I find in our collection of pictures photos of something called the Painted Cliffs. They're lovely. I have no idea whether they're in New Mexico or Arizona. All I know is that they can be photographed from a tourist center on I-40, which advertises cave buffalo. (We did not get to see the cave buffalo.)

The next stop I clearly remember is Flagstaff. I clearly remember it because I got out of the car expecting the nice balmy, though windy weather we'd had since Oklahoma and discovered it was freezing and there was snow on the ground.

"This is Arizona, right?" I asked Kathy.

"Uh- huh."

"People come here because the winters are warm?"

"Uh-huh. It'll get warmer once we get to Phoenix." Silly me. I believed her.

We headed down the mountain and at some point Chelsea decided we were up high and she didn't like heights.

"We're on the ground, Chelsea."

"But the ground is up high!"

And what does my clever husband do to take her mind off it? He starts pointing out the vistas. "Isn't it a long way down, Chelsea?"

We entertained ourselves with that, until the appearance of the first saguaro. I have developed a passion for them. They're the only thing I've ever seen in a cartoon that looked like it really did. Counting the arms and multiplying by 100 kept Chelsea busy for quite a while and made her forget we were up high.

(BTW Chelsea actually did pretty good for a 10-year-old cooped up in a car for 12 hours a day for most of two weeks. Better than I did at times.)

We got to the site after dark--none of us had a watch and once we were away from the van we never had any idea what time it was. All I know is that it was dark and very cold.

For those of you unfamiliar with Estrella War I should explain that it's called that because it used to be at Estrella State Park west of Phoenix. This year, after much debate, it had been moved to a place called Schnepf farms in Queen's Creek near Mesa. The fact that the people who owned the site had no idea how to handle a 5000-7000 person event accounts for many of the problems.

Lest you think this is the crisis free day use your imaginations please--it was very cold. Colder in fact than it had been in Flagstaff, but not as cold as it had been at Estrella the night before. (It had gone into the lower 20s and it was reported that the disinfectant on the floor of the portajohns had formed a layer of ice.) I knew the desert got cold at night; and that it would be colder in Feb, but I gather this was above and beyond the call of nature. Even the veterans of the event were surprised. And the Caidans from Southern California were downright dumbfounded.

So here we were wearing our winter clothes, and putting up a pavilion in a space too small for it and unloading the van in the dark, because the lanterns didn't get packed at some stage in transferring the stuff around either at home in Indiana or back in Illinois. (Luckily a very nice young gentleman who had been in contact with Howdy about garb found us and lent us a lantern to get through the night.)

Eventually we were able to crawl into our semi-warm beds and sleep to await the next day's challenges.

We crawled out of bed the next morning. It was still pretty chilly and windy, but at least the sun was up. As soon as possible we got ready to put up the clothing racks, and then it was discovered that today's crisis was the Great Rack Crisis. It seems that when Kathy's son Nick was told to pack the racks--all the racks--he missed some. To be precise he missed the ones in usable condition. The ones he had packed had been cannibalized to make sure the good ones were working. And, of course, the parts needed to fix the racks had been left in the truck in Illinois.

After a little discussion Marty finally took off to find a hardware store and the rest of us got started trying to set up as best we could. Kathy looked at the racks we had and thought we could tape the crossbars to them, Dan found the rope and suggested that we use that instead. The pavilion had a large inverted U shaped center support. With rope and bungee cords we put the racks around the center support and tied the whole mess together. (I wish Dan had gotten a picture of it.) The wind was pretty heavy and as we worked Dan had to keep running around to adjust the ropes. As I mentioned the space was too narrow and the tent had problems because it couldn't be staked taut enough to keep it stable.

By the time Marty arrived we had most of the merchandise hung or stacked and were organizing it into sizes and styles. Kathy got fed, which she needed badly, and Dan had put his knee out getting up and down to fix the tent. Sales were steady that afternoon. We had to go off site that night to pick up more supplies now that we had some cash, and we had dinner. By the time we'd eaten it was pretty obvious that none of us was in any shape to fix up the tent to sleep, so we went in search of a motel. Now this was in the height of the tourist season and we wound up paying a lot more than we did anywhere else, but it was worth it. We all had showers and we got to hear more of the great Tinky-Winky crisis on the news. (TW had been invited to be Grand Marshall of the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade.)

Wednesday through Friday are kind of blurry. It was a long collective crisis of gettng the booth going and attracting customers and being physically miserable and coughing. I got out a few times, but I mostly recall sitting and stringing ribbon into chemises, or helping customers. Then there was the grass. Dan describes the ground as looking like fiberboard. Apparently the tall dead grass on the site had been a point of contention when this site was first suggested, so the owners had mowed it. What the Estrella Park people had apparently known, and done, was to water the site daily for about a week before the event. The Schnepf farm people didn't do this and it caused severe problems: the wind blew the grass came into the tent where it was trapped. It was into everything and all over Kathy and Marty's merchandise. It got so we mentioned souvenir Estrella grass as a bonus with every purchase. (Note: It's now Feb. 2002. I recently pulled out a piece of cloth that had been part of my gear that trip. Despite the fact that I've packed and unpacked the fabric any number of times in the intervening 3 years, it still had bits of Estrella grass stuck to it.)

