Three Rivers Petroglyphs, Sunspot, Cloudcroft, Pancho Villa State Park, Palomas (MX), Douglas (AZ)

(posted from Old Bisbee, AZ Library)
(This post covers 29 March – 1 April, 2010)

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Thursday, 1 April-

The wind was fairly strong last night but not enough to disturb our sleep. I'd guess the gusts were in the 25-30 mile range.
This morning we headed west across Route 9 which parallels the Mexican border and lies within a few miles of it across much of New Mexico. Then New Mexico's 'bootheel' drops away.
As we began our drive today we had some fresh winds but before long we were blasted by gusts over 50 miles per hour. We were driving pretty much head-on into it and Mocha Joe didn't want to do any more than 55 miles per hour. We also were very conscious of the Border Patrol. We saw something on the order of 30 Border Patrol vehicles in the 80-plus miles from Columbus to Rodeo. At Hatchita we pulled over at an historical marker and within minutes a Border Patrol vehicle stopped and checked on us. As I said to the officers, though, I thought of it as them watching out for our safety rather than an intrusion. Across this very desolate area we also saw quite a bit of evidence of Border Patrol technology. We had already seen the aerostat blimp near Columbus but in our drive today we saw several observation stations, including one with a desert-camouflage net over most of it and many communications installations, both radio and microwave.
After reaching the Arizona line at Portal, we turned south and very soon came upon the Chiricahuha Desert Museum. It seemed very oddly placed in we had just come across a very remote-feeling area yet here the center had a yuppie gift shop and played New Age music. And the museum portion turned out to be a gallery for very expensive wildlife artists rather than what we'd think of as a museum. We peered through the doors and couldn't think of a good reason to pay the $5 to enter. Labashi did find an exquisite fossil from Morocco, however, and has just the right place for it at home.
We had a late lunch at the roadside pulloff marking the surrender of Geronimo just north of Apache, AZ and the wind shook the van mercilessly. But the good news is we felt very secure in good old Mocha Joe.
We then drove on to Douglas which sits on the Mexican border across from Agua Prieta, Sonora. We checked in at the Visitor's Center and then did some re-supply shopping at the Safeway and the Wal-mart, then spent a few hours at the Library. It was great to take a break and spend a few hours on the web, read newspapers and magazines, and browse the book shelves. Douglas has a very pleasant and friendly little library for this.
And in today's paper I read an article about a community meeting we missed last night. Some 350 people showed up to a meeting with the Border Patrol in tiny little Apache to discuss border security in light of the murder of a rancher in the area a few days ago. The murder is believed to have been done by a smuggler who then escaped into Mexico.
After the library we set up camp for the night at the Douglas Wal-mart. We watched 'The Men who Stare at Goats' with George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, and Ewan MacGregor, a movie from the Redbox.



