Category: Road Trips

Red Raven Restaurant – Williams, Arizona Restaurant Review

Most of our photo outings are day trips, but when we go too far away, we spend the night with the Patels. That means eating on the road. Usually, dinner out, and If the motel doesn’t provide waffles, then breakfast too. That was the case on our recent Williams trip.

My default reference is Trip Advisor to find a decent place to eat. I’ve even contributed a couple of reviews. When I looked up a place for dinner in Williams, their top-rated restaurant was the Red Raven. With a bit of effort and a couple of mouse clicks, I pulled up their dinner menu on my screen. Right off the top, I found two dishes that I enjoy listed under house specialties; Filet Oscar and Grilled Duck Breast (I’d order duck more often, but when I do, Anne—in her best Daffy Duck voice—says, “Thatssh Dishspickable.”). With items like that on the menu, we had dinner sorted before we jumped into Archie.

Ambiance

The first unusual thing was at Red Raven’s front door. It was locked with a note above a doorbell that read, “Please Ring for Service.” After you ring—sometimes twice—a hostess greets you outside. I don’t know if this is their standard modus operandi or a Covid 19 thing, but it works well. After your greeter politely asks a couple of questions—party number, reservations—they find a table and usher you inside. Right away, you see that although the ceiling is above the two-story arched windows, it’s a small room with a limited number of tables. Managing the door this way reduces unnecessary tourist traffic—like people wanting to use the bathroom.

The dining room takes up the entire width of the brick building, and the tables are spaced apart in three rows. The wall bottoms are wainscoted with a pleasant green beadboard. The plastered walls above the chair-rail are painted a soft yellow—buttercup or custard if you’re into that sort of thing. High and well out of reach is a plate rail with china and other trinkets tastefully displayed. The hanging artwork resembles a Pairs bistro. Missing from the décor are novelty signs with folksy sayings, and there isn’t a single TV anywhere. Once you’re seated at your table, you’ll notice that the staff is all women. The waitresses wear classic French bistro aprons, and the hostess is the manager doing double duty.

Menu

The menu provides several choices for appetizers, salads, specialties, grilled entrees, and plates of pasta. Their wine list is impressive for a small place. It includes several choices for each grape varietal, so it covers several pages. They have a good selection of beer on tap, including some from the local Williams craft brewery.

I was first attracted to the Filet Oscar. Traditionally it’s a veal dish topped with crab meat, asparagus, and béarnaise sauce. Veal has become persona-non-grata these days, so the chef substituted beef filet in its place. It’s been years since I’ve had any version of Oscar, but then I saw the price. Knowing that we needed gas money to get home, I ordered a New York strip with a side of béarnaise instead. I like to compare with my own. From the list of sides, I chose a couple of things I’ve never had; Southwest Pilaf and Tempura battered Broccolini. Anne also went with a New York strip but smothered hers with mushrooms in a Worcestershire and white wine sauce accompanied with mashed potatoes and vegetables.

Our Meals

Anne started with a house salad and vinaigrette dressing. It looked green and fresh. I had the daily soup, which they called Hot Italian Sausage and Vegetable puree. I’m familiar with the Italian Wedding version with a clear broth, but this looked like a lumpy split pea. It didn’t taste like that. The sausage was spicy, and the creamy puree was delicious. I soon annoyed the rest of the guests with my slurping and spoon, trying to scrape every drop out of the bowl.

Next, the mains came out looking appetizing on the plate. Our 8oz steaks were cut in European style—sliced thin with all of the fat trimmed off—more like a cutlet than a chop. I prefer my steaks twice as thick because thinner cuts are often overcooked. Not a problem here. The chef grilled both our steaks a perfect medium-rare. They had good flavor but sadly was a bit on the tough side. I enjoyed the sauce, which was very tangy, just like I make mine. If I had a gripe, it would be with the pilaf. Calling a dish Southwest means that it ran into a jalapeno at least once. My serving was simple pilaf. Anne said that her steak was as she ordered it, but she thought the potatoes were loose.

