BAKED BRAINS

Saturday, June 27 to Monday, June 29.

We swished our way NW through the light rain on US180, hung a left at SR78, and left NM for Arizona. Temperature-wise, we shoulda stayed put.  The drive up 180 was beautiful, and the descent on 78 from the high plateau was high anxiety, filled with 7-10% downgrades (hmmm, that’s a memorial there by the guardrail), switchbacks, and acrophobic wonders.   At Safford, we turned up US70 through the ridiculously green Gila Valley, which reminded me a lot of the Salinas Valley, miles of agriculture with mountains on both sides,  although these were quite a bit bigger, topped by the 10,720 ft Mt. Graham.  Our target for tonight was Apache Gold, an Indian casino with RV park, supposedly at $12 a night.  Folks, save your money.

The rv park was a big parking lot, with generous spaces but virtually no shade.  Turns out our AAA guide is last year’s, and the price is now $20.  Not wanting to drive any further, we stayed put.  We hoped to get some free player’s bucks and maybe a decent buffet dinner.  Not(x2).

We hoofed it to the casino across the blazing parking lot.  This ain’t Vegas, kids.  The casino was surprisingly small.  We went over to the “Players Club” to get our free “fun pack” that the signage had advertised.  Well, whoop-de-doo.  It consisted of a coupon good for fifty cents in slots credit, and $2.50 towards the price of a drink in the bar.  Huh?  We didn’t bother with either, and walked over to the . . . closed . . . buffet.  On a Saturday night?  I don’t think we missed much.  It was supposed to be, according to the signs, a seafood buffet, at the princely price of $23 each.  Ouch.  Back to the rig and Loni’s ever-so-much-better cooking.  This truly is a loser of a place, and not just in the gambling sense.  Ought to be called “Apache’s Revenge.”  The only saving graces were the sunset sky and the amazing sight of a couple traveling with FIVE, countem FIVE, toy poodles.  A traveling kennel?  Loni was particularly taken by the woman wiping each dog’s rear end before allowing them back into the rig.  Yuch.

Sunday we hooked up with our old friend, US60, and headed down into the Phoenix area.  Actually, we stopped for the night in Mesa, as Phoenix itself doesn’t seem to have any RV parks other than 20-30 miles up in the local mountains, and those didn’t have electricity.  Did I say it was getting hot?

Well, how about setting records?  When we stepped out of the rig after getting parked we nearly passed out.  Turns out it was 111 degrees!  Yikes.  Got the A/C going, determined that the advertised cable tv didn’t exist, and found that the “free” wifi wouldn’t allow us to sign on.  Oh, well, they DID have a very nice big pool, with no one at all in it or around it.  We had it to ourselves for about an hour before anyone else showed up.  This place actually is a retirement village composed of about 1,000 8x30 mobile homes, arranged in a grid pattern with virtually no landscaping.  This is so dreary that it has probably hastened more than one demise of the poor old souls who end up here.  The rv rentals like ourselves are put on the concrete pads of vacant slots that lack a mobile home.  You can imagine the “view.”  You’ll have to, cause I didn’t take any pics here.  We soaked in the pool until we were prunes, then went back to the “cool” rig, which was down to the mid-80’s inside.  By comparison with outside, it was very nice.

We thought we might stay an extra day, to go see some sights in Phoenix, but the thought of trying to navigate the scoot around, with helmets on, in 110+ heat, put the squelch on that.  We decided to head for the border, and back to the state park we had started this trip at, Buckskin Mountain State Park.  The drive there (the first part on I-10) was uneventful, and largely boring except for the 80mph trucks that kept overtaking us like we were standing still.  There was hardly anyone at the park.  Guess the heat (about 105) was discouraging them.  We lucked into the primo shaded spot, so at least all we had to deal with was the ambient temperature.  We discovered the first and only other Lazy Daze of our trip several sites down from us, a grey 26 footer.  We knocked to say hello, but I think we woke the elderly owner up.  He was polite but a bit dazed, so it was a short conversation.  Time for a dip in the river, which is surprisingly clear.  We marked the end of our trip with a great steak dinner, the last of our beer, and cleaned up the remaining Haagen Daz coffee yoghurt.  All was right with the world.

