Wandering Around Willcox

If you follow Interstate 10 across New Mexico into Arizona driving towards Tucson or Phoenix you're going to pass the town of Willcox.  In the past, Denny and I have driven to the Cider Mill in Willcox from St. David, Arizona to purchase frozen apple cider but we never really looked around the town while we were here.

This year I decided to arrange a stay of a week's time so we could play golf in Sunsites and check out the Rex Allen Museum and get some cider.  Well, two out of three is not bad.

It seems the town of Willcox has been hard hit by the recession and a lot of the local restaurants and motels have closed down.  The Cider Mill was victim to the economy also, shutting down after selling locally grown apples and apple products for twenty-plus years.  When you ask folks where to eat they recommend the Big Tex BBQ place or "The Plaza" which is a little restaurant at the truck stop along the interstate.  Driving through downtown there are almost as many empty storefronts as there are those still in business and there's not much traffic on the roadways.  It only takes a few minutes to navigate most of the town, so after driving around a bit one day we stopped at the Rex Allen Museum.  


Growing up in the 50s and 60s my heroes were cowboys: Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, the Rifleman, Sugarfoot, Sky King and more.  Rex Allen wasn't a name I was familiar with but I figured he was a contemporary of Roy Rogers and that was good enough for me.

Located on N. Railroad Avenue near the middle of town, when you pull up to park across the street you discover a statue of Rex Allen himself as well as a separate memorial to his horse, Koko.  Once Denny and I went inside the museum, we were immediately informed by one of the staff there that Rex had been cremated upon his death and part of his ashes were scattered by Koko's memorial at his request while the other half were scattered at Rex's parents' gravesites. 

 

It will cost a couple all of $3 to tour the museum; $2 if you are a single.  On the day Denny and I visited we were met at the door by two employees who had obviously worked together a long time; like an old married couple they finished each others statements and bantered back and forth like an amateur comedy team.   It turns out that one of the men was from Ohio originally while the other was a native of Willcox.  Denny and I chatted with them almost as long as we spent wandering the small museum.

Real cowboys wear spangles.  Most of Rex's outfits were created by Nudie, while his boots were by Tony Lama.   In addition to being in movies, Rex Allen had a long recording career and worked in radio, making many public appearances, usually with his beloved horse Koko (nicknamed the Miracle Horse of the Movies.)

The minimum requirements to be a cowboy, as posted in the museum.

 

The museum is divided into several sections dealing with Rex Allen's various careers, family and life growing up in Willcox, but the room I found impressive was the one dedicate to the local cowboys--those ranchers and farmers of Willcox.  Most of the portraits here have been painted by very talented local artists and show the determination and true grit it takes to carve out a life here in the high desert.

It's not going to take you a long time to cover the entire museum, but it was an interesting way to spend the morning and bring back memories of sitting in front of the TV on a Saturday morning enthralled by the cowboys racing across the small screen.  And that was certainly worth the $3.  

Journal Entry June 3, 2003

I had started to post this while we were in Oklahoma City and got distracted with RV issues.  I will occasionally be posting blogs covering some of our travels from before I started blogging in 2005.

Tuesday, June 3 We had thunderstorms early this morning, but no winds so the rain came straight down and we didn’t have to close the bedroom windows, which was weird because it flashed and banged and you would have thought there would be high winds. The weather cleared up after dawn, so after breakfast we drove downtown to the Oklahoma City Memorial. I’ll tell you, I’ve never been to a place where my eyes kept tearing up over and over due to the stories and pictures and videos and photographs and words inscribed on granite and concrete and the memorials left in the original protective fencing. It was touching and awe-inspiring for all the stories of heroism and bravery and pain and terror. There is the outdoor memorial area, with the empty chairs representing those that died that are placed in rows to represent the floor where the person was at the time of the bombing, the reflecting pool and two gates with the time of 9:01 on the east end, representing the time of innocence before the bombing and the west gate has 9:03 on it, which represents the time that Oklahomans were changed forever, since the bombing occurred at 9:02. The museum is in the Journal building, which was badly damaged but left standing next to the Murrah building. They have areas inside that show the damage to the building, with the concrete blocks in rubble and damaged office furniture crushed, doors blown outward, etc., as well as videos of survivors and rescuers and volunteers and relatives and friends of those who were lost, pictures and videos of the bombing and of the world’s reaction to it, and the most touching room was the room of pictures of those who died, each picture set in a shadow box and for many of the pictures relatives and/or friends had placed mementos relating to that person in the box, like a child’s favorite toy, or something of special importance to that person. That was a hard room to view. I’m so glad we went there.