I usually skip dessert, but Anne insisted on a menu. The Queen picks her deserts by how many times the word chocolate appears in the description. She found one. Chocolate, on top of chocolate, wrapped in chocolate, then run over with a chocolate truck. There was enough cocoa to satiate her because she let me have a bite and took leftovers home in a box.

Conclusion

I can’t entirely agree with rating a restaurant with stars or forks. It’s an obscure concept and doesn’t translate into real-world experiences (especially if it’s an unknown review, like me), so I will do something different. There are no Michelin Star restaurants in Arizona, but we’ve been lucky enough to dine at a few in San Francisco. Nominating a place for a Michelin Star will be my high bar. At the scales other ends, I’m want to use a well-known but mediocre restaurant. I’m using Applebee’s for this review because we’ve all eaten there, and I’ll go to Applebee’s again if there’s nothing better. To me, Applebee’s is … meh!

So, I think that the Red Raven is a few notches above our standard because of its atmosphere, imaginative menus, preparation (the food is cooked in-house), taste, and service. It is not at the Michelin level (yet?), and I agree with the Trip Advisor reviewers. With some improvements, we could stop qualifying our recommendations by saying: “It’s a great restaurant—for Williams.”

Until next time — jw

Red Raven – lunch till 2:00 dinner starts a 5:00.

Grand Canyon Hotel Picture of the Week

Almost two centuries ago, a peculiar group of men earned a living by hunting and trapping wild game in the mountain west. That’s right; they were the Mountain Men. Although they were legendary, there were only about a thousand of them, and their heyday only lasted 20 years. They preferred pack mules to people, so they traveled alone. One of these men was exceptional and was admired even among his peers. They called him Ol’ Bill Williams.

The Arizona historian—Marshall Tremble—describes Bill as a 6 foot, skinny redhead with a high-pitched voice and a peculiar walk—more of a stagger. His Osage wife must have had olfactory problems because even his cronies complained that he should take a bath once in a while. I didn’t find any references about Bill’s Arizona travels, but he must have impressed many Arizonans because our state has a trail, an annual gathering, a river, a mountain, and a town named in his honor. That town is the anchor for our October project—Williams, Arizona.

Williams is another railroad town along Arizona’s northern east/west corridor. First Nation people, trappers, railroads, and dust bowl migrants stopped here because there’s water. It’s located on the Colorado Plateau about an hour west of the Flagstaff volcanoes. A few miles west of Williams, you quickly descend into the transition zone and the grasslands around Ash Fork.

Sultana Bar - Williams has a couple of proper dive-bars right out of a Micky Spillane novel.
Sultana Bar – Williams has a couple of proper dive bars right out of a Micky Spillane novel.

The current attraction of Williams today is Route 66 memorabilia. Shops line the historic downtown area selling posters, t-shirts, car signs, and other useless trinkets of that ilk. But that’s not what we’ll be concentrating on this month. I’ve already covered that in our Seligman series. Besides, I’ve already said that Route 66 may have already jumped the shark. Car stuff was important for my generation, and maybe the one following us. Millennials don’t seem interested in cars or property. Owning a car was our independence. To them, it’s a ball and chain.

Williams began as a railroad town on one of the busiest routes in the country. It also has a couple of exciting spurs. One that goes past my house into Phoenix and another that runs to the Grand Canyon. Santa Fe built that line to lure eastern tourists into seeing the park. That ride is still famous today, and passengers get dumped at the El Tovar Hotel. If you had deep pockets, you could hop a train at Grand Central Station and stay in two of Arizona’s historic hotels—the Railroad Hotel in Williams and El Tovar at the canyon.

Grand Canyon Hotel - The historic Grand Canyon Hotel's neon sign lights up a couple of blocks in downtown Williams.
Grand Canyon Hotel – The historic Grand Canyon Hotel’s neon sign lights up a couple of blocks in downtown Williams.

