Why is traveling with a dog like painting a house?

Why is traveling with a dog like painting a house? Because preparation is everything.
We're about to embark -- figuratively and literally -- upon our most challenging journey yet.  Tomorrow, we will board the Azamara Quest at the Port of Miami for a 12-night Colonial South and Caribbean cruise to Charleston, South Carolina, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Grand Turks and Caicos. This will be interesting.

The first challenge is making sure Xingxing can come ashore to participate in the land tours that I'm taking in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Grand Turks and Caicos, none of which have Service Dog legislation. The Dominican Republic simply asks for an International Veterinary Certificate dated within 30 days of arrival.  That's easy.
Turks and Caicos (part of the Bahamas) is more complicated.  Naturally.  They're British, and the Brits are sniffy about animals.  You have to fill out a form and mail it to the Department of Agriculture in Nassau, with $15 cash or a money order.  (No checks) I did that, back in September.
Haiti is tricky.  They also want an International Veterinary Certificate, but it has to be dated within 7 days of arrival.  We set sail on December 8th, and get to Haiti on December 15th.  Ooops!  As there is no veterinarian aboard the Azamara Quest, we'll have to get the International Veterinary Certificate in Charleston, South Carolina.  I find a veterinary practice that seems to be located reasonably close to where the ship will dock, contact them, make an appointment and arrange for Xingxing's veterinary records to be faxed to them.
By late October, I still haven't heard back from the Bahaman Department of Agriculture.  So I telephone.  Yes, they received my application.  It should be processed within a couple of days.  In mid-November, I call again.  Progress has been made. The application has been approved, but they can't fax it to me. They've mailed it, instead.  It eventually arrives, with my money order stapled to it.  It is definitely a permit, signed and sealed.  But why they didn't cash the money order?
 I don't know what this means, but decide to think positive.
The next step is getting permission for Xingxing to accompany me on the actual tours.  Being allowed to come ashore doesn't necessarily mean he'll be allowed to board the tour bus.  Luckily, Azamara Club Cruises has a special department to handle such matters -- all permissions granted!  So that was easy, but you can't just assume things will be easy.
D'you see what I mean about preparations?

Acoma: The Oldest Continuously Inhabited City in North America -- Bet You Didn't Know That!

Acoma is off the beaten track.  Not far.  And there's a casino, to tempt you -- if you are tempted by things like a casino.  But it definitely involves a detour, one that I might never have taken if Christopher hadn't wanted to visit Acoma.
At least, it's a paved road -- although I must say, it is not what you'd call a promising paved road.  In the distance, there was what looked like a huge something.  A rock, maybe.  But it was too big to be a rock.  It was a mesa.  It's 400 feet high, but from the ground, it looks higher.  You'd feel pretty safe, living in a village built on top of something like this. One wonders how the Spanish managed to conquer these people.
There's a Visitor Center at the base of the mesa.  And tours, because you can only visit Acoma on an accompanied tour.  The road that runs up the side of the mesa was built in 1940, for a John Wayne movie.  Today, it's used by the bus that takes visitors like us to the top.
"But I don't know how safe your dog will be", we were warned by the woman who sold us our tickets.  "There are dogs running around loose up there."
We zippered Xingxing into his stroller and boarded the bus.  Xingxing had never been zippered in, before but he didn't seem to mind.  He is a very laid back dog.  However, this is something to bear in mind if you are traveling with a dog and planning to visit pueblos -- a stroller comes in handy.
So there we were, on top of this mesa.  Adobe dwellings.  A few people still live here, although there's no electricity and no running water.
Our guide -- an Acoman -- told us that all the buildings still belonged to individuals.  He pointed out his own family home,  and told us that when his parents died, it would go to his youngest sister.  All the real estate is owned by the women, and it is always passed down to the youngest daughter -- the idea being that she's the one who will live the longest, and thus be able to care for other family members. His grandmother was sitting outside, selling slices of cherry pie. She gave him one.
Most of the tour was about Acoma history -- and in particular, how it was interrupted by the Spanish conquest and corrupted by Franciscan priests, who proscribed the Acoma religion and executed Acoma shamans.  From the vehemence of our guide, you would think all of this happened last year, instead of 500 years ago.  Acoma memory runs deep.
One of the things they are particularly touchy about is photographs.   There is a church (built by the Franciscans and no longer used for Christian worship) and an adjacent graveyard, in which people are buried in layers. There are four layers, but there won't be any more, because four is a sacred number to the Acoma.  No photographs are allowed of the church, or of the graveyard, or of any living person.  A hapless tourist who was trying to photograph birds flying above the church and accidentally captured a distant Acoman repairing his roof had all her photographs deleted by our guide.  As I say, he took all this very seriously.  This was his home. This was his life. These were his people.
There were no dogs.  It was very hot, and they were probably all inside.  Xingxing slept through the whole thing.
Acoma is one of those places where there are more ghosts than people.  At one point, when the tour group got a bit ahead of us and we paused in the shade, the ghosts were palpable.  You couldn't see them, but you could feel them.  And of course, the views from up here are spectacular.  Again, I found myself wondering how the Spanish ever managed to defeat these people in the first place.  Or why they'd even want to.
I also wonder how many more years it will be before the Acoma claim sovereignty once more, and again become masters of these lands they ruled for so many centuries.  
We left Acoma in a quiet, thoughtful state of mind and got as far as Holbrook, where we spent the night.  By noon the next day, we were back in Scottsdale.

