2007-#7: New Mexico

New Mexico, Land of Enchantment. It is different, somehow. Gorgeous scenery, of course ---
Mesilla, NM - a lot of old buildings. Billy the Kid is a mainstay of te tourist trade, out here. He was a ruthless killer, a halfway retarded, an honest but misguided guy who stood by his friends and got in trouble for it, a hero to the Mexicans, or maybe an early fighter for social justice - take your pick, nobody can prove any of it. He was "shot by Pat Garrett, who'd once been his friend", or maybe died of old age. Church in Mesilla - not old, but nice.
This roadrunner dominates the skyline on a hill outside Las Cruces
And it's environmentally responsible...

There's a mesh of steel wire, filled with old computer keyboards, pots and pans, tin cans, fenceposts, signs...but the chief ingredient is sneakers: Just for interest, here's a real roadrunner. Incidentally, coyotes, Wiley E. or whatever, almost never go after roadrunners. Not only are they pretty fast, there's not much meat on them...

The roadrunner is an amazing bird. He (or she) kills a rattlesnake by grabbing it by the head , lifting it in the air and smashing it on the ground, which fractures its spine. After it's done this a half-dozen times, the snake is dead, and he swallows it. If the snake is so long he can't get it all down, he just rests in the shade, with the end of the snake hanging out of his mouth, until the front part is digested. Then he swallows some more, until it's all gone.

The snake's best tactic, it turns out, is to curl up with its head hidden inside its coils. If the roadrunner can't find the head, he gives up.

Later on, in California, we saw this whole tree full of sneakers. Is something going on with sneakers?

Las Cruces - a beautiful toen. This is the Heritage Museum...

The Wild Bunch. They were pretty wild, even tho they did seem to dress well.
Saddlemaking kit belonging to Austin 'Slim' Green. It turns out there is a whole lot to saddlemaking; a good one cost a lot, even back then.
A Sidesaddle: ladies who thought it immodest to ride astride the horse, or who had a dress on, sat sort of sideways.The had a lot about hats, too: A hat stretcher:Hats:

A J. B. Stetson advertisement
Clever (or maybe stupid) sign



On the Gila National Forest, a trail up a narrow canyon, called the Catwalk:

This is reconstructed; the original was much like it, being a maintenance walkway along a flume that brought water down from the top to a mining operation. Eventually they used it to generate power as well as refine the ore.
Note the bolts, for holding the mountain together:
Out in the desert west of Datil, NM: The VLA, or Very Large Array, of radio telescopes. There are 27 of them, aranged in a Y-shaped array of three arms, each of which can be as long as 13 miles. The elecronics are complicated, involving amplifiers that run at 15 deg Kelvin to reduce noise. The scientests never have to go near the place; they submit their requirements, and the data gets transmitted back to them, by internet. That is, Verrrry Large. See the truck next to one of them?

Of course, they all point in the same direction, unless one is out of commission, which two or three always seem to be, in which case they go belly-up, you might say.13 miles sounds like a nice round number, but it's far enough that they have to move the units by rail, so they have their own railroad. I think by exempt they mean no crossing signal is needed; they move at about 2-3 MPHDatil Well: There were a whole series of these wells, about ten miles apart, for watering the herd on cattle drives.
Black (or brown, or cinnamon) Bear. They're really big on not leaving food out, or approaching bears - if they get used to people, sooner or later they'll maul somebody, so the often end up being put down, which is politically unpopular.

Alligator Cypress tree. Rather rare.
On the way west...On the way out of New Mexico, we went thru Pietown - the cattle drives in the old days went thru here, and a local bakery made pies for them to take along on the trail. It's also right on the Continental Divide; we got a coffee cup that says "It's all down hill from here."


And so, off into the sunset...

2007- #6: More Texas: Dallas and Fort Worth; El Paso

Dallas: About the first thing we thought about was, of course, where Kennedy was shot. This is the Texas School Book depository. The entire sixth floor is a museum; very poignant, but they wouldn't allow pictures. Where he was shot: the X on the street doesn't have any explanatory sign. Doesn't need one.
But there's a lot more. For one thing, the oil. They had this old Mobil sign, just uncrated, and were going to put it up somewhere.Then we rode a Streetcar named Petunia (one of the others they got from Australia; that was named, naturally, Matilda)
To the Dallas Art Museum

Where they had a lot of stuff. This is by Max Ernst: The King playing with the Queen. You could think of chess of course, but of other things too.

Joan Miro's Mooncow:

Jonathon Borovsky: "Walking to the Sky". Had to really crane our necks to take it all in. The guys on the ground are part of it too.


And, the old downtown area. New Orleans is not the only city that's gotten flooded out.But apparently they learned to laugh at it a bit.Dallas is a big city, somebody told us, but Fort Worth is still a town. It is a city, of course, but there was a sort of small-towny feel to it.

If Dallas is oil, then Fort Worth is cattle. First, the Stockyards (now closed): Locomotive turntable, so the trains that came in empty could load up with cattle and go back the way they came.

Statue of Bill Pickett, credited with inventing Bulldogging a steer, and the first champion at it. He was black; apparently a fair number of them were black, the heyday of it all being right after the Civil War. Yep, they still brand the horses...
Conditions were a bit rough in the old days...

After the museum, the Buffalo Butt Bar. On the other side of the partition, in the dining room, was the front half of the buffalo. Seemed a shame to waste the other half, I guess.

Texas TaxidermyThen, the museums, which are all in this one park. The National Cowgirl Hall of Fame: Mostly rodeo riders; but Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is in it, for having grown up on a ranch and written a book about it.
Barb saying hi to T-Rex

The Kimbell Art Museum
Buddhas

The Amon Carter Museum specializes in Western art: After all the press they give to the guys who ride the horses, this is a kudos (Yes, being a Greek word, kudos is the singular form) for a horse:

A Grant Wood of Parson Weems, who preserved the story about G Washington and the Cherry Tree. A bit tongue in cheek - note the old head on young George.

The Fort Worth Botanical Garden: The 'EarthKind' idea is to develop roses that will grow in Texas without using a whole lot of water and fertilizer.

' Julia Child' Roses
'Hot Cocoa' Roses Wild Blue Yonder Roses (No, I don't know why they're red)
Pond with a whole lot of turtles on the rock
Cactus Garden: Prickly Pears

Cholla
'Texas Horse Crippler'
A really Texas-sized Japanese Garden, including this lake

And a Zen garden

Bird statues; doesn't the real bird look a little disdainful? Then, to El Paso. Greater El Paso has about 1 million people; Juarez, across the border, has two million. A lot of them cross evey day to go to work
And a whole lot more try and (maybe) get caught. There was a border guard about every quarter-mile, plus barbed wire, the Rio Grande River and an irrigation ditch; but still a lot of them try.


A stutue in front of the main library:
A Zen-garden looking drainway for when it rains

El Paso is a rail hub. Note the flatcars: They can carry containers off ships, or by raising the platform at the end of the car, Semi trailers.

The rare and sought-after Jackalope, a cross between the jackrabbit and the antelope. There have been numerous sightings, so they say, but all of females, who of course don't have the horns...