As I said already, I’m not going to focus (get it?) on the Route 66 stuff this month, but I couldn’t help myself when I saw the historic and bright neon lights—ooh, shiny. I love them, especially when they’re not working completely. So that explains this week’s featured image that I call Grand Canyon Hotel (or should it be H tel). I’m not sure that I’d stay there. It would be like staying at Miss Kitty’s Long Branch Saloon—dancing girls, cards, drunks, and gunfights all night long. The sign is the brightest on the street, and it casts its red glow for blocks.

Also, in the lower-left corner of the photo, you can see the Red Raven’s awning. Trip Advisor rates it the top restaurant in Williams. Queen Anne and I had a wonderful meal there. It’s a bit pricy but better than the rest of the burger-and-fries joints in town. I’ll write a complete review if you’re interested—that means begging me in the comments.

You can see a larger version of Grand Canyon Hotel on its Web Page by clicking here. Next week, we’ll start our tour of the Williams area, and you can see what we found. Come back then.

Until next time — jw

Five Cairns Picture of the Week

If you’ve ever hiked a backcountry trail, you know about cairns. They’re the road signs hikers use to stay on track. They’re simply piles of rocks high enough to be seen and reassure travelers that they’re following the right path. According to Wikipedia, cairns have been around throughout time all around the world.

I don’t know who has the time to build and maintain these stone piles, so I’ve concluded that it must be the Pixies. If you think about it, who else has the skills to precariously balance rocks on top of one another that magically survive wind and rainstorms? You never see humans stopping to build them. Yeah, it’s definitely the Pixies.

The markers confirm the obvious on some trails—like this month’s hike up the Little Granite Peak trail. The steep climb from the parking area to the first flat was like tromping through a rain gutter. Runoff and traffic have carved a trough that’s easy to follow. On the other hand, where trails traverse slick rock areas, cairns will reliably mark the easiest path. When I hiked to Coyote Gulch in Utah, there were long sections of trail where I had to stop at one of the cairns and look for the next one before I went any further. Later I found that the markers kept me from having to scramble down treacherous cliffs.

Another time that I remember cairns saving my butt was on the outing to Cedar Mesa. While Queen Anne waited in the truck, I hiked down into Cigarette Canyon to get this shot of Fallen Roof Ruin. She insisted that I leave the keys with her. After reaching the canyon bottom, I only had to trudge a mile before I spotted the ruin nesting high in the cliffs. Paying no attention to my route, I scrambled up the smooth sandstone wall with my camera and tripod.

Fallen Roof Ruin - Built high above a canyon floor, these ruins were a strenuous hike to get to, but a treacherous path down.
Fallen Roof Ruin – Built high above a canyon floor, these ruins were a strenuous hike to get to but a treacherous path down.

After getting my shot, I started my descent, but what I saw scared me. It was one of those steep hills where you could only see the first few feet before the ground plunged out of sight—like the first hill of a roller coaster. I had visions of rescuers finding my skeletal remains among the ruins because I became trapped there. Anne would surely get bored and drive off, leaving me to rot alone. But as I searched for a way down, I spotted a pile of rocks to one side, so I headed toward them. From there, I saw more cairns that made a zigzag pattern down to the bottom. Thank God I didn’t have to make Anne put down her book and get out of the truck to find me.

Five Cairns - This little cairn didn't like the way you looked at her, this little cairn didn't like the way you spoke to her, this little cairn hated the way you bumped into her, this little cairn thought you smelled, and this little cairn went "wee, wee, wee," all the way to the police station.
Five Cairns – This little cairn didn’t like the way you looked at her, this little cairn didn’t like the way you spoke to her, this little cairn hated the way you bumped into her, this little cairn thought you smelled, and this little cairn went “wee, wee, wee,” all the way to the police station.

So, imagine my smile when I reached the first intersection on the Little Granite Mountain trail and saw five miniature cairns lined up on top of a boulder the size of a small Toyota. This spot must be where the fairies had a picnic. It was off the path behind some bushes, so these weren’t actual trail markers. They were left by the little people having some mischievous fun.

