In the Sonoran Desert

After yesterday's drive of 450 miles we decided to stay closer to home today. On the outskirts of Scottsdale there is a trailhead with miles of hiking trails in the surrounding desert. A good walk was on the agenda. I love the desert environment; it is so different from any other. In the spring (March and April), after the monsoon season, this arid landscape will be in bloom. I wish I could experience it then.

Tumacacori

Sometimes the best laid plans go awry. My cousin Charlotte made reservations for us to take a tour of some caverns to the south of Tucson. Unfortunately, we misjudged the travel time and arrived too late to join the tour. We decided instead to visit one of the oldest missions in Arizona (now a state park). To get there we took a scenic road south to the Mexican border, then west to Nogales skirting the mountains that form tha natural border, then north for a bit. The mountainous scenery was impressive. The area of the Santa Cruz Valley was first visited by the Spanish in the 1690's. It wasn't until the mid 18th century that a settlement was established. The plans to build a self-sustaining mission and church were never fulfilled due to harassment by the Apaches and the changes in the political winds in that Mexico gained control of the area and evicted the Spanish clergy in the 1840's. The partially completed church mission buildings were then abandoned, the tower of the church never receiving its intended dome. Through neglect and wanton destruction the compound fell to ruin. It is a pity because it would have been a gem of colonial architecture. What remains is something of a wreck (see pic). The second pic is of one of the hand-carved doors, one of the few decorative elements to have survived the ravages of time. The interior of the church was once brightly painted, but the plaster has long since crumbled and even the choir loft has disappeared, either collapsed or purposely dismantled for its wood. The compensation for the less than spectacular architecture was in the very well-organized exhibit on the history of the place. The information presented did not avoid the fact that the arrival of the conquerors was catastrophic for the indigenous inhabitants. In my view, the Catholic missionaries forced the inhabitants of the area to abandon their superstitions and ignorance to replace them with their own version of superstition and ignorance. Behind it all is the eternal great motivator of man: money and power.

Gallup to Scottsdale

The morning in Gallup was really frigid, with the temperature in the single digits. The altitude is again over 6,000 feet. It is dry as a bone here and the mountains look like massive rock piles that were deposited by some capricious giant. The landscape is magnificent in an austere way. Crossing over into Arizona the topography changes again, flattening out. It is perhaps the most inhospitable and charmless landscape I have seen. I left the interstate to join a two-lane secondary road headed south. For the first hour I sped through a vast emptiness; there was no one and nothing to be seen. I would have felt utterly alone had not a Mozart Piano Concerto been playing in the radio to console me. Rising in elevation I passed a sign announcing the Tonto National Forest. First there were only widely spaced juniper trees which are more like bushes than trees (you call this a forest?) but then there were pines and eventually nothing but pines. At the top of the ascent a vista opened up of snow-dusted, forested peaks, unexpected and glorious. What a change in flora in just two hours of driving! The gradual descent went through the town of Payson (which has grown a lot since the last time I was here) and then began the steep descent to the valley floor. The pine forests disappeared and were replaced by suguaro cactus, first a few, then countless specimens. These are the iconic cacti of the desert that grow to thirty feet in height with arms curved upward. It takes a suguaro 75 years to produce its first arm. Reaching the sprawling megalopolis of Phoenix/Mesa/Scottsdale there were palm trees, blooming bougainvilea, orange and lemon trees hung with a bounty of fruit. It was surprisingly cool, only in the fifties. The pic is taken outside of Payson, on the way down the mountain. Note the splendid prickly pear cactus specimen.

Las Vegas to Gallup

I stopped at the town of Las Vegas (not to be confused with the one in Nevada) to have a look around. Although it was only founded in the late 1800's (hardly worth mentioning by European standards) it sports an Old Town with a charming town square replete with park and Victorian band stand. Most of the buildings here are original but many have undergone some unfortunate changes. The town seems to be just hanging on. The most impressive edifice is the Plaza Hotel. Again, this is the pic I would have taken if...but I have used someone else's shot. Continuing south the road enters the mountains. Here they are covered with pine forests and, with a dusting of snow, they are magnificent against the blue wintery sky. The altitude here is over 6,000 feet.

I reached Santa Fe just in time for lunch. Not to sound like a broken record (I have commented on this before in my blogs), but the quality of food available to the traveler on this continent, and especially the vegetarian traveler, is just plain awful. Outside of Wichita I got off the freeway to find a place to have lunch. There were restaurants all right, but all six of them were burger joints. Doesn't anyone eat anything besides burgers? (Okay, there was a KFC, but that's just a different variety of junk food.) I knew that Santa Fe, the sophisticated town that it is, would have something to meet my needs -- but how to find it? The guiding spirits of Bonne Cuisine were with me as, just by accident , I found a bakery/cafe that had the most wonderful black bean/mushroom veggie burger I have ever had. And with sprouts! And salad! Real food! I intended to have a walk around the famous Plaza but couldn't find it. I drove around in circles and got quite lost until I found myself on a highway going south. It was too far to turn back so I kept on going and eventually joined the interstate again. I have been to Santa Fe once before. I reckon it was in 1978. That's 32 years ago -- half a lifetime. Gradually descending in altitude I turned westward again at Albuquerque and made it to Gallup, the last big town in NM before Arizona. I am now in the Great Southwestern Desert. New Mexico is the sixth largest state in the Union but it only has a population of two million.

