Category Archives: Travels with Maria

Blogging from the road.

Skip the Massage; Get the Facial

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The joys of a real spa.

Yesterday, for Valentines day, my husband treated me to an overnight trip to the Scottsdale Fairmont Princess. The Princess is a five-star resort in North Scottsdale with amenities that remind me why I work so damn hard sometimes.

It was great to get away from town — even for such a short time — to go to a place where “service” and “quality” are more than just words thrown around by people who’ve never experienced them. The Princess’s staff members go out of their way to provide excellent service and make you feel special from the moment you walk in the door. The bellman who escorted me to our room not only pulled my small wheelie bag for me, but pointed out the various restaurants, shops, and other points of interest along the way. In the room, he showed me how to work the thermostat, hung up my jacket before I could stop him, and even fetched ice for the ice bucket. That night, when we went down for dinner at our second choice restaurant, the hostess there tried again to get a table for us at our first choice. (No luck.) We wound up eating in the Princess’s low-end restaurant, which still offered better service, a more interesting menu, and better prepared food than any restaurant in Wickenburg. (I will admit that Rancho de los Caballeros has a better wine list.) Even room service this morning was a special treat: fresh fruit and plain yogurt for me and blueberry pancakes with fresh blueberries, strawberries, and whipped cream for Mike, all served up with today’s New York Times.

Ah, civilization. I guess I miss it more than I thought.

But the highlight of the trip for me came after Mike left to go to work. I made an appointment at the Willow Stream Spa, which is part of the Princess complex, for an aromatherapy facial.

While I’ll admit that I’ve experienced a true spa only five times in my life, this was, by far, the nicest. It featured wide open spaces, pleasant aromas, the sound of falling water almost everywhere, and friendly service. After checking in, I was escorted to the women’s side of the facility by a woman who played tour guide. She pointed out features that included a waterfall (where spa guests could enjoy the spray or high pressure of the falling water), hot and cold plunge pools, steam room, aromatherapy inhalation room, and Swiss shower with 12 shower heads. (We skipped the private rooftop pool — the resort seems to have a swimming pool everywhere you turn — because it was a cool, rainy morning.) Even the waiting areas were warm and comfortable, the kind of place you could easily spend the day with a good book.

I was assigned a locker, terry robe, and slippers and told where to meet my “service provider.” I wasted no time getting undressed and slipping on the robe. By the time I found a seat in the corner of the waiting area, I was already relaxed.

When I tell my friends that I prefer a good facial over a massage, they think I’m crazy. I think it’s because they’ve never had a good facial.

Here’s the brochure description of what I experienced this morning:

Arizona Aromatherapy Facial. 60 minutes. Restoration. Ease tension through the healing gifts and remedies of the desert. Choose from desert lavender for balance or chamomile for restoring your skin from the desert sun. Th healing is all encompassing with an invigorating lavender foot experience, a scalp and hand massage, as well as couperose skin ampoule.

(And yes, I’m very glad I don’t have to write this kind of silliness. I simply could not spread it thick enough, if you know what I mean.)

The point is, a good facial tends to more than just your face.

My service provider, Heather, led me to a private, softly lighted room with the gentle sounds of New Age music. While she stepped out into the hall, I slipped out of my robe and into a “cocoon” of sheet-lined towels on a special padded table molded to keep my body in a reclined sitting position. Then Heather returned to get to work.

She began with my hands. She put some creme on my nails and cuticles, then used fragrant massage oils to massage my hands. Then each hand went into a baggie with a warm sand-filled mitt over it. I can’t describe how good it felt. It was like wearing heated mittens on a cold day.

She then moved on to my arms, which got an excellent massage with more aromatic moisturizers.

Then she started on my “face,” which began at my upper chest and went all the way to my hairline. Lots of steam and different cremes and exfoliating gels and moisturizers. She told me what each one was as she applied it, but I don’t remember any of it. They all smelled really good. There was a hot towel on my face and shoulders whenever something needed to be wiped off.

Then the neck, shoulder, and scalp massage. I cannot imagine a back massage feeling as good as this.

Then more cream on my face and a warm towel while she went to work on my feet and lower legs, with moisturizer and a good rub. They got plastic baggies and warm booties, too.

All this took about an hour. I was completely relaxed, feeling almost on the verge of sleep. I don’t think I said more than a dozen words during this time — and anyone who knows me personally can attest to the fact that I rarely keep my mouth shut.