Albuquerque: Another Museum You Must Not Miss

By the time we dragged ourselves away from Santa Fe and hit the road for Albuquerque, it was late afternoon.  But who cares what time it is when you're having fun?  And we all had a good time in Santa Fe.
The sky over New Mexico is a scenic attraction in itself.  Partly, it's because there aren't many towns -- you've just got miles and miles of flatlands and mesas and mountains, untouched by human hands.  The sky is a great big playground for the clouds and wind and some of the cloud formations are truly spectacular.  New Mexico isn't a wealthy state, but it is a magnificently beautiful state.
Our motel in Albuquerque was at the edge of Old Town.  We settled into our rooms, enjoyed the company of our trusty traveling companion Johnny Walker, gave Xingxing his dinner and then set out to see what we could of Old Town before it go too dark.
There was a mariachi band playing in the square, and we sat on a bench and enjoyed the music and the general ambience as the sun set.  There were still a few shops open, and Christopher has never met a shop he didn't like. The infinite variety of merchandise in New Mexico is amazing, and so are the usually quite modest prices.
We had dinner at a Mexican cantina, and walked back to our motel beneath a star-studded sky, Xingxing slumbering contentedly in his stroller.
The next day was Thursday, and we had to be back in Scottsdale by midday Friday.  And there was still Acoma to come. We took advantage of our Best Western Motel's generous, free hot breakfast (so we wouldn't have to waste tine eating lunch) and pondered our next move. The shops in Old Town wouldn't be open until 10 am.  So what else was there to do in Albuquerque, this early in the morning?

I was here some years ago and seemed to remember that the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History adjacent to Old Town had an interesting sculpture garden.  It does indeed. And a number of new pieces have been added since my last visit, all of them stunning. The architecture of the museum itself is worth a visit, even if it's not open.  And a sculpture garden is really an open-air museum.  Christopher
 was so impressed by the outside of the building that he wanted to see what it looked like inside, so he went up to the front door to peek in and guess what?  They were open!  Turns out, they open at 9 AM --an hour earlier than most museums.
We browsed the art and ended up in the Museum Shop -- well, where else?  It is an exceptionally tempting Museum Shop.  In recent years, Museum Shops have become a shopping genre of their own, many of the larger ones transmogrifying into sprawling upmarket boutiques.  Every now and then, you find a Museum Shop in a smaller place that is nonetheless amazing.  This was one of them.  If you're ever in Albuquerque -- even if you're not big on museums -- don't miss this museum shop.  (By the way and as long as we're on the subject, another really good museum shop is the one at the Tucson Museum of Art)
The plan was to proceed to Acoma -- where we would do a guided tour -- and then push on as far as we felt like going, perhaps all the way to Flagstaff.