You can see a larger version of Five Cairns on its Web Page by clicking here. Next week, we start a new project, so come back and see where the road leads us.

Until next time — jw

Sierra Prieta Afternoon Picture of the Week

I broke down and bought one of those dorky bicycle helmets. Not the pink and white one that Anne picked out. She only liked it because it came with a Hello Kitty backpack, ideal for carrying my Capri Sun juice boxes. Mine’s bright silver with a black visor, and when I wear it, I look like the cartoon character in Pearls Before Swine—Jeff the Cyclist. Women swoon when I ride by.

I didn’t buy a helmet as a riding accouterment; it was a practical choice. A couple of weeks ago, I fell off my bike and landed on my head in a neighbor’s front yard. Don’t worry, nary a scratch, so I got up and finished my ride, but I was all over Amazon the minute I got home.

The bike was an innocent bystander in the crash; the real culprit was my balance. I’ve had dizzy spells recently. They’re caused by the microscopic sand particles in my inner ear balance thingy—the vestibular system. Some of the particles in my ear have escaped, and when I tilt my head, they brush hairs and set off dizzy spells—vertigo.

As I was climbing the hill on my morning route, I looked down at the chain to see which gear I was in, and when I looked back up, my head started spinning. The spells usually only last a short time, so that I thought I could power through, but the bike kept drifting toward the left curb, and I couldn’t control the steering, so I stopped to get off. If I get dizzy at home, all I need is to touch a wall for balance. There was no wall in the street. I was on my way to the ground before I knew it. I landed on my back, and I pounded the gravel with the back of my head. I sat up and checked for anything broken or bleeding. Then, I glanced around to ensure that no one had seen me before continuing my ride when I found none.

I’ve already seen my doctor, and she gave me exercises to round up those little buggers, so I’m doing better. There are a few recalcitrant grains that still run loose in my ear, but we’ll get them back in their cage eventually.

The dizziness was a concern on this month’s hike, but I wasn’t affected on the trail. I guess that the strenuous exercise kept it at bay, but I touched every boulder and tree along the way to be safe. When I reached the top, I was rewarded with views like in this week’s image.

Sierra Prieta Afternoon - From the top of Little Granite Mountain Trail you can see south all of the way to the Weaver Mountains.
Sierra Prieta Afternoon – From the top of Little Granite Mountain Trail, you can see south all of the way to the Weaver Mountains.

I call this picture Sierra Prieta Afternoon, and in it, you’re looking south from the hilltop. Beyond the eroded granite boulders, there are three mountain ranges. The closest peaks—the ones with color—are the Sierra Prieta. The next range—the one that has the large rounded peak—is the mountains around Kirkland and Skull Valley. Finally, along the horizon on the left-center is a glimpse of the Weavers. Our home is down on the desert floor on their far side—four thousand feet below the point I was standing.

Click here to see a larger version of Sierra Prieta Afternoon on its website. Next week, I’ll finish with a whimsical thing I found on the Little Granite Mountain Trail, so be sure to return.

Until next time — jw

Prescott Basin Picture of the Week

There’s a growing trend in the comedy routines that Queen Anne and I watch on YouTube’s Dry Bar channel. The bits poke fun at young people for not knowing about obsolete things my generation regularly used. I’m not sure if the joke is at the youth’s expense or if it’s simply us old farts complaining about change again.

To give you an example, one performer asked a teen in the audience to explain the relationship between a pencil and a cassette tape (the kid didn’t know what the tape was). Another was about the phone books we used to get each year. The fact that we had to look numbers up on our own was mind-boggling enough, but they couldn’t comprehend that the books were primarily used at grandma’s house as a booster seat. Finally, hold up a 10’ curly phone cord and ask a young person why it existed.