Heather finished my face with some moisturizing oils and unwrapped my feet and hands. Then she left me alone again to rerobe. She met me outside the room with a cup of cold water, then escorted me back to the waiting area, where she recommended ten to fifteen minutes in the inhalation room. I made a beeline for it.

Now I need to make a distinction between aromatherapy at a quality spa and the kinds of “aromatherapy” products you can buy in candle shops and cosmetics shops and home shopping parties. The crap you buy for home use at these places is crap. It’s over-scented, made with chemicals that could probably make you sick if you use them often enough, and gives aromatherapy a bad name. While I don’t buy into the idea of certain smells giving certain benefits, I do know that a room full of fresh air that is lightly infused with the scent of eucalyptus or mint or rosemary or some combination of these things clears my sinuses and makes me want to breathe deeply all day. It also makes me want to throw out all those crappy, smelly candles I’ve managed to collect — mostly as gifts — over the past ten years. I don’t want a cheap alternative. I want the real thing.

Anyway, I had a great time at the spa, although I didn’t stay very long. I didn’t have a swimsuit with me, which is required for several areas. But I made a conscious decision to do this more often, despite the rather high cost. Whether I return to the Princess’s spa or start checking out the ones in other luxury resorts in Phoenix and Scottsdale remains to be decided. (Frankly, I can’t imagine any other facility being nicer than this one, so why try the others?) All I know is that I deserve to be pampered once in a while and I’m going to make sure I get the pampering I deserve.

As for facial vs. massage, why not give it a try? Report your findings in the comments here.

Go RVing?

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Two photos from our first real campground experience.

I’ve been camping since I was a kid. My family camped with an elaborate setup of tents and equipments on family vacations until I was about 11 years old. That’s when my dad caught a nasty cold and decided on comfort. My parents bought a 22-foot Prowler pull trailer that could sleep seven [little] people. That gave us all the comforts of home.

My family always camped in campgrounds that had at least partial hookups, even when we tent-camped. Mike and I, however, have always favored “dry camping” on public land and parks. We’re not the kind of people who like to be compartmentalized in a parking spot surrounded by other campers. Once, when we were camping at a park in Hawaii, everyone else set up their tents in a big field. We passed all that up and set up our tent on a cliff overlooking the ocean. At night, we could see the lights of the big island in the distance, we listened to the sound of the restless sea’s waves on the rocky shore below us — not our fellow campers.

Anyway, about a year and half ago, in preparation for a summer-long helicopter gig that didn’t happen [yet], I bought a 21-foot pull trailer. We’ve used it a number of times for helicopter gigs: at the Mohave County Fair, Big Sandy Shoot, COPPERSTATE Fly In, etc.

The camper is rigged for dry camping. It has a solar panel on the roof that keeps its batteries charged, so we have plenty of power for the lights and stereo and water pump. It holds 40 gallons of fresh water and has gray water and black water tanks to hold what goes down the drain or down the toilet. The fridge and water heater run on gas. Water is our big limiter; if we take very short showers every other day and use paper plates for all meals, we could probably last a week. But if we’re out for longer than three days, we bring extra water in up to four 7-gallon containers.

Most recently, we used the camper for a weekend-long stay in the Parker area, where I’d been hired to do an aerial photography gig of the Parker 425 Off-road race. Since we’d planned to bring Jack the Dog and Alex the Bird with us and since our camper isn’t very easy to keep warm on cold desert nights, I decided to reserve a spot in a campground. We wound up in Buckskin Mountain State Park (highly recommended if you don’t mind camping in a pleasant parking lot), right on the Colorado River. And for the first time ever, we had a full hookup: water, electricity, and sewer.

The main benefit of this is that we could use a very quiet electric heater to keep the camper warm at night. The gas heater that’s part of the camper has a very loud fan and goes on and off all night long. With the electric heater — which our batteries could not run — we got a very comfortable good night’s sleep.

Which is kind of important when you plan to spend the next day chasing off-road racers with a helicopter.

Anyway, after the race gig, Mike and I came back to the campground. We took Jack the Dog for a walk up to an overlook right above the campground. And that’s where I shot this photo. It reminds me of all those Go RVing commercials they have on television. It also shows what Arizona is like in the winter time, when the snowbirds come around in their $300,000 motorhomes and set up in transient RV neighborhoods like this campground.