LAS CRUCES, SI; EL PASO, NO

Wednesday, June 24 to Saturday, June 27.

Balmorhea is a nice park, with little ramadas at each site with picnic tables.  A stream, originating with the spring, runs through the park and is stocked with fish, some good sized.  Actually, smaller ones are in the pool, and if you stay still they come up and start nipping at your skin.  We kept moving.  They also have created a pretty nice wetlands area with tall reeds and other vegetation, and we spotted a big turtle, several water snakes, and some nice birds.  Sorry, Audubon, no identifications here. 

We took off and went west on I-10 to SR54 where we headed north to the Guadalupe Mountains national Park.  Nice drive with, natch, dramatic mountain vistas.   Didn’t stay at the park, but turned west on US62/180 towards El Paso.  Again, a beautiful desert drive, with storms dropping rain to the south, but not much of note to report.  Entering El Paso we quickly determined that we’d rather press on to Las Cruces.  From what we could see of El Paso, it is one of the more unlovely cities and, unless you wanted to go across to Ciudad Juarez (we didn’t), there was precious little to keep you there.  We had passed through Las Cruces on our AZ/NM trip last year, and thought it looked pretty nice.  Also, our friends Perry and Sara, who make frequent drives to L.A./Vegas, had a favorite restaurant there.

This turned out to be a good call.  Our AAA Camping guide had several choices, but one was quite close to the restaurant, so we chose it, the Siesta RV Park.  This is an excellent park, and is within walking distance of the old town portion of Las Cruces, called Mesilla.  Think of a lower-keyed Santa Fe, with a nice town square fronting a very nice mission church, which we photographed at night.  After setting up and getting the A/C going, we walked to Mesilla and found the restaurant, La Posta, right on the square.  This place has been in operation for 80+ years, and is in a building even older with a series of rooms with eclectic, to say the least, decorating.   They make a number of Margueritas, including “authentic” ones that use only fresh lime juice, no sweet-n-sour mix.  That was my choice, with special tequila and Cointreau.  Oh, yes.   The food was typical everything-covered-with-sauce-and-cheese, and plenty of it, but did have some good flavors peeking through.  Good chips and salsa.  After dinner we strolled around and found a little theatre that was run by a nonprofit group, showing “The Great Buck Howard” starring John Malkovich (sp?).  Five rows of seats, with tables and chairs behind for eating while you watch, and a lady to introduce the evening’s entertainment.  Loved it.

Thursday we unloaded the scoot, gave it a sponge bath, and went off to the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum.  This is a fairly new facility, with some parts still under construction, and demonstrates ranch operations.  Some schoolkid groups were there, so that made the milking demonstration more fun, as well as the bottle feeding of the orphaned “brangus” (brahma/angus) calf which was growing 50% faster and larger on its diet of Holstein milk.  We got a private cart tour of the various pens and stables with a grizzled cowboy guide, and his enthusiasm for the various types of stock was infectious.  There was an unique cutting-torch metal diorama that this picture only captures a portion of.  After that we went inside to view the exhibits, which had some great displays of southwestern history and life.  Loni got sidetracked by a woman who had been giving the kids a demonstration of quilting in the lobby.  Her samples were really beautiful, and they ended up talking for a quarter hour.   Loni liked the saddle teeter totter in the kids playroom.  This definitely is a good stop.  After we had finished, we debated scooting on up the the White Sands Missile Museum, but the wind was blowing and gusting pretty strong, and it would be a 25 mile trip each way.  We opted to go back to Mesilla and look at the shops.  Most were the usual touristy junk, but some had some nice artwork and house stuff.  We actually spent some buckos on a metalwork sculpture and a rooster lantern.  What?  I’ll have to post pictures, but they’re all wrapped up at the moment.  Next morning (Fri), we took our power walk through an adjacent residential neighborhood and admired the xeriscape varieties of the front yards.  Adios, Las Cruces, we enjoyed our stay.