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Wednesday, 31 March-

A park ranger woke us this morning to collect for our stay and we talked with him for a few minutes about going across the border. No problemo.
The park's visitor center wasn't due to open until 1000 so we drove down the street to the Pancho Villa Cafe for a Mexican breakfast. Labashi had Eggs Mexicano which turned out to be scrambled eggs with veggies. I had chilequiles with egg which was a folded corn tortilla in a red chili sauce with a fried egg on top and accompanied by fried beans and skillet-fried potatoes. Very nice!
We then went to the park's very nice little visitor center to learn about Pancho Villa. Villa and his 'Villaristas' attacked the town in the pre-dawn hours of March 9th, 1916. And if they had attacked a town without a military post, they would probably have been very successful. But this town had a military post with a Machine Gun squad and in the next few hours the squad's three machine guns cut down some 85 Villaristas in a hail of over 20,000 rounds. There were eight US military deaths and ten US civilian deaths.
In retaliation, President Wilson sent General John 'Black Jack' Pershing after Villa. This pursuit marked the first time mechanized vehicles were used as part of the a military campaign. Pershing pursued Villa for eleven months, never catching him. Toward the end, the US military was ramping up for World War I and four months after Pershing's return to the US, he and his troops were sent to France.
As we approached the museum we happened to run into John Read, one of the park rangers. We asked him more questions about crossing the border to Palomas and, more specifically, about parking on this side and walking over. He said he routinely goes down there with his wife to a very unique restaurant and store called The Pink Store, just a block or so on the other side. He gave us parking information and even menu recommendations. He did say it's completely lawless down there-- the lawmen have long since left--- but if you're not into the drug trade you won't be bothered. It's the kind of recommendation to make you think about the consequences of mistaken identities.
We drove to the border and parked in the nice lot next to the crossing gate and simply walked across and ten minutes later we were in The Pink Store. The store turned out to be a large gift store in front and a restaurant and bar in back. As we viewed the many shelves of colorful gifts and trinkets and jewelry and pottery, we were offered margaritas and they turned out to be surprisingly strong. The free margaritas there are quite a bit stronger than the seven-dollar margaritas at Chili's, in fact.
After browsing for a half-hour or so we were shown to a table in the restaurant. John Read had recommended the garlic shrimp so Labashi had that and I had a soup called 'caliente'. My soup was a bit spicy and had potato and farmer's-cheese (they call it 'Mennonite cheese') cubes and green chiles.
Our waiter, Goel, was terrific. Labashi tried to use as much Spanish as she could and he'd help out and then say that he's learning too and would ask a question about English. Labashi asked him for a good recommendation for a song for the mariachis to play and he recommended 'Caballito'. Labashi asked the leader to play (in Spanish) and after a brief chuckle, he passed the word and we were treated to 'Caballito'.
After sharing an excellent flan, we left The Pink Store and walked a few blocks to another restaurant, 'El Sinaluense'. This restaurant had been recommended by our waitress at breakfast this morning. But when we entered town we saw it was two blocks down a side street and we were reluctant to go down there. But this afternoon-- with a few margaritas under our belts – it seemed fine and indeed it was. We weren't really hungry but after checking out the menus we split a piece of cheesecake anyway.
Our border crossing back into the US was also very easy. There was a line for cars but no line for pedestrians and all we did was show our passports to the friendly officer. He scanned them into the computer and we were on our way in a minute or two.
We were back in Columbus by 1600 and decided it was too late to drive on so we'd stay a second night at Pancho Villa State Park. We drove through the few streets of Columbus and wound up at the library where I saw they have wi-fi but were closed. That signal turned out not to work but I picked up wi-fi from the restaurant across the street and checked our email.
We then returned to our campground for the evening. Labashi read and I caught up the blog as fairly strong winds buffeted the van. Tomorrow's supposed to be another extra-windy day but the winds are supposed to die before bedtime tonight.

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Tuesday, 30 March-

We left Oliver Lee State Park fairly early this morning after a comfortable night. The overnight temperature was dramatically different than the last few nights for some reason. The low was around 57.
We drove into Alamogordo just to look around. We stopped at the Visitor's Center and tried to find a source for butane cartridges (no luck) and then hit the Lowe's hoping to find a creative solution to stabilize the van on windy nights. No luck there either.
We drove west on Route 70 to White Sands National Monument. As we drove into the parking lot I noticed a motorcyclist walking away from a BMW GS-style bike and I asked him how he likes it. That led to a fairly long conversation and demo of some of the features of his F650 GS. I was particularly impressed by the hard-sided bags which adjust width at the throw of a lever and by the low seat height. The guy has had as many as four bikes at a time and reduced his stable to this one and is very happy with it. He added a taller Cee Bailey windshield, nerf bars, and trunk and says he as about $11K in it. I think I may have just found my next bike.
We toured the visitor center then took the 8-mile drive through the ultra-white gypsum sands. We saw kids trying to slide down the dunes on snow saucers but they didn't go very fast. Gypsum has a lot more surface friction than snow, of course.
The sands come from the Lake Lucerne which receives gypsum-infused waters draining a wide area. The water evaporates, leaving the gypsum crystals which then are blown into the dunes. The dunes currently extend some 120 miles and are still slowly growing to the northeast from the lake.
We then drove on to the White Sands Missle Range headquarters area where we visited their gem of a museum. We enjoyed seeing the history of White Sands and the many types of missles, particularly the V-2. At the end of World War II, German scientists decided they'd have the best chance of survival with the Americans and apparently made it known they would surrender. The Americans brought them to America in an operation called Operation Paperclip. Among the scientists was Werner Von Braun. As the war ended, there was a stock of V-2 parts at Peenemunde in an area to be turned over to the Russians. Americans quickly shipped all the parts and the German scientists to White Sands. There the 39 German scientists worked with General Electric contractors assemble and launch sixty V-2 rockets. V-2, by the way, is a short form of “Vengence Weapon 2” according to the museum information.
After checking out the V-2 exhibit we walked the outside display yard looking at many different missle types-- Patriot, Hawk, Nike, Big John, Little John, Sargeant, Corporal, Copperhead, Redstone, and on and on. Very impressive indeed.
I kept looking around to see if I recognized anything since my Dad had brought the family to White Sands in the late Fifties when he attended a two-week school for his job at Letterkenny Army Depot. But I must have only been about eight. I very vaguely remember being at a campsite with Mom and brother Orat while Dad was in school and I remember it being hot and sandy. But that's about it.
We then continued southwest to Las Cruces. We had planned to visit the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Museum but we were both put off by it. It just didn't look like the gem it's supposed to be. We went inside and talked with the receptionist but she didn't know anything and the gift shop seemed to be a straight-on tourist trap. We moved on.
We drove into central Las Cruces just to look around and then headed back out to Interstate 10 to continue west. In an hour or so we reached Deming but only long enough to turn south to Columbus. We stopped for the night at Pancho Villa State Park which is just a few miles above the Mexican border. In fact as I write this I can see the border crossing just a few miles from our campsite. I can see a border fence lit by a string of streetlights and I see a set of green traffic-signal lights at the crossing gate. Before dark we had walked around our campground and we saw something odd and unmoving in the sky. It turned out to be an observation blimp.