 
In case you’re wondering, our camper is the small one just to the right of the big spread of green indoor/outdoor carpeting. That’s where our next door neighbors had set up an enclosure for their tiny dog, which spent all of its time on the dashboard of their motorhome, yapping at whoever went by.

And because you know I can never leave an interesting scene without trying that fisheye lens, here’s another shot from the same spot. That’s the Colorado River bending around the campground. The 10.5mm lens exaggerates the bend a bit, but it really does bend quite sharply here, making an interesting spot along the river.

 
And, for the record, neither of these shots have been cropped.

Round Robin Photo Challenge: Landmarks

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The Mittens.

This afternoon, I stumbled upon a blog devoted to sharing photos. The description on the Round Robin Photo Challenges page states:

Welcome to the official information and update journal for the Round Robin Photo Challenges. This is where you will find all the details for each photo challenge, such as the subject, the link to blog or journal where each challenge is being hosted, and all updates to the players participation lists.

The current challenge can be found at “Round Robin Challenge: Landmarks:”

Again, let’s take an opportunity to show off our hometowns. I live in the Bay Area, so I have no real shortage of recognizable landmarks, so what I would do is try to show those landmarks in an interesting lighting circumstance, such as a sunset, or under special lighting conditions. But I want to see other places, and the landmarks that make those places so special. A beautifully designed building, an incredible bridge, or a monument of some sort, or maybe even an unusual road sign. It’s all good!

Unfortunately, there’s no landmark in my current home town that I want to show off. As the Mayor and Council continue to make decisions that destroy what was special about Wickenburg — cutting down tall trees bordering a park, allowing new housing developments where there were once horse trails, approving road construction that will destroy the downtown riverfront — I prefer to look away, to the places that remain unspoiled.

I get around a lot — probably a lot more than most folks. And I visit a lot of landmark locations in the Southwest. And I usually have a camera with me. So there were a lot of “stock” photos in my iPhoto library to choose from. Many of them represent places I wish I could spend even more time.

I chose The Mittens — or the Mitten Buttes — in Monument Valley. Although the Tribal Park overlook where I took this photo is in Arizona, the buttes themselves are in Utah. This isn’t a terribly special photo — it was taken from the ground at a viewpoint every tourist stops at. But I like the lighting of this shot. It was an October morning, with light coming from the southeast. I like the way it illuminates the rock in the foreground, giving it texture and color far more interesting than the famous monuments that stand beyond it.

So, for what it’s worth, this is my entry. I hope to be a regular participant.

Tourist Photos from San Francisco

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Or fun with a camera.

Note to feed subscribers: You may not see the photos in this article in your RSS reader. That’s because of the way they’re embedded. If you like photography, I do hope you’ll take a moment to visit the site and see the photos. If you don’t, just skip it. I understand.

I was in San Francisco last week for Macworld Expo. In the old days, I used to spend every day at the show. Nowadays, I’m more interested in seeing things outside the exhibit hall. With a half day to spend on my own, I took the cable car from Market and Powell to Fisherman’s Wharf. Here are some of the photos I took that morning.

I started my day just after sunrise at the corner of Powell and Market, five or six blocks from Moscone Hall, where Macworld Expo is held each year. This is the terminus for two of San Francisco’s three cable car lines. The photo here shows one of the cable car drivers turning the car around for the trip back to Fisherman’s Wharf. Although the photo is distorted (because of that darn fisheye lens I like so much), the ground here is relatively level. They manually push the car onto the turntable and turn it, then push it back onto the main track. After paying off a homeless person for telling me that I could buy my ticket on the cable car — it was either that or buy a newspaper I didn’t want to carry — and assuring another homeless person that I didn’t need him to take a photo of me and the cable car with my camera, I climbed on board.

The cable car took off up Powell a while later with a surprising number of people on board. The corner of Market and Powell isn’t far from the BART station and apparently the cable car is a valid mode of transportation for commuters. There certainly weren’t many tourists on board at 7:30 AM. We climbed up Powell, dropping off passengers here and there. I took this photo when the car was nearly empty. Again, there’s some distortion from the fisheye lens, but I think it’s a cool shot of the cable car and its driver.