Santa Fe: Art, Shopping, and a New Museum

We stayed in downtown Santa Fe, just two blocks from the green, shady, totally inviting central plaza. Say what you will about the Spanish, they definitely knew how to plan towns.
Xingxing loved Santa Fe -- after all those white sands and little green aliens, he was happy to be back where there were things like sidewalks, grass, trees and doggy smells.  Especially the latter. As everyone who is owned by a dog knows, finding just the right spot is vital when a dog needs to do what dogs gotta do.  And few dogs want to be the first to go where no dog has gone before.  This proved to be a bit of a problem at the White Sands Monument.
But we saw lots of dogs in Santa Fe, which is a very dog friendly town.  And where there are dogs there is an abundance of tempting spots -- in the course of a single block, Xingxing stopped and lifted his leg no less than twelve times, letting everyone know he had come to town.  Someone wrote that dogs write their history in urine.  Xingxing certainly does.
Santa Fe is actually a city, but it feels like a town because there are hardly any buildings over two stories high -- which is delightful, really.  The architecture is Southwest adobe, the colors sunburnt browns and pinks, the population easy-going and relaxed.  Artistic souls are drawn to the ambience, and the local art scene is purely incredible.  So are the shops.  You can buy things here you wouldn't see anywhere else in the world.
Shopping is fine with Xingxing, so long as he can ride in his stroller.  In fact, just about anything is fine with Xingxing when he's in his stroller.  So instead of spending all our money in the Dinosaur Shop, we left Christopher there haggling over a chunk of meteorite on a chain and headed for the newly-opened History Museum of New Mexico.
This three-dimensional, multi-media presentation is not to be missed -- suffice it to say, museums have come a long way since I was a girl!  Touch screens, video commentary, interactives and a simply breathtaking 17-minute film in the Manifest Destiny section combine to make a visit to this museum a feast for the ear, eye and mind.  From the talking petroglyphs to the Pueblo Revolt to the Harvey Girls to the "secret city" of Los Alamos -- what a trip!
My favorite was the room that featured a full-size covered wagon -- the kind the settlers used, coming West -- and a series of voice-overs taken from settlers' actual words.  One woman said, After weeks of travel, we arrive at a city of mud.  Everything is mud.  The streets are mud. The houses are mud. The walls are mud.  Everything is mud.  There is nothing here but mud.
She meant adobe, of course.  But you can sympathize.
We met up with Christopher and had lunch in a courtyard restaurant and bought stuff, and wandered around some more.  I found a bronze statue of a dancing Ganesh, something I have always wanted. I saw one once, years ago.  But it was expensive and I hesitated for several days and by the time I made up my mind to buy it and went back to the store, it was gone.  You see images of Ganesh standing on one leg, and sitting, but rarely dancing. Wouldn't you know I'd find it in Santa Fe? And before we left for Albuquerque, we went back to the Dinosaur Shop and I bought a Tibetan singing bowl.  I have also always wanted a Tibetan singing bowl.
And we had to get this shot of Xingxing and me in front of the skeleton of a prehistoric cave bear. I mean, how often do we get to pose with a cave bear?

So What Really Happened at Roswell on July 7 1947?

Over 60 years ago, something fell out of the sky and crashed on a sheep ranch near Roswell, New Mexico.  But was it a UFO manned by aliens?  Or was it just a weather balloon?
Lt. Walter Haut, a bombardier navigator stationed at Roswell Army Air Field and acting as PR officer wrote the first report about the incident, describing a "saucer" made of some sort of unknown metal.  The next day, General Roger Ramey pooh-poohed this version and told the media the saucer was really only a weather balloon.  But according to W. Glenn Dennis (who was working at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell) members of the military had been asking around trying to find youth-sized caskets.  And a friend who worked at the base hospital said he'd seen doctors examining something that was alive, but not human.
The military closed ranks, as only the military can.  For over 30 years, nothing more was heard about the matter.  But in 1980, "The Roswell Incident" by Charles Berlitz and William Moore appeared and the world has been fascinated ever since.
There was so much interest in Roswell and what did -- or did not -- happen there that Haut and Dennis had the idea of establishing a UFO Museum, which opened in 1991 and logged its one-millionth visitor ten years later.  About 150,000 people visit the UFO Museum every month, which is impressive, as Roswell isn't exactly on the beaten track.

The UFO Museum's exhibits include extensive information -- including statements from witnesses, copies of original newspaper reports, a radio announcement and documentation describing the subsequent cover-up -- as well as fascinating material about crop circles and alien abductions. There's also some "fun" stuff, like the flying saucer and animatronic aliens that flash blue lights and belch smoke every hour or so.  And sets from the Showtime Movie, "Roswell".  My personal favorite was the cartoon wall, featuring dozens of cartoons concerning Roswell.  One of them depicts a General asking another General, So why have we kept a weather balloon on a life support system for the past 60 years?
The evidence is pretty overwhelming.  There was a cover-up.  But why?  We're presented with a whole list of reasons.  The government was afraid there would be a panic.  The government was afraid it was all a Russian plot.  The government didn't want to offend people who believed in God.  None of these reasons are very convincing.  So what really happened?  We still don't know.  But as they say, The truth is out there.
Whether or not you believe in UFOs and alien abductions, the UFO Museum at Roswell is definitely worth a visit, even if it involves going miles out of your way.  It is fascinating, and it is fun. There is also an annual UFO Festival, held early in July.  That sounds like fun, too.  And there's quite a good selection of motels (most of them dog friendly) and restaurants in Roswell if you decide to stay over, which we did.
Xingxing toured the Museum in his stroller, and was unimpressed -- probably because there weren't any dogs involved.  If he could have asked a question it would probably have been something like, Why didn't they bring their dogs along with them?  But he cheered up enormously when we reached the gift shop and he was presented with a little green stuffed alien, which he chewed on happily as Christopher and I shopped for souvenirs.