The entrance to the memorial showing the time the bomb exploded.

One hundred and sixty-eight chairs; one for each person killed.  Each chair is inscribed with the name of one lost and each chair is lit at night.

Simply titled "Jesus Wept", this statue stands with its back to 168 pillars.

 Written by one of the many search teams looking for survivors.

 Personal memorials left by friends, family and those passing through.  Periodically items are removed and cataloged and the fence fills again.

 

"Forever changed".  This wall at the opposite end of the reflecting pool shows the time the explosion ended and the beginning of the way our country now had to think about terrorists.

I was looking back in my journals to see when we were here last exploring the city and found my journal entry on our visit to the bombing memorial. As I reread it I realized I really didn't do justice to the museum or to the people who created this memorial or to the people who died that awful day. But our visit left me emotionally overwhelmed and I just couldn't summon the words to describe the emotional impact the entire memorial area had on me. This is one of those places that you just have to come and experience for yourself.

A Missile and A Mission

Duck and Cover--for those of us growing up in the 50s and 60s practicing this drill was standard procedure in elementary school.  So when I was perusing the list of places we could visit in Tucson, Arizona it was natural for me to be intrigued by the idea of visiting a Titan Missile silo to see one of those awesome harbingers of doom.

Located just a few miles south of Tucson in Sahuarita, Arizona there's just a small sign by the turn off for the Titan Missile Museum.  After we parked by the Discone Antenna (ignoring the radioactivity sign at our own peril) we entered the small storefront/museum entrance to discover we had missed a tour by 15 minutes and had another 45 minutes to wait for the next tour.  The tour itself lasts one hour and there is an admission fee with multiple types of discounts for seniors/military/AAA, etc.  There are a few displays and plaques with the history of the Titan missile program but most of the area is given over to touristy souvenirs in the shop. 

Your tour starts with a brief video explaining what you'll be seeing inside the missile silo and then you are led to the open area on top of the silo complex where a tour guide explains the mechanics of the missile itself, including its size, its propulsion system and fuels, the outer security systems and spoke about working there, as many of the guides are former employees of the base.

 One set of four motion detector systems along the outer perimeter of the missile silo area.

Then we walked to a metal staircase the led to a glass topped area that looked down into the actual silo for the now-deactivated Titan II missile.  Unfortunately the glare of the sun on the glass meant I was unable to get a photo looking down into the silo.  Those beige panels are the huge sliding sections of roof that covered the silo and that rolled open for launching the rocket.

Next we traipsed down 55 steps to the inner sanctum of the missile silo, entering through three ton steel doors that had to be opened with special codes that were once burned after they were entered.  Our tour guide, Bob, explained the tasks and preparedness drills the staff went through on a daily basis and even showed a dry run of what a launching would have been like.  Of course, no missiles were ever actually launched from any of the bases.  Back in the 60s there were a total of 54 missile silos; 18 in Tucson, AZ, 18 in Little Rock, AR, and 18 in Wichita, Kansas.  The silo here in Tucson is the only one still in existence.

The long hallway leading from the command center to the missile launch silo.

The halls weren't built for tall guys.

Looking through a cut out in the wall at the deactivated Titan rocket and warhead.

Looking down towards the base of the silo.

Bob, our tour guide, was a font of information about the Titan Missile base, the program and the mechanics of the rocket itself. If you are interesting in learning more I found a great site here. What I should have done was bring my small digital recorder because the amount of information given is vast and it was all fascinating.  Unfortunately, I find that as I age I can look around and listen and process, but I can't always do all three at once.

After leaving the Titan Missile Museum we headed for the Mission San Xavier del Bac just a few miles north off Interstate 19.  I've seen photographs of this history church on other RV blogs and wanted to see this "white dove of the desert."

The Mission of San Xavier del Bac is still in use as a church and is available for weddings and funerals for the Native American Tohono O'oodham people who worship here.  There are no admission fees to visit the church and you are free to wander the grounds and the church itself as long as services are not in session. 

 Now a National Historic Landmark, construction of the current Mission San Xavier del Bac began in 1783 and finished in 1797.  The artwork and craftsmanship inside are amazing for the time and restoration has been ongoing for years due to lightning and storm damage as well as earthquake damage.  Built of brick, stone and lime mortar originally, over the years cement plaster was added and now the restorers are removing that cement plaster and working on returning the walls to their original lime plaster. If you look closely at the first picture (double click to enlarge) you can see the difference between the completed tower on the left versus the tower on the right side of the photo. 

