Tuesday, 16 November 2021
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| today's route |
I'd originally chosen this route because I saw there are 2 ruins along the way and thought I'd want to stop at at least one of them. After I looked them up, though, I changed my mind. As far as I could tell, these are mostly ruins of buildings Spanish missionaries built, and not so much those of the Native Americans that lived in the area. I'm sure they're interesting, but that's just not how I wanted to spend my limited time. Especially when Google promised this drive would take 4 hours - meaning 7 or 8 for me - even without stops.
Still, I decided this route might be more interesting than cutting over to the interstate, as Google kept trying to insist on.
On the road
Instead of turning into the mountains at Tularosa, which would take us back over to Roswell, we went north on US-54. I saw green cropfields (so incongruous in mid-November, but this is a lot farther south than, say, Wyoming). But mostly I saw sagebrush desert with mountains on either side of the road.
At Three Rivers, I passed the turn for petroglyphs and wished once again that I had more time. The BLM is in charge of this site which has more than 21,000 petroglyphs. Imagine. Here's a short description and a photo of one of the pieces of art. https://www.blm.gov/three-rivers-petroglyph-site I wonder when this area will be given more protection than the BLM can usually provide.
At the town of Oscuro, I saw a sign for the Oscuro Bombing Range. This seemed odd to me, so I looked it up and found it's part of an Air Force program that works with White Sands Missile Range. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/oscura.htm This website that gave me information about this program seemed a little strange, with a lot of ads that seemed anti-Biden. Him being the president and commander-in-chief, it seemed odd that a site talking about a military program would have this sort of thing advertised. But what do I know. I usually shorten the URL to fit better on the blog page, but this time I kept the whole thing in case it means something to someone.
I came to the town of Carrizozo, elevation 5,425'. "Carrizo" means reed grass, and the extra "zo" suggests abundance. The population exploded when the railroad came through in 1899, and a 1909 county referendum decided to move the Lincoln County seat here from Lincoln. For some reason, this was so controversial it had to be decided by the US Supreme Court. Carrizozo won.
When the railroad declined in importance, so did the town, and the current population stands at 933. It sounds like the town is trying to reinvent itself as an artists' colony, apparently with some success. So this is one tiny town that shouldn't be counted out yet.
From here, the mountains started to fade into the distance and instead, I was seeing a broad area of sageland with hills. I missed the turn for the state road that would take me to the ruins and had to go back about 15 miles or so. New Mexico just doesn't mark roads the way I'd wish they did, but I found the right road eventually.
The difference between US-54 and NM-55 was like that between an interstate and a local road - stark. But rewarding in an odd way: on US-54 I felt like an observer, as if from a passing train; on NM-55 I felt like I was walking in the middle of all I'd been observing.
At first what I saw was sage and grass - fairly tall grass, up to maybe 4'. Then I saw all grass. Eventually that changed to grass with cactus, and later to grass with juniper.
I passed through Claunch, which claims about 50 residents, but I don't know where they were. I saw buildings for a community church and a women's club, and I saw a cemetery. But there were no stores and no buildings that looked inhabited.
At another place, I passed workers operating large heavy machinery at the site of a small brick building without a roof. I couldn't tell what the workers were doing or how they got to the work site, as there were no vehicles other than the very large machinery.
In fact, for the entire drive I saw only 7 vehicles coming toward me and only 1 that was going my way.
I came to the turn for the Gran Quivira Ruins, and found this marker:
And for some actual information about this site, here's a brief explanation from the park service. https://www.nps.gov/gran-quivira Actually, it sounds like a place I'd like to visit if I had more time to spend here.
But here's what I've been wondering about: how did these people find each other out here? The park service says this was a huge settlement for hundreds of years - but how did the Spanish find it? Twice? This area is so covered with hills that it's impossible to see very far in the distance, so the Spanish couldn't have just stood on a handy hill and looked and seen this city. And if no Europeans had been here before, how did they find it this first time? It's not like they'd been given compass directions by someone. With all these stories we've read about early explorers and early parties of settlers and so forth - how did they know where they were going? I get lost when I'm on marked highways with a map.
After more than 60 miles on this bumpy, narrow state road, we came to the town of Mountainair, home of the Historic Shaffer Hotel. At least, that's what their advertising said. When I went online to find out what made it historic, I found this odd blog post about it. https://cityofdust.blogspot.com/shaffer-hotel-mountainair-nm He said the town was named for fresh mountain breezes; I say there was a constant very hard wind blowing the whole time we were there.
I wanted to stop and let the dogs out but, for the life of me, I couldn't find a park or a church that wasn't being used. I finally found a school in a residential neighborhood and tried to walk the dogs there. We immediately discovered that every single house had at least one, usually two, large dogs living there, all of which were outside in their yards, telling us to stay away. And where there weren't dogs, there were stickers and/or litter. And while we were still out, a city work crew came along and raised a bunch of dust while they worked on a pothole near where we'd parked. I apologized to the dogs for having picked a place that really wasn't fit to walk in.
As we were leaving town, I saw a sign on a fence at a home: Bad Ass Dog On Duty.
From Mountainair, I could have taken a road north 8 miles to the Quarai Ruins. The situation there sounds much like that at the Gran Quivira ruins - both are managed by the National Park Service; both document long-time Native settlements; both have ruins of churches built by Spanish priests from the 1600s. Quarai does have some unique features that are described at this website. https://www.legendsofamerica.com/quarai-mission
Instead of doing that, we picked up US-60, which a sign told me was on the Salt Missions Trail. I wondered why it referred to salt missions and found this page that describes the history of this state scenic byway and notes that it passes a number of dried lakes whose beds provided salt for both local residents and passing trade caravans.
A short way along the road I came to the town of Abo, and found another historical marker that indicated local ruins were part of the same situation found in Gran Quivira and Quarai. Here's a link to the marker. https://www.hmdb.org/abo-ruins
As I drove, I kept seeing those falling rocks signs. But I also saw signs that said, "Removing Rocks from Right-of-Way Prohibited." Huh? I'm supposed to keep my eyes open for rocks that might have fallen on the road but I'm not allowed to get them out of the line of traffic? What if it's a rock that's too big to drive over and falls in a place that I can't drive around? Never mind. I didn't see any more fallen rocks than I've seen elk.
I did see a sign that said, "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh." Which sounds kind of awful. I'm not a Biblical scholar, but I don't remember Jesus ever talking about following him being so hard. Unless you're rich, of course.
I wanted to avoid the interstate as long as I could, so I turned north on NM-47 that ran through a string of local towns for 40 miles. I passed through an area that at first I thought was a collection of towns called Rio Communities. But I finally saw a sign that said something about the City of Rio Communities, which just seems an odd name.
There there were Tome, which I also saw written as Tomé, which I think is Spanish for the verb to take, which makes this an interesting name. I passed through Los Lunas and Peralta. Note the strong Spanish influence in this state. Then Bosque Farms, elev. 4,866' (Bosque means forest in Spanish), followed by the Isleta Reservation boundary.
I joined I-25 to get through the traffic of Albuquerque. The airport code here is ABQ, and I saw that abbreviation everywhere because, let's face it, Albuquerque isn't all that easy to write.
I passed signs telling me there's a Historic Old Town here, and a balloon museum, both of which sound interesting if I have time.
I crossed the Sandia Reservation boundary near Bernalillo, which is just north of ABQ and is where my campground is for the next few days.
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