The wool cloaks sold well, they were better quality than most of the ones being sold at the same price, and when Kathy and Marty discounted the prices Saturday and Sunday. The only bad part was that we were sleeping under them.

On Saturday the wind died down but by evening it was obvious that however many other problems it had caused it had blown the heavy dust away from us. Now the dust hovered in the air like a haze as high as my head. I don't thrive well in dry air and dust. I'd started coughing about the time we hit the Arizona border but now it got a lot worse. (Dan remembers seeing a woman with a large dog of a breed which drools a lot. The dog had a beard of dried grass spread across it's entire jaw. As he watched the dog Dan coughed and realized he was coughing out puffs of straw.) We all had the Estrella cough by the time it was over.

Around sunset that night we heard a noise that sounded like a helicopter overhead. It landed, and we found out that it was there to pick up the first of a number of people who were in respiratory distress (i.e.: stopped breathing.) Ambulances came and simply stayed treating people. Anyone with a respiratory problem who came to the chirurgeon's tent was told they should leave the site. This didn't get spread around too well, though. Estrella has neither a daily newspaper nor regular heralds' announcements like Pennsic War. If there was a central site for disseminating news I missed it. .

Another crisis was the portajohns. We had a row of them conveniently near us, but it was obvious by late Friday that they weren't being cleaned. By Saturday they were unusable--yellow Caution tape was around the whole row. It seems that the guys in the honey wagon had missed the rows that were in the center of the camp---they only got the ones on the periphery. At the camp store, I was told that handicapped people could request the key to the locked flush johns. I told Kathy, who is allergic to the ammonia used for cleaning, and since I wasn't doing much better we both got the unique opportunity to be in heated restrooms with running water. (Neither of us sneaked a shower as we threatened though.) In the middle of the night the honey wagon came and by the next day we could use the nearby facilities.

There were some good moments. As I was helping Katrinn set up racks on the first day I heard someone behind me say, "Audelinde what are YOU doing HERE?" It was Syr Semjaka, an old Shire member now living in Calontir. It was good to see him, better yet to freak him out.

I got to meet Kathy and Marty's buddy Wulfram, who I'd kept hearing about, his wife, Heather, and their newborn called Mr. Baby. (We hope the final decision as to what he'll be called is made before he gets big enough to whump his papa...)

I also got to Horde Camp for my traditional 45 minute shmooze. I met a couple of bros who I only knew from hordenet phosphors. And I got to talk to Shoshona who I'd known a couple of eons ago when she was in the Middle. I once again missed meeting Ioseph of Locksley. (I have known Master Ioseph for years via the internet, heard of him often long before that, he is a sword brother, and we've been at a number of events together over the years. However, we have never contrived to knowingly meet in all that time. I fear for the consequences if we ever do.)

We kept the booth open on Sunday until it was too dark for customers to see. Howdy had done decently, better than most. But apparently there were about 1/3 more merchants than last year, and there was no guide to who was there or in what location. To give you an idea of how bad it was, I found a merchant who was selling spinning and weaving stuff including a lap inkle loom I lusted after. When I tried to take Kathy by the booth I couldn't find it. The merchants' area was just too big and, without any idea of who was where, it was difficult to find anything. The result was that no one did very well.

Monday we spent the morning packing the van. The problem of the trashed racks was solved by leaving the worst ones behind. (It wasn't wasted though--as we got ready to leave somebody ran up and asked if we were really abandoning all this good wood. We told them to help themselves.)

Just down the road from the event site was a fresh fruit stand that also sold homemade tamales. Kathy ordered a dozen, and we got cherry cider as well (yum!) In spite of my problems with spicy food--I hate cayenne, and only eat chilies if they've been thoroughly de-seeded--I had one and enjoyed it.

We made our lunch stop at something called the Gila River Indian Cultural Center. The building is round and shaded. We got our picture taken in front of a large saguaro--our first close encounter with one. The central courtyard had a pool with a large white tower looming over it. The gift shop and museum was fascinating and the food at the restaurant was great.

The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show had ended the day before, so we figured it would be possible to find a hotel room there. What we didn't think we'd find was a cheap hotel room. We checked at an Hampton Court which quoted us rate about twice as high as we could afford. When asked about places in our price range we were politely snickered at. So Marty checked at the gas station next door which directed him to the motel right behind the Hampton Court. Not only was it well within our price range, it was owned by the same corporation as the Hampton.

Once we'd checked in we went looking for a little Mexican restaurant that Kathy and Marty had eaten at two years before. They sort of remembered where it was. We found it, by golly. It was closed by then, but we found it. So we wandered around admiring the wide and wondrous assortment of fast food places that Tucson offers all of which were closed or closing at that hour. We eventually wound up at the Ihop across the street from the motel.