There is a small museum and gift shop on the grounds, as well as a snack bar and a couple of shops operated by local Native Americans.  In the parking lot you'll find several stands with local folks cooking tacos and Indian fry bread for sale while the music of a wooden pipe wafts on the breeze.  It's only a recording coming from one of the nearby shops, but the sound is magical here in the desert standing in front of the white dove.

An Unintentional Christmas Present

When our youngest son called on Christmas morning, he asked what Denny and I had bought each other as gifts. I told him that we hadn't bought specific gifts because we tend to buy things we need like new golf bags/shoes/shirts and call them "anniversary" presents or "birthday" presents no matter when they are purchased. And then we throw/give away something old.

I always find something to buy at the Mesa Market Place (swap meet/flea market) and this year was no exception; I purchased a lovely hand blown art glass solar powered mushroom yard decoration. I called it my birthday present and figured that would work for Christmas also (after all the two are only four days apart.)

But then we moved from our campground in Gold Canyon, Arizona to a county park campground in Mesa and that's when Denny and I discovered we had given ourselves a Christmas gift after all; a beautiful desert setting where we were serenaded by birds in the daytime and coyotes at night. During our week long stay here the two of us have run errands, visited with friends, done some sightseeing on back roads and hit the flea market again where we bought a new pair of binoculars (20 x 70 power) which we have used to pick out distant hikers on the mountainside, followed jet contrails in the sky and watched birds in flight and lizards scrabbling on the desert floor. We have breathed deeply and relaxed completely and that in itself has been a gift.

So Darb, for Christmas we gave each other a campground. And since we've enjoyed ourselves here so much, for Valentine's Day we're giving it to each other again.

Recap

Once we download the current year's version of Turbo Tax to the computer Denny finishes off his maintenance and mileage lists for The Beast so I thought I'd briefly sum up our travels this year.

January first saw us in Live Oak, Florida and December thirty-first finds us in Mesa, Arizona. In between we pulled the trailer 8,498.5 miles, putting a total of 16,751 miles on Black Beauty in our errand running and sightseeing. We crossed the borders of thirty-four states, spending at least one night in twenty-five different states during the year. Denny and I spent the year in a total of forty-six campgrounds over a period of fifty-two weeks. Of those forty-six campgrounds, twenty-five of them were private member parks which meant we either stayed for free or for a deeply discounted price. Our shortest stay in a campground was one night and our longest stay in one campground was five weeks.

In September we finally arrived in Maryland, which completed our desire to visit all fifty states. In November we spent three weeks in Oklahoma while dealing with repairs to The Beast, which allowed us to play golf in that state and thus crossing off Oklahoma as the 50th state in which Denny and I have played a round of golf. That means after thirteen years on the road we finally met our two primary goals of full time travel. Yes, we're a little slow.

Tomorrow begins a new year. Monday we will head for Casa Grande, Arizona with plans to bounce around southern Arizona and California for the winter before moving north through California to the Oregon coastline over the summer. There are no real concrete plans at the moment, because making said plans seems to bring a plethora of problems upon our heads and we're a bit tired of that. We're thinking of visiting friends and family in Colorado, Nevada, South Dakota and New Mexico before the year is through, but if there's one thing Denny and I have discovered over the years it's that nothing we plan is written in stone. So you'll just have to tag along to see where we end up.

Happy New Year! Use a designated driver if you are out celebrating so we can see you somewhere down the road....