We took I-10 (ugh) west to US 180 and turned NW, over the local Continental Divide,  towards Silver City, which was billed as a former mining town turned art center.  Well, it was a mining town, and boyhood home of Billy the Kid, as they remind you at every turn.  the drive up 180 was again scenic, with the mountains looming, but I wouldn’t go out of my way again to visit Silver City.  It’s a collection of old and reconstructed buildings, precious few of which are worth much to look at, with much boarded up and out-of-business enterprises.  I realize we are here in the off season (only mad dogs and Englishmen . . .), but this place felt dead.  And nearly all of the shops that are still in business close up at 4:00.  We found only one shop with anything to look at.  The best part of the town was its “river walk”, which stretches for 3 blocks along the former site of the town’s main street, which was washed away in some 19th century flood, resulting in the relocation of everything.  The other good thing was the RV park, which is right in town, was neatly maintained, with good shade trees.  Another gold star.  It even had high entertainment as we watched some poor guy towing a long horse/human combo trailer try to parallel park it behind our rig.  We lost count of the forwards and backwards.  He kept making the same mistakes over and over.

Before settling on that park, we had thought we would try to do some dry camping up in a state park north of town on SR15, towards the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.  However, about ten miles up the road the signs warned that the road narrowed, with no center stripe, and it was dangerous for vehicles over 20 feet in length.  That’s usually an exaggeration, but the road was so narrow that we got concerned we might get in a situation where we couldn’t turn around if needed, so we bagged it and opted for in-town.  Too bad, as the local promos show the area we were heading for to be quite lush with pines and lakes.

We also thought we might stay another day and use the scoot to go up that mountain road to the Monument.  That was squelched by the first steady, albeit light, rain of our trip.  It started that night and was still going on Saturday morning, so we called it quits and quit Silver City.

BIG BUST

Sunday, June 21 to Tuesday, June 23. 

No, we didn’t have a Dolly Parton sighting.  The big bust was Big Bend.  We left Fredericksburg west on 290, relying on Gertrude to lead us eventually to SR41 to ultimately connect with US377 and then south to Del Rio, TX.  One of the intermediate waypoints we programmed was the tiny hamlet of Mountain Home.  Gertrude totally screwed up, turned us down a farm road, and announced “You have reached your destination.”  Say, what?  We were nowhere.  Nothing.  We used the sun to navigate south and after many turns found our road, and Mountain Home.  5 miles from where Gertrude said, and on the other side of the I-10.  One of these days we’re going to be in big trouble following that broad.  Along the way we kept seeing weird antelope that didn’t seem to belong here.  Then we saw all the signs advertising “exotic game hunts” and realized these ranches were stocking African goodies for the gunboys to slaughter.  Yuck.  We also came upon our first border patrol checkpoint. Guess we looked harmless as they just waived us through after asking if we were citizens.  Now I know how to smuggle lots of aliens in an RV. 

Del Rio is a strip town, with all the businesses stretched along the main highway.  And all of those businesses appear to be chain franchises so it’s a good thing we carry our own and feed ourselves.  What Del Rio does have is the Amistad National Recreation Area consisting of the huge Amistad Reservoir which has large open areas and lots of inlets.  It’s an incredible amount of water in what otherwise is desert. Some nice housing developments border parts of the reservoir with $$$ views.  We stopped only to gas up in Del Rio, then headed NW on US90 to our camp for the night at Seminole Canyon State Park.  Quite nice, set up on a hilltop, with 50 mile views and the best night sky we’ve seen thus far on this trip.  As Carl did NOT say, “Billions and billions!”  We also spotted some giant luminescent critter flying around.  Not your garden variety firefly, this sucker had a long lighted body.  My googling suggests it was some sort of beetle.  We asked the rangerette the next morning, but she didn’t have a clue.  It’s also the home of the killer centipedes. As with all Texas parks, this one had great bathrooms and showers.  We’re getting spoiled.  So much better than California parks.