The car deposited me at Bay Street about two blocks from Fisherman’s Wharf. From there, I wandered around, taking photos of the area. The sun was too low to get the shots I wanted, so went in search of breakfast. Boudin’s Bakery was there and I stepped inside. I love freshly baked bread, but I was on a diet and trying hard to avoid excess carbs. But I did get a good photo op when I saw this “Bread Line” sign. It was just too ironic for me to pass up.

Back outside at the Wharf with the sun still too low for shadow-free photos, I asked one of the fish guys where I could get a good breakfast in a place the tourists didn’t go. He pointed up the street to a “hole in the wall” called Darren’s Cafe. While waiting for my meal, I snapped this weird self-portrait with that fisheye lense. I don’t look happy here, probably because I knew the camera was shooting a picture up my nose.

After breakfast, I strolled north along the wharf area, stopping a few times to take photos of the fishing boats. Unlike most tourists, I didn’t stick to the well-trodden places. I poked around on all the piers, taking my time and seeing as many different things from as many different angles as I could. It was a beautiful day with clear blue skies and light wind. Not very cold, either. Here are a few of my more interesting shots in that area.

After a while, I found myself in Aquatic Park, which is part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. There are a number of old, art deco buildings there and the light was just right to get creative with some shapes and shadows on a round building that used to house a public restroom. A flight of stairs curved up the side of the building to an observation deck on top. But the views from up there didn’t interest me as much as the stairs, shown here.

From the park, there were sweeping views of San Francisco Bay. But the best views were obviously from the curving arm of the Municipal Pier. So I took off on foot along the long, crumbling concrete and steel pier. The only people on the pier were a handful of Asian fisherman, although when I reached the remains of the building at the far end, another tourist pedaled up on a bicycle. We had a short chat before I walked back. Here are the photos I took along the way. They show, in order, the rust of steel embedded in the concrete, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Alcatraz.

It was nearly 10 AM by the time I got off the pier. I had to check out of my hotel by 1:30 PM, but I had a few errands to take care of on the way back. So I walked up to the cable car terminus at Hyde, which is just a few blocks away. By this time, the tourists were coming out and there was about a dozen people waiting. I snapped a series of photos of the cable car being turned. If I look at them quickly in sequence, they look like a movie. Here are five of the six shots in miniature:

Cable Car Turning at Hyde

On the way back to the Union Square area, I had a nice conversation with a woman who lives in San Francisco and uses the cable car to commute back and forth to work across the city. I couldn’t help but be envious. How wonderful it would be to ride in an open seat through such a beautiful city every day.

At Macworld Expo

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Are you there? I’ll be there soon.

As this is appearing online, I’m boarding a plane for Macworld Expo in San Francisco. This is yet another one of my quick in and out trips — I really can’t afford to be away from my office for more than two days. I’ll arrive in SF around 9:30 this morning and depart around 3:30 on Thursday afternoon. In between, I’m staying at the Nikko.

I have a lot to squeeze into this trip:

  • Wednesday, 12:00 PM – meeting with two editors, one publisher, and a representative from an online publishing group regarding ebooks and ebook piracy issues. I’m tired of seeing little ebook revenue while copies of my ebooks are floating around on file sharing sites. Armed with some excellent feedback from an ebook reader, I’m going to propose some changes to the way my work appears in ebooks. I also hope to spend some time talking to one of my editors about a book we hope to start next week.
  • Wednesday, 2:00 PM – appearing at the Peachpit Press booth on the show floor. I’m doing a 45-minute presentation and hope to cover some productivity tips and tricks for Leopard users. Peachpit will be videoing the presentation for eventual distribution online.
  • Wednesday, after 3 PM – seeing the show floor. I’ll be walking around armed with my cameras: Treo for instant Web publishing of images, Nikon D80 with fisheye lens for a very different look at the show floor, and video camera for content I hope to put together as a short Macworld Expo movie.
  • Wednesday, after 6 PM – attending one or two parties (depending on how tired I am).
  • Thursday, before 1 PM – see Wedneday, after 3 PM. More of the same.

If you’d like to see photos from Macworld as they are taken, visit my TumbleLog. I expect to start sending photos as soon as I arrive in SF. I’ll try to make them interesting.

Product ImageI’ll also be giving away two copies of my Leopard book during my Peachpit booth presentation. One of them will go to the first presentation attendee who tells me he/she read about the giveaway here.

If you’re at Macworld Expo and want to say hello, drop by the Peachpit Press booth. I usually pop in now and then during my time on the show floor. I’d to meet you!