A Silly Way to Spend the Day

sTuesday I found out I had dodged the skin cancer bullet so I decided to celebrate my "over the hill plus ten" (or twenty depending on what you consider to be over the hill) birthday by hiking up Silly Mountain in Apache Junction, Arizona. Silly Mountain is its official name and now it even has it's own Botanical Trail, picnic benches and doggie water fountain. It is officially a destination park instead of a place where people brought their off road vehicles to tear up the side of the mountain. And yes, I'm a bit anti-ATV when it comes to the damage they do to the desert. Anyway, when Denny and I first walked up Silly Mountain back in 2002 you could pretty much just walk straight up the hill from the parking lot. The park service has now closed off that wide pathway created by misuse and a staff of volunteers has created a series of narrow walking/trail biking pathways around the mountain that create 360 degree vistas and varying amounts of difficulty to walk. On a good day you can see for miles; there was a haze in the air when Denny and I were attempting our walk. I assume there are still some geocaches around the mountain too, although I haven't checked that.I think the sum total of the paths I took was about one mile, but that was a lot of ups, downs and turns. Denny and I stopped a couple of times to chat with people on the path; once with a Mennonite couple from Kansas who were taking a brief winter break before heading back to Kansas to haul hay (I was awed by the fact the woman was walking the trail in a long and billowing dress) and a second time with a Native American gentleman with a big gentle yellow Lab who told us of other trails in the area that lead to petroglyphs and areas where folks still search for the Lost Dutchman Mine. He entertained us for quite some time and then it was time for me to move on. Denny found himself a comfortable rock with a view of the Superstition Mountain itself and waited for me to wave to him from the top.
If you double click on the photo below, Denny is the tiny little bright blue spot below the red arrow. I took this from the high point of Silly Mountain.
This time of year the rattlesnakes are a bit dormant so I didn't worry about running into critters on my walk, although this little fellow thought I was pretty scary with all my huffing and puffing on Huff and Puff Trail.It was an ideal day for hiking the mountain thanks to bright sunshine but cool temperatures. The scenery was fabulous as always.
In the photograph above you can see where the old off-road vehicle path is. The parks department has fenced that off and is hoping Mother Nature will do her thing by scattering the seed of native plants and reclaim this part of the mountain.

And another item is checked off the bucket list.

Eating Our Way Through Silver City

Thanks to our unanticipated and extended stay in Oklahoma City, my nice, neat little travel schedule was all messed up. I had a couple of pre-paid reservations still to come that I had made in Arizona that we needed to get to but due to the inclement weather predicted along I-40 Denny and I need to change our travel route in an attempt to avoid the snow. Thus we ended up in Deming, New Mexico for a few days.

The two of us have been here before; we stay at the very convenient and reasonably priced Dreamcatcher RV Park owned by the Escapees organization. There are multiple day trip opportunities here in Deming; City of Rocks State Park, the Luna Mimbres Museum, Rockhound State Park, a couple wineries, Pancho Villa State park, the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument , Gila National Forest and Silver City, New Mexico. Since the two of us had already explored City of Rocks, Rockhound SP, one winery and the museum on past visits, we decided to check out Silver City.

Silver City is a drive of about 60 miles from Deming, seemingly flat roadway and terrain with distant mountains. But the elevation changes from about 4,300 feet in Deming to almost 6,000 feet in Silver City so we were glad when the sun finally popped out from the clouds as we arrived in town. The discovery of silver in the nearby hills brought miners and settlers into the area in the late 1800s, although like many mining towns the claims petered out eventually. Today there is still copper mining and some gold and silver mining carried out, but the downtown section of Silver City is busy recreating itself as an eccentric little town full of eateries, shops and art galleries.
This is the kind of town where you have to look up, down and around thanks to the interesting architectural details of the buildings and what's on the buildings.
This old truck door had small flying pigs cut out of its panels which hovered above the cut out sections. The artwork was attached to an exterior wall of one of the businesses on the main drag.
After the silver rush was over, people with tuberculosis came to the area for the dry air and hot springs. Among them was Billy the Kid's mother, so the Kid lived here several years as a child, which is noted in this stained glass/art glass window high above the sidewalk. There is a cabin in town that sits on the Antrim homestead (Billy the Kid's step-father) that is "similar" to what would have been the cabin where Billy was raised.
At this time of year the people out on the streets in downtown are basically the folks who live here but they are friendly folk eager to share their love of the area and life here in Silver City. Denny and I bought some fudge in one shop, a loaf of the most wonderful, crusty sour dough bread from Diane's Bakery and had sandwiches at Vicki's restaurant which is housed in what I believe to be an old church. The downtown leans towards aging, more upscale yuppie/hippies but it was a fun way to spend the afternoon. Certainly we'd come back for more exploration on another day.

Fix Up and Clean Up

Hmm, let's see...in my last post we were in Roswell, New Mexico so I'll start there. Wednesday morning I got up and as I walked to the bathroom I felt like I was in a carnival fun house. I was walking at an angle. Let me just say here that while I am a bit of a klutz and lately don't have the world's best balance, I am very sensitive both physically and visually to things that aren't level. And we weren't level. Added to the fact that there had been some creaking coming from The Beast the night before I suspected we had a tire that had gone flat or a hydraulic jack that had lost pressure.