I uncovered another lost phone tradition this week after talking to a particularly annoying salesman. It’s known as the old 40mph-hangup. I learned it from my dad back in the age of unenlightenment. It has Zen-like qualities and resembles a marshal-arts move, but it more closely mimics the grace of a baseball pitch. I’ll try my best to describe it. After you’ve had your fill with the person at the other end of the line, you scream a final taunt—after all, you must have the last word—then as you lift your left leg, you begin to swing your right arm in a full roundhouse motion and slam the handset onto the cradle. It should bounce at least once. I saw my father shatter an old black Bakelite phone we were renting from Ma Bell. Although this hang-up never accomplished anything productive, it always put a satisfying exclamation point on your lunacy.

With remote handsets these days, they took away that small joy of life. No matter how hard you mash the End button, it’s silent. Your adversary doesn’t know if you hung up or the phone dropped the connection. I don’t own a smartphone, but vigorously swiping at the screen can’t be any better. Maybe someone could write an app that plays a recording of a loud car crash before disconnecting. That would come close. Kids don’t know what they’re missing.

Now we have to find another channel to drain all that excess adrenalin. I could have run up and down the Little Granite Mountain Trail a couple of times with that pent-up anger. I wouldn’t have even broken into a sweat by the time I reached upper flats. Instead, I had to stop constantly until the pounding in my ears subsided.

Prescott Basin - You can see miles in any direction from the flats on the Little Granite Mountain Trail, like this view of Prescott to the east.
Prescott Basin – You can see miles in any direction from the flats on the Little Granite Mountain Trail, like this view of Prescott to the east.

It was at one of those rest stops that I got this week’s featured image. Close to the trail’s top, it begins to flatten, and you can finally see above the trees. After I passed this Alligator Juniper, I stopped for a rest. Here, I could see Prescott in the distance below, so I couldn’t resist snapping a photo. The view was hazy from the humidity, so I’m sure it would be spectacular on a clear winter afternoon. I call this photo Prescott Basin. I hope you enjoy seeing it.

You can see a larger version of Prescott Basin on its Web Page by clicking here. Next week, we’ll walk around and take in more views from the top of the trail, so I hope to see you then.

Until next time — jw

North Weaver Shadows Picture of the Week

This is Augusts’ final post; the doves are skittery, there’s football on TV, and my astrological markers are lining up. Hmm—what do you think Mother Nature’s trying to say? For me, these are all precursors to summer’s end and the time when Arizonans will once again emerge from their dens. If we were smart, we’d form a committee to dress up a ground squirrel in a tux, call him Congress Cecil, and have him predict how many weeks of extreme heat warnings remain. The days will still be hot for another month, but soon the evening temperatures make being outdoors tolerable.

I should explain the skittery doves and astrological marker. September 1 is our state’s dove season, so doves begin to move to where the houses are because they have a better chance of not being shot. The day after hunting season closes, the doves return to the open desert and won’t be heard from until they get horny in the spring.

And yes, just like the ancient Anasazi, I have a special marker that precisely tells me when the spring and fall equinoxes happen. I didn’t carve a light-piercing spiral in sandstone as they did; instead, I use Bruce’s—my across-the-street neighbor—roof. Its ridgeline runs east-west, and on the mornings of the equinoxes, the sun comes up from its peak as I enjoy my coffee on my front porch. Y’all should come to join me on September 22. It would really freak out Bruce to see hundreds of people staring at his house at dawn.

North Weaver Shadows
North Weaver Shadows – With help from the setting sun, cumulus clouds cast shadows on the Weaver Mountains.

As I said, this is the last image in my August cloud project. The monsoon took a vacation this week, so the sun’s brought the heat back. It’s had a chance to dry out, and now the yard’s full of weeds. But, Arizona Highway 89 is lined with orange poppies, and I spotted a couple of Palo Verde trees with yellow blossoms. It’s like spring again, and I’m getting that familiar wanderlust feeling.

Our monsoon will be back with a vengeance in a couple of days. There’s a hurricane traveling up Mexico’s west coast, and there’s a good chance it will come up the Gulf of California. When storms do that, it brings more than isolated showers—instead, the whole state gets soaked.

