"Remember the Alamo" - Southern States  DAY 12 - Wed., 20 March 2002

We managed to oversleep.  Sue us, it's a vacation, after all.  The alarm went off at 6 a.m., but having discovered the secret to oversleeping is having the heater on, being under a cozy blankey, and turning off the alarm, the boy managed the alarm part, but we share the blame on the other two charges.  Deal with it.

The Green Spam Can is fueled up, and the usual liter of Pepsi is acquired, before we go on the war path of driving and photographing the southwest as we near the end of this leg of the tour.  In leaving Odessa, we found that you can really see a lot more during the day time.  For example, the lights in the distance weren't a small town or a business area, but rather, one of what seems to be many oil refineries in the area.  We pass by a brick mural built into the overpass, and even a happy, large-scale painted mural for the city itself.  We headed over to The Presidential Museum, but figures, it's not open for hours, and those are house we don't have.  And who could forget the First Baptist Church, conveniently located across from the museum.  Thus, we left town.

Not surprisingly, we found that it's not only fashionable, but apparently nearly a gospel truth, that oil rigs should be used decoratively.  The irony is, we didn't see a single, working rig... they all now seem to be more of the less unsightly pump contraptions.  We ended up turning from a northbound to a westbound direction in Seminole, Texas.  It's a nice looking town, and the cop cars are quite subtle.  (You can't even see the lights in the grill in the picture, but no markings, and except for the spotlight, who'd know?  And no, the 10-gallon hat is not unusual in these here parts.)  And, the First Baptist Church.

At 8:06 a.m. (Central Time) turned 7:08 a.m. (Mountain Time), we crossed over into New Mexico, and a different country station took to the air waves.  (While the music selection is a bit limited, so is the range of the stations, which also led to them apparently all borrowing news and weather content from each other, or alternately, getting theirs from the same source; the only variance was the announcer's voice, and the silly attempts at jokes.)

So, we missed Enron Stadium in Houston, but there were still fields with that ill-fated company's name and logo scattered about New Mexico.  And of course, stories of their now unemployed work force in various communities across Texas.  We hit Carlsbad, New Mexico, with the goal of turning from our westbound direction to return northbound, which was successful.  The fact that we saw a BNSF train chugging along thrilled the boy in a way I cannot begin to express.  Go figure.  And the downtown, and we were off again, northbound along highway 285. 

Next on the agenda was Roswell, New Mexico.  Not as much alien possession as you'd assume, but there was some.  The historic marker was historic, not alien-based, by the way.  The street lamp was another story, though, and the true colors began to shine through.  A block further was the UFO Museum and store, and nearby, an Alien Zone located next to Area 51; not sure what they were peddling, though.  Wal-Mart even got into the act by painting their window and putting out a trampoline (though I'm not clear on the significance of alien influence and trampolines is, exactly, if any.)  Of course, they'd also decorated their recycling collection bins so well that the boy was tempted to empty the car's collection of plastic bottles, but sadly (very sadly), that didn't happen.  Remind me to include a picture of the fiasco in tomorrow's posting (cozy in here, cold outside).  And yes, Roswell is the place to buy wholesale fire trucks, it seems.

So, we depart, and onto Artesia.  Why?  Well, it's sort of in the way, meaning, we have to slow down at the downtown signals (two of 'em on 285), before we could return to exceeding the posted speed limit.  Maybe 45 minutes later, we fork off of 285 into rural highway 20, a cozy two-lane deal with a posted speed limit of 55 MPH.  Maybe 12 miles from the interchange, meaning an hour from the last hamlet of Artesia, we encounter a house or old church, with nothing visible for miles (and yes, we've been looking).  It seemed odd, thus, immortalized.  And if you were wondering, yes, it snows in the desert.

The road goes on forever, it seems.  At each new ridge top, we could see for between three and seven miles before the road disappeared into the haze or over another hill.  But thanks to driving at 80-90 MPH versus the suggested speed of 55, we get there in no time flat... although I'm sure observing the speed limit would have gotten us much less jarred, for the road wasn't what you, I, or the department of transportation, would call smooth.

Fort Sumner is a historic site.  Which is nice, but incidental to our visit here.  And no, not Fort Sumter.  That's an island fortress in the Charleston, South Carolina harbor.  (Yes, I'd agree, the guys naming forts in the day were not given enough resources or name selections to work with.)  Our mission was to visit the actual gravesite of William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid, et al.  So, we did.  The grave site itself is now encased in steel, with the gravestone (commonly referred to as the headstone) being strapped with steel as a secondary precaution.  It seems that the gravestone has been subject of theft twice now, leading to one absence for 26 years.  (The coroner's report and other such things.)

The cemetery was pretty much empty; perhaps 100 feet square, with only a dozen marked graves remaining (representing internments between 1881 and 1926).  The only other one in good condition was that of Lucien Maxwell, who did several things to bring about the civilization of the southwest.  His claim to fame, if nothing else, is that as an individual, he owned the single largest tract of land in the United States in the day.

With that, we made our way back to Interstate 40 in Santa Rosa, New Mexico (where it was not nearly as windy as it was when we passed through on Day 3, and headed for our final location for the day in Gallup, New Mexico.  Along the way we snapped a pic of some of the landscape, which pretty much looks like you'd expect New Mexico to look.  (Of course, this would require you to forget that 70% of the state is flat, desert-like with nothing but ugly plants, power poles and cattle fencing, so... enjoy the picture!)

And yes, we're back in the motel across from the train yards.  I think it's not just that it's cheap ($26 with tax for the night) and relatively cozy (especially if you brought your own pillows and blankeys).  I suspect it's also because of the train yards.  Let's face it, the boy is obviously queer for trains.  He just bought the LEGO Santa Fe limited edition train (two of 'em, in fact, the Santa Fe is the same engine that BNSF uses, which is right across the street at the moment).  He made me stop at the train in Carlsbad today, he bought the Microsoft Train Simulator in the Biloxi, Mississippi Wal-Mart while waiting for the oil change, he's got a train across his counter top at home right now, and from what I understand, there was once a train running around his little cubbyhole of a cubicle at his work (the very same place I was denied employment in May of last year).  Call it a hunch, but I think he likes trains.  Weird, eh?