Thursday, February 26, 2009

New Mexico, day three

The sign in Martye's yard
Truth or Consequences, from the south side at night, looking towards the hot springs district.

The second and third days of the trip out were pretty flat, filled with tumbleweeds that kept rolling into the car and vast stretches of scruffy looking over grazed land.
We rolled through Dodge City, Elkart, and a bunch of towns that mostly consisted of big grain silos surrounded by run down houses and a few gas stations and beat up grocery stores. The two lane highways we drove on were mostly empty.
We stayed the night in in a cheap hotel near Dodge City,
In the morning we walked across the dark parking lot , the sun just starting to show in the east, the biggest full moon I've seen in years going down and went into a little breakfast joint and had an unexceptional breakfast.
You could tell that the Mexican influence was there in the food, but watered down like the coffee.
And nobody uses real half and half out west, it's all non dairy creamer.
The joint was filled with late middle aged guys in cowboy hats with pot bellies, the parking lot filled with big beat up trucks.
On the long drive west did pass a few huge wind farms, but the cold hard wind and a need to get somewhere left us rolling along, so we didn't stop for pictures.
We hit the interstate near Las Vegas, New Mexico and set the cruise control on 75 and pushed on to Truth Or Consequences, not stopping at Santa Fe, Los Alamos or Socoro.
Seeing the beauty salon sign that told us we were in front of Martye's house sure felt good. We unloaded and headed down to the hot springs district, and bought a soak at Indian Springs Waterhole No.1.
One thing I did find funny was how small the Rio Grande was. It's not much of a river at that point of it's run.

1 comment:

M Big Mistake said...

See there's my mistake...I stopped in Socorro. For 4 years.

Much of the year in many places the Rio Grande is dry and you can walk across it.

"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis." Ralph Waldo Emerson