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Monday, 29 March-

After an ultra-quiet night at Valley of Fires Recreation Area, we took showers in the heated (!!!) restrooms and then went to the visitor's center. There we met 93-year-old Johnson Sterns, a volunteer at the site. Mr. Stearns was a delight. He told us stories of growing up in nearby Carizozo in the Twenties and going to work for the Southern Pacific Railroad then the local bank. He retired in 1983 and his wife of 59 years died in 1996. He's in remarkably-good shape and has a young boy's grin. He says they had electricity in his boyhood home but they didn't have running water. He said it occurred to him the other day that he has lived his entire life living within a half-mile of where he was born and wouldn't change a thing.
We then drove south toward the Three Rivers Petroglyph site about 30 miles on. Along the way I realized Mr. Stearns had been here during the Manhattan Project's atomic bomb test at the Trinity site about 35 miles due west. I pulled over while Labashi looked up the phone number for the visitor's center and called him. He said that, yes, he was living here when it happened. His mother-in-law was hanging clothes outside in the pre-dawn darkness and all of a sudden the sky lit up like it was daylight. She thought daylight had come on all of a sudden but then realized it couldn't be daylight when the darkness came back. It's unclear why the noise wasn't more significant though he did say his mother, who had been staying with them that night, asked what the loud noise was. I asked what he had seen or heard and he said “Nothing! I slept right through it! I had worked a 16-hour shift on the railroad and was very tired that night.”
He said the Army claimed an ammunition dump had exploded and since they had never heard of an atomic bomb, they believed it. He said he heard some ranchers had been told to clear out because there might be some sort of big explosion so the ammo-dump explanation didn't make a lot of sense. Still, they didn't question it.
I also asked about shattered windows and the like, saying I read that windows were shattered as far as 120 miles away. He told me he wasn't aware of any windows being shattered though some in the area could have been and he just hadn't heard about it. He also said he knew ranching families who lived within 25 miles of the bomb site for years afterward and never had any ill effects from living so close.
We continued on to the petroglyph site and just before reaching it we saw eight elk in a plowed field. The site is just below the mountains and apparently the elk spend their winters down low.
We spent the rest of the morning looking at some of the 21,000 petroglyphs scratched into the rock at the site. Interpretive signs tell us it's believed most of the symbols were scratched or pecked into the rock by inhabitants of a nearby village. The symbols appear to have some common elements with Mexican Indian cultures.
After a late lunch we headed for Sunspot, NM and the National Solar Observatory. We rushed up the mountain to the 9000-foot level to reach NSO before it closed for the day and had deep snow along the roads but a pleasantly-warm sun shining on us as we walked to the observatories. We visited the Big Dome and the Tower Dome, the only two facilities open to visitors. We were particularly impressed by the scope in the Tower Dome. The building appears to be fairly tall but then inside we learned that the scope is longer than a football field and sticks down into the mountain over 250 feet. Its mission is solar research and it projects a twenty-inch-diameter image of the sun onto an observation station for researchers. Since our visit to the MacDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, we've been very interested in learning more about solar observation. Unfortunately, there was no live observation here at NSO but we did have an interesting conversation with an operator of one of the scopes.
We then toured the visitor's center museum. It was pretty good as far as content but badly needs an upgrade to the displays and the upgrade process is just getting started. Still, we're very glad we were able to see the facility and its location.
After NSO we headed back down to the mountain town of Cloudcroft and had a fine meal at 'The Lodge', an early 1900's lodge built by the railroad to attract tourist traffic to what had otherwise been a lumbering spur. Though the lodge is well past its prime we had an excellent meal with baked brie, dungeness crabcakes, pecan vinagrette dressing on the salad, and a super Rebecca's Filet Mignon in a green-peppercorn sauce. Outstanding!
As the sun set we zipped down the mountain to Alamogordo and drove a few miles south to the Oliver Lee State Park for the night.


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