After Denny got up I allowed him a peaceful breakfast before I warned him that I thought we might have a flat tire that needed to be fixed before we pulled out to hit the road. I got the "what next?" look from him before he went outside to check and sure enough, one of the tires he had added air to yesterday was totally flat. Apparently the tire pressure monitor cap hadn't been seated correctly, allowing the air to leak out. All of this meant that half of the contents of the storage bin had to be removed to get to the pancake air compressor to fill the tire and that's when Denny saw that we had water sitting on the floor of the storage bin which means either the water pump, the water filter or the hot water heater was leaking. We had been using the water pump in the evenings because of the below freezing temperatures since Denny takes in the water hose from the faucet to prevent the hose from freezing. To say Denny's jaw got tight might have been a bit of an understatement.

Tire re-inflated, storage bin repacked, we hit the road for Deming. Our delay in getting started allowed the heavy fog to clear and we were able to enjoy new scenery as we traveled US 70 down and across New Mexico. At Ruidoso Downs we drove on roadways just barely cleared of snow as the town sits at an elevation of 7,000 feet and they had had snow the night before. The temperature started warming a few degrees as we drove out of the hills down towards Las Cruces, passing the White Sands area. As we continued on to our destination Denny and I decided we were going to come back next fall to more fully explore this corner of the state but we'd make sure to do it much earlier in the season so we wouldn't be trying to outrun bad weather.

Arriving in Deming where it was very cold, I checked at the campground office to see if it would be possible for us to wash The Beast if the weather turned warmer. Yes. Yippy! Because driving through the icy fog, over sand strewn overpasses and snowy slush had done a number on both Black Beauty and The Beast and they both desperately needed to get the road grime and crud washed off.

We had to wait until the afternoon the next day so the temperature could warm up enough for the two of us to work outside, but Denny was able to locate the leaks; both the water pump and the lines leading into and out of the whole house water filter were leaking. Two trips to the hardware store and Denny had the problem fixed while I did clean up. Maneuvering around inside the tight storage bin area caused Denny to pull a muscle in his back, so we were done for the day.

The weather people started warning of rain over the weekend so we knew we needed to get the rig and the truck washed sooner rather than later. Cold winds made the whole experience a bit torturous, but we finally got the job done and Beauty and the Beast are looking good once again.You certainly can't tell that there is chrome and polished aluminum and silver paint under that dirt, can you?

Now that we have all the work out of the way we might actually be able to go day tripping today. Yay!

Warming Up a Cold Day

My intended plans for the day included going to two museums (one wasn't open) and getting a photograph of us with some of the hokey alien creatures lining the streets of Roswell. What I hadn't planned on was cold, dreary, drizzly, windy weather so the photographs were scrapped for another year's visit to the area and instead Denny and I headed for the warmth of the Roswell Museum and Art Center.

As we entered the doors we were greeted by a staff volunteer who immediately informed us that the gallery to our left was closed for remodeling and I thought "hmm, this doesn't bode well" but I was wrong. How can you not love a place that has a modern version of "The End of the Trail" statue where the horse has red glowing eyes glaring at you as you enter the building? The Roswell Museum is large, bright and airy with plenty of room for exhibits to come. Currently exhibitions include the artwork of Peter Hurd, Peter Rogers, women artists of New Mexico, the collections of Rogers (not a misspelling) and Mary Ellen Aston and a display on the life and inventions of Robert Goddard. I fell in love with the work of Peter Rogers, especially a small pen and ink drawing of a dove superimposed over an angel superimposed over Pegasus.The museum displays are housed in glass paneled sections with laminated flip-page books explaining each piece inside the glass wall. That was a little strange and hard to manage if you wanted to look closely at the piece and match it up with the book as the books were set at the edge of one side of the exhibit so you would have to walk back and forth to read what the difference displays were. However all the artifacts they have gathered are well displayed and beautifully kept. And as always we learned something new as we read our way through the exhibit about Robert Goddard, who advanced the science of rocketry, starting off small with rockets that went a whole forty-one feet in the air to inventing propulsion system that eventually led to man being on the moon.

There is also a planetarium attached to the complex but Denny and I passed on that for this visit. We needed to pick up a few groceries and top off the truck's fuel tanks since diesel prices were twenty-eight cents a gallon cheaper than in Amarillo, Texas. I was still feeling the chill of the wet day when we got home so I made a pot of spicy vegetable soup. How do I do that, you might ask? Make up a potful of vegetable soup using your favorite recipe and then instead of dicing up tomatoes or adding a can of diced tomatoes (you DO add diced tomatoes to your vegetable soup, right?) toss in a can of original style Rotelle tomatoes with green chiles. Yum! It adds a surprising kick and went very well with our roast pork loin sandwiches.

All in all, a very good day despite the lack of hokey tourist photos of us standing next to lime green aliens.