Monday morning we continued west on 90, across the Pecos River, to the town of Langtry and the home of Judge Roy Bean, “The Law West of the Pecos.” There’s a small museum, and you can walk through his original courtroom building and home, which he called his opera house.  He had an infatuation with Lily Langtry, whom he had never met, and had written many letters inviting her to visit the town he claimed to have named after her and his “opera house.” The town actually was named after an engineer.  Bean died nine months or so before Langtry did actually visit.

We stayed on 90 to the town of Marathon, where we turned south on US385 to wards Big Bend, through the Santiago Mountains with views of the Sierra Del Carmen off to the left.  I had never thought of there being mountains down here, but the whole area is mountainous, including the Chisos Mountains right in the heart of the park.  The drive into the park has some nice views, and as long as we stayed in the RV with the air conditioning it was fine.  We got to the Panther Junction headquarters and found the only campgrounds are 14 miles or so further down on the river (that’s good, as it was the Rio Grande we came to see.  Down we went, descending a thousand feet or so, and came upon the Rio Grande Village campground.  Hmmm.  Where’s the river?  Well, gosh (I said something else), the campground is not actually ON the river, despite a promo photo I had seen.  The camp was a large parking lot affair, and it seemed we were the only fools to elect to camp in Big Bend in June, which as it turns out is the hottest month.  No place to go, so we paid up and hooked up and got the air going.  Off to find the river, which actually wasn’t far off, but completely hidden by impenetrable undergrowth.  Our map showed a boat ramp, so we hiked that way and eventually found a path through the brush and there it was.  All of 25 feet wide and brown as mud.  Actually, it WAS a river of mud.   The camp brochure warned against swimming in it as it had pathogens, and said it was so gritty that you could hear it sandblast your hull if in a metal boat.  All in all, a big disappointment.  As it turns out, the actual Rio Grande dries up almost entirely before entering the Park.  All the water we see here comes from a Mexican river that empties into the streambed about 30 miles to the west.  This is one ugly ditch, and no reason to make a journey of any length.  Sometime in the middle of the night, another rig pulled in an set up, so we’re not the only ones.

Tuesday morning we packed up and went out to an overlook about five miles away.  It didn’t overlook, much except the Mexican town across the river.   One of its artists apparently waded over and has set up an honor-pay stand of his/her wares. After this, we began the long climb out of the river area and then out of the park, heading for the Balmorhea (Bal’moray) State Park which sports one of the largest spring-fed pools in the world, covering more than 2 acres.  We could use a little fresh spring water action in this 100 degree heat.  First, however, we went on the mother of all roller coaster roads, SR170 through the adjacent Big Bend Ranch State Park.  Yeegods.  We’d plunge down and then swoop up so that you couldn’t see anything but sky out the windshield.  Had to take it on faith we were still in our lane and no one was in ours.  A wild road.  Then it was up 67 through the town of Marfa where they filmed the movie “Giant” way back when. Not much there all these years later.  then it was up 17 to Balmorhea and the wonderful spring water pool.    Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh.

THE DUMMKOPH AND HIS KARMA

Wednesday, June 17 through Saturday the 20th. Fredericksburg is in the heart of the Texas hill country,  with lots of green and rolling hills.  It also is German.  Back in the 1840s, Germany was not unified, but was a collection of fiefdoms under various princes, dukes and the like.  It also was in economic distress.  A group of 19 princes formed a company that enlisted families to join together and relocate to America, with the intention of creating a settlement to raise cotton and tobacco for the profit of the company (and the princes and dukes).  120 souls made the initial trip and somehow ended up in Galveston, then made the trek to the hill country.  After being fleeced a couple of times, they purchased acreage first in New Braunfels, but ended up in the area they named Fredericksburg, after one of the princes that sponsored the company.  They nearly starved, but were saved, of course, by the local Indians.  The company went bankrupt, but the farmers stayed on and eventually thrived.  Today, there are original structures from that time, along with reconstructions from back in the 1930s.  Many in the town still speak German (to the delight of some German tourists we followed into one of the attractions).  This also is the birthplace and boyhood home of Adm. Chester Nimitz, the architect of the victory in the Pacific in WWII.  There’s an excellent museum devoted to his life, and he was an extraordinary guy throughout his naval career.  Got the Navy to convert subs from the dangerously explosive gas engines to diesel, and later gave key support to Rickover for having subs go nuclear.  He even met Togo as a shavetail lieutenant decades before the war.  The town also has the National Museum of the Pacific War, which was the principal reason I wanted to make this stop.  Of course, it had just closed for six months of renovations.  But I could use the stub from the Nimitz museum for admission when it reopens!  Thanks.  I don’t think we’ll be passing this way again soon.  Fbg, as they refer to it here, has a lot of nice art galleries, an incredible number of furniture and furnishings boutiques, ice cream parlors, and . . . a brewpub!  Just the thing for a 102 degree afternoon.  For one day of our stay, it also sported the world’s biggest dummkopf.