White Sands National Monument

It's called White Sands National Monument, and Christopher expected little more than a statue.  (I don't know what Xingxing expected) But what we found was nothing less than  the largest gypsum sand desert in the entire world.
The white, gypsum sands really are white, spectacularly so. They are arranged in undulating dunes which are constantly on the move, traveling as  much as 38 feet in a single year.  The gypsum comes from the surrounding mountains.  It is leached out by the rain, and flows down the sides of the mountains to collect in pools, where it forms soft crystals as the pools dry out.  The crystals are light enough to be blown about by the wind, and when this happens, they break up into smaller and smaller particles, eventually forming fine, white sand.
People climb the dunes and slide down them and take photographs, but I suspect it wouldn't be all that difficult to get quite lost here, and quite quickly.  Once you're out of sight of the road, it all looks pretty much the same.  Because the dunes are continually moving, the road has to be plowed regularly.
Prevailing winds blow the sands across the flat basin and gradually, as the winds grow weaker, sand accumulates and grasses and other vegetation take root, forming a boundary of sorts. Animals live here -- mostly small, and mostly nocturnal.  We didn't see any of them.
Christopher climbed a dune to see what was on the other side -- more dunes -- but Xingxing and I were less adventurous, sticking to the boardwalk which has been constructed to give visitors a feeling of the desert without the risk of losing themselves in the white vastnesses.
Driving along past all these huge, white mounds of sand was a bit unworldly -- which I guess was a good preparation for our next stop: Roswell, and the International UFO Museum.

Xingxing Hits the Road Again

Our Australian friend Christopher recently paid us a visit.
While he was here, he said he'd like to visit Roswell, Santa Fe and Acoma, all of which are in New Mexico.  So last Saturday we hit the road. Although Xingxing has done one-day car trips -- to Mexico and to San Diego -- he has never actually done a road trip.  And sometimes, he does get car sick.  This is happening less and less as he gets older, but I truly didn't know how he'd handle having to get back into the car and travel for several hours at a stretch, day after day.  I also wondered how he'd feel about having someone else in the car with us, sitting in his seat. However, there was only one way to find out.
Our first day's drive was the longest, from Scottsdale to Las Cruces, New Mexico.  This is a good, solid six-hour drive at the best of times, about the same as amount of driving that it takes to get from here to San Diego. We got a late start and ended up stopping for lunch in Tucson, which made the trip even longer.  Xingxing didn't have lunch (he never does) but he did have a few nibbles of bread and butter, which he absolutely loves.  He also had a drink of water.
This -- I realized after the fact -- probably wasn't the greatest of ideas. But Xingxing was amazingly, incredibly good.  I'd put a little doggy bed in the back seat, and when he wasn't curled up in it he was sitting on Christopher's lap, having a cuddle.  Here in Arizona, it is against the law to drive with a dog sitting on your lap, so simultaneous driving and snuggling was a new experience for him.  He definitely liked it. AndChristopher is a dog person who quite enjoys dog kisses, so everyone was having fun.
Even so, that first day was a long drive.  At dusk, it began to drizzle.  I don't see very well at night, so Christopher took over the driving for the last stretch.  Coming into Las Cruces, there was roadwork, as well.  Really poorly lit roadwork. The last little bit off the exit ramp was like an obstacle course.
By the time we got to the motel it was two hours past Xingxing's usual dinner time -- and he'd missed his afternoon walk.  (It was also an hour later, because Arizona doesn't have Daylight Savings Time and New Mexico does -- but dogs don't have to worry about these human-made technicalities)
Xingxing was unfazed by any of it. He ate his dinner, drank some water, had his walk, did what dogs do, curled up in bed next to me and went happily off to sleep.