In the Land of Enchantment

Leaving Guymon bright and early on a cloudless but chilly morning I made a bit of a detour to the west. I wanted to hook up with the scenic route. This meant an extra hour through the Oklahoma Panhandle to the town of Boise City. It gave me an unobstructed view of the High Plains. And what could possibly obstruct the panhandelian view? Nothing. The term 'flat as a pancake' came to mind as I cruised through the treeless, grassy plain. What land is not reserved for cattle grazing (and the cultivation of whatever it is the steer eat) is scrubland. I reveled in the joy of being in an environment so utterly different from any other I've seen. Dorothy, we definitely ain't in Missouri anymore! At the point where Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico meet I entered the "Land of Enchantment" which is the official epithet of the State of New Mexico. I think it is well chosen. This secondary road I was on was actually the Santa Fe trail, the route that brought settlers and traders from Missouri to central New Mexico. The roadside markers revealed fascinating bits about the surroundings. For example, just after crossing the state line into NM there is one lonely hill rising up from the flatness. This was known as Rabbit Ear Hill to the travelers on this route. It was a sign that they had only 200 more bone-crushing miles to travel in their wagons to Santa Fe. The first town in NM, Clayton, already had a different feel to it. There was evidence of Southwest culture: the adobe earth-colored buildings, the color turquoise and the emblematic New Mexican cross. Hills and mesas became more abundant and then, in the distance, I saw a mass of looming white. Could it be? Yes! The Rockies! What a thrill to finally see the high mountains, especially now with their recent adornment of snow. I reached the I 25 and headed south. This must be one of the most beautiful stretches of Interstate in the country as it skirts the eastern edge of the Rockies from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Las Cruces near the Mexican border. The pic is of a butte at a town called Wagon Mound. This is the pic I might have taken myself IF I had remembered to recharge the battery of my digital camera. Aaaargh!! I am grateful to whomever provided the pic.

Greensburg

Just before Liberal I passed through the town of Greensburg, or better said, what is left of it. This once prosperous town, a county seat, was wiped off the map in the spring of 2007 in a mega tornado. In a few minutes 95% of the town was gone. It has stubbornly refused to surrender and is rebuiliding, this time as an example of 'green' living. I made a short detour to have a look at the place. The rubble has been cleared away. There are some new buildings going up. The street grid has been maintained but there are plenty of empty lots. The old trees with their branches lopped off looked forlorn. I wish the town well. The pic was taken just a few days after the disaster.
The town of Guymon is located in the panhandle of Oklahoma, just south of Liberal, Kansas (which boasts a 'Land of Oz' exhibit). It was my plan to overnight in this burg. It really feels like the middle of nowhere. Tomorrow I cross over into New Mexico. It is odd for me to consider that the eastern state line of Kansas is about a mile down the street from my house while at this end only about 30 miles of Oklahoma separates it from the southwest. it's a meeting of the worlds.

Westward Ho (Ho Ho!)

Guymon, Oklahoma. By some inexplicable coincidence, the distance between Scottsdale, Arizona and Schroon Lake, New York is exactly the same: 1,250 miles. Since flying has become such a hassle and is so unreliable I decided to drive westward. The unreliability in the overland plan is the weather. How could I have known that one of the biggest blizzards in decades would sweep through the Midwest on Christmas Eve day? I watched the progress of the storm attentively. It seemed to be two-pronged, bashing the Upper Midwest and the states south of us at the same time, but leaving western Kansas virtually unscathed.
When I started off this morning I had to ask myself if I wasn't making a big mistake. The Interstate was in part ice-covered and high winds blew drifting snow. But around Emporia, after two hours of white knuckle driving, the situation improved and by Wichita there was little of the white stuff to be seen. I have described the landscape of this segment of the journey, the Flint Hills, a little more than a year ago. The road west of Wichita was unchartered territory to me. I have traversed the entirety of the great state of Kansas before, heading to Denver, but that route was in the middle of the state. Today's route, the K 54, was more southerly. During the steady and subtle gain of altitude into the Great Plains trees become scarce. These are wide open spaces here. There is something grand about the vastness of space on the Plains. The land is fertile and given over to agriculture. There is a gentleness to the curve of the land. I can imagine how its inhabitants would be attached to living out here, although I would find it intolerable. Towns are few and far between. Look at any map of western Kansas and it looks like it is nearly empty. After Wichita I travelled on a secondary road. I much prefer it to the monotony of the Interstate. Of the towns I passed through, with names like Kingman, Calista, Pratt, Bucklin and Meade, a few were charming, with some vestiges of a past century, while others were utterly non-descript, a collection of ramshackle homes, the inevitable fast food eateries and abandoned gas stations.