This week’s cloud picture kind of shows the weather’s dry break. The sky is clearer with scattered cumulus clouds. It also shows that it’s not just the puffy white sky-meringue that is pretty, but their shadows make the mountains more interesting. In the photo that I call North Weaver Shadows, we see cumulus cloud shadows cast on the north edge of the Weaver Mountains with help from the setting sun. This is my favorite image in this series because my familiar mountain range is different—more interesting. For your viewing pleasure, I also hid a black cow grazing on the desert floor somewhere in the picture—if you can find it.

You can see a larger version of North Weaver Shadows on its Web Page by clicking here. Next week, I’ll start a new September project. With the coming weather change, I hope I can get some shots in by then. So, be sure to come back and see if Dudley Duwright rescues Lit’l Nell from the railroad tracks in time (if you think about it—if he’s not in time, it’s not much of a rescue—is it?).

Until next time — jw

Sun Rays Picture of the Week

My first photography class was a half-century ago. I had just come home from a year-long tour in Korea with a brand new Nikon F2, and I wanted to learn how to be a photographer. I was stationed in Pasadena at the time (I’d tell you what I did, but then I’d have to kill ya,) and Al Bowman—an old friend—convinced me to sign up for a Pasadena City College night class. As frequently happens with crafts-centered night classes, it was more of a club. Everyone got an A, and the same people always attended each semester.

I no longer remember the instructors’ name, but he had been published in a couple of journals, so his credentials were impeccable to us. Although I wanted to shoot black and white in Ansel Adams style, our classwork was shot using Kodachrome. Each week the teacher would show our work on a Kodak—antique, even then—slide projector that he liked because it was bright and had an exceptional lens. It was essentially a portable searchlight that showed even the most minor flaws when closely viewed. It also doubled to signal Bat Man.

Even in those days, Ansel Adams was the master of landscape photography, but cover shots on Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post, and others of that genre were color. They all followed the formula we read in Kodak’s How to Make Good Pictures—a bible for beginning photographers (I still have my thread worn copy).

The method of shooting landscapes in the book—and what the instructor taught—was that you find an interesting background and properly compose it within your frame, then get a model (wife, friend, stranger) to pose to one side as if they were taking in the beautiful vista. Your model should be wearing something red or bright yellow to capture the viewer’s eye. Finally, if there’s any possible way you could get a sun flare to shine on your model, that was the cherry on the sundae. That classic nature shot had been de rigueur since the thirties.

It was so pervasive, it was trite, and it wasn’t how Ansel shot, so it turned off photographers like me. We felt that there was beauty in nature even if no one was there to enjoy it, and sunrays … really? Although I’ve seasoned over time, I still avoid light beams glowing from clouds. It’s become ingrained. Maybe I’ve over-corrected because of those days.

Sun Rays - Light beams radiate from clouds near Hillside, Arizona.
Sun Rays – Light beams radiate from clouds near Hillside, Arizona.

Those conflicts came to a head with this month’s cloud project. I wanted to show the pretty side of our Monsoon Season, so I’ve been capturing clouds all month. On my last outing, I concentrated on the eastern sky as I drove north to Hillside. The clouds billowed in pure white as they built in the afternoon sun. However, there was a darker, more brooding cell on the left side of the road, but it had shafts of light beaming from it. For miles, I tried to ignore it because it looked too different from my other shots, and <shudder> there were sun rays. It followed me for miles like a puppy wanting attention, so I finally gave in and took this week’s photo that I call Sun Rays. I hope you’re happy since I broke one of my rules, but I will not put a model wearing a red coat in one of my photos—unless that’s all she has on.

To get a shot like this, you have to shoot towards the sun and make sure it’s hidden from the lens. Otherwise, its bright light will wash out the detail around it. Another consideration is how you treat the foreground. In this case, I over-exposed the shot to get some texture in the mountains and then brought back the sky in post-production; otherwise, the ground would have been a lifeless silhouette.

You can see a larger version of Sun Rays on its Web Page by clicking here. Be sure to come back next week to see what happens next.

Until next time — jw