninetieth birthday.
• June:  We walked the Camino the entire month of June.  The Wife had no foot issues and we never took a break.  I worked through some issues that darkened my mood and surrendered to the experience.  This was the first month since I started Homer's Travels that I've never posted even once.
• July:  We finished the Wife's Camino including walking to Finistere and a visit to Muxia.  I decided not to document every day of the Camino.  We had a low-key twenty-eighth anniversary celebration as we were too tired to do anything.  Our dog-friend Cooper stayed with us for a week.  I turned sixty-two.
• August:   We went to an underwhelming Santa Lucia Festival procession.  The anniversary of my Mom's death came and went.  I celebrated my faithful backpack and its retiring.  I had another bad blood test and am now on diabetes medication.  An unwanted vole was found in a planter.  Starting in late July and through August and some of September I really didn't do much.  I had a period of powering down, quiet, and a lot of television watching.
• September:  Another doctor's appointment.  No bad news so that's good.  I posted about our Camino magnets. Another autumn arrived.  Another rapture did not arrive.  We prepared for another adventure.
• October: We traveled most of this month in Greece, Albania, Northern Macedonia, and Malta.
• November: I started documenting our Balkan and Malta travels this month.  Iago got a proper burial.  We celebrated an early Thanksgiving with family.  I had my last doctor's appointment for the year and I seem to be doing ok.  We had our first snow.
• December: 
• Hiking: 2025 was a good year for walking.  This year was my third highest number of miles walked at 1,043 miles (1,678.6 km) over 115 hikes, the second highest number of hikes since I started keeping records.  The Wife's Camino contributed a large chunk of those miles.
  
• Books: I set a goal to read fifteen books this year and, unlike last year, I met my goal.  I read nearly everyday including while we were traveling (which is odd for me) though I slowed down a lot near the end of the year.   Here are my Goodreads Stats for 2025.
• Concerts, Shows & Music :  We went to a few concerts this year. With the Wife, I went to Bob Dylan. I also went to Kansas and Rilo Kiley by myself.
  
  I listened to a lot of music this year - mostly during naps and on long airplane trips. According to Spotify I listened to 2,184 songs from 1,075 artists for 44,358 minutes, so I listened to fewer songs, from fewer artists, for more time than in 2024.  Spotify thinks I am sixty-nine years old.  This actually makes some sense since my taste in music came from my brother who was five years older than me.  Here is my Spotify 2025 Wrapped if you want to explore what the shuffle button did music-wise this year.
• I posted 93 times this year. Not as many as 2024 but good enough I guess.  As usual, I think I need to write more. 

What will 2026 bring? We are going on a southwest road trip which will include visiting with friends.  We are planning a Cape Town, South Africa trip in the summer and a northern European trip including northern France, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg in the fall.  Other than that we will be trying to keep our sanity intact and brace ourselves for what 2026 has in store for us.

Here's to a Happy, Prosperous, and Healthy New Year for all.  May you all find happiness in 2026.

First Bloom

Yesterday, despite it being late this year again, one of our Christmas cactuses has bloomed.

December 30th bloom.