We took the scoot into town from the LadyBird Johnson Park, parked it on the Main Street drag through down, carefully locked up the helmets, and left to go tour the town by foot.  All day.  With hundreds of passersby.  It’s a good thing that we had ended the afternoon with a brew from the brewpub, and I was feeling mellow, because when we got back to the scoot I saw the flapping yellow.  Of the tag.  To the keys.  Still in the ignition.  Thank you, honest Texans and tourists, one and all.

One of the things we toured was the Pioneer Museum, a collection of buildings – houses, school, workshops, barn, outhouse (recognize the shnoz?) – dating from the 1800s that were moved to this site in town (one house was there already) and set up as a preservation of the pioneer heritage of those early German settlers.  You take away a sense of admiration for the craftsmanship, fortitude, and endurance of those folks.

But, you say, what about the karma?  We extended our stay from the intended two days to four when we found out that the neighboring town of Stonewall was hosting its 48th annual Peach Jam-boree and Rodeo on Saturday,  We scooted over there early to catch the parade with the requisite beauty pageant floats, horses, tractors, assorted goofballs (it’s a peach festival, get it?), and an alleged African beast supposedly called a Wasubi, which looked like a Brahma, but had the hugest horns (girth, not length) I’ve ever seen.  Hmmmmm.  Calling Ripley’s.  We listened to texmex music (guitars and squeezebox), ate peach cobbler with peach ice cream, watched the eleven queen hopefuls answer the question portion of the contest, saw the infamous armadillo race reduced to a battle between one painted juvenile armadillo and a pet possum that was scrounged up at the last minute when no other dillos arrived, ate peach ice cream by itself, enjoyed the peach eating and pit spitting contests, gazed bewildered at the tractor goings on in the arena (here comes the karma), and sat amazed (and silent, with our hands under our thighs) at the auction of the fruit baskets from the local farmers which went for . . . wait for it . . . between $450 and $2,500!  We foolishly had thought we might get one for around $40, but this is an auction for the local businesses (and one rich guy who was showing off) to drop bragging-rights funds as the principal fundraiser for the chamber of commerce.

We went over to the grandstands about an hour before the rodeo was to start and nabbed primo seats in the top row, with a railing back to lean against.  The stands slowly filled up, but we, being insulated by lower rows, enjoyed footroom on empty seats in front of us.  That is, until . . . oh, no.  The, ah, woman tractor driver whose posterior I just couldn’t keep from photographing (see above) was gazing up at the empty spaces before us.  She nudged her almost equally porcine husband and started to climb.  Slowly.  With great effort and much exhalation.  With seas of spectators parting like the waters as she progressed.  She then got to us, turned around.  And sat.  Oh, how she sat.  Our footroom?  Forget it.  Our legs?  Might as well be amputees.  We could either stand on our seats all night, or move.  We moved.  See what I get for being an insensitive smartass?  Yup.  The ass.

Once we relocated, the rodeo was fine, with an opening prayer that was decidedly and unapologetically denominational, hilarious sheep-dogging for the kids, pretty fearsome broncs, even nastier bulls, and something called a wild-cow milking team contest, where 6 teams of 3 race on foot from one end of the arena towards 4 cows at the other end, the object being to retrieve at least a centiliter of milk.  Cows naturally scatter and run.  Mayhem ensues.  The crowd goes wild.  Again we are reminded:  ah, America.