Leaving Las Cruces

Las Cruces, NM. We arrived here on the 26th and are leaving again today, the 30th. Actually we left today, we are currently on the road heading to San Antonio, TX. It’s a long drive from Las Cruces to San Antonia, probably between 8-10 hours with the RV.

Mostly we’ve been relaxing, riding our bikes and stuff like that. We went to Fort Selden day before yesterday and toured their museum and the ruins there. http://www.nmmonuments.org/about.php?_instid=SELD There isn’t a large photographic account of the Fort, there are some pictures that say, “we think it might have looked something like this” and it would be a picture of another Fort. We didn’t take the cameras with us…so there are no pictures from us either. It’s an interesting place, but not as well kept as some of the places we’ve been.

Other than that we didn’t really do much. On Saturday we drove out to the Farmer’s and Craft’s Fair, it was ok…fairly small. I did buy a couple CDs of a guitarist named David Valenzuela (http://www.davidvalenzuela.com/), if you like Latin guitar music; you’ll like his stuff. I particularly recommend his CD ‘Latin Moods’…it’s good. I have no clue if he sells his CDs online or not because I’ve never been to his website.

So that’s about it, we hit the road this morning around 9am and have a long and boring drive to look forward to. We’ve never been this route before, we’ve only been as far east on I-10 as El Paso…so we are on an adventure, and we are currently driving past UTEP on our left side and Juarez, Mexico on the other. It’s currently about 9:30 in the morning; it will likely be really late before I get a chance to post this, or maybe even tomorrow if I forget.

So there it is, we’ve left Las Cruces and are heading for San Antonio, TX.

;-)K

PS – It’s now 8:30pm and we just got here and are about half done setting down. After the 10 hour drive here I’ve renamed Texas, it’s no longer The Lone Star State, it will, from here on be referred to as The Roadkill State. I have never in my life seen so many dead deer on one stretch of highway, we counted between 50-100 dead dear on the I-10 from the state line to here…crazy. And that’s not saying anything about all the dead bunnies. These people should be ashamed of themselves!

Fairbank, AZ

On Saturday January 21st we drove out to find the ghost town named Fairbank, AZ. Fairbank has an interesting history. Here it is according to the Bureau of Land Management – San Pedro Riparian:

“Fairbank is a ‘ghost town’ located within the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area (NCA), along the San Pedro River. Its life as a town began with the construction of a railroad in 1881, and it soon became an important depot as well as the closest railroad stop to Tombstone, then one of the largest western cities (15,000 in 1882).

Originally called Junction City, Kendall, then Fairbanks, it was officially named Fairbank on May 16, 1883. The name refers to N.K. Fairbank of Chicago, who helped finance the railroad.

The town was built on an old Mexican land grant, the San Juan de las Boquillas y Nogales, which was bought by the Boquillas Land and Cattle Company in 1901. The company evicted all potential landowners, but continued to lease the mercantile building and a few residences well into the 1970s.

The Bureau of Land Management acquired the land that was once the Mexican Land Grant in 1986 as part of the San Pedro Riparian NCA. Today the area is open for the public to enjoy.”

I think the most interesting part of the ghost town for me was the cemetery. We didn’t get any pictures of it, but what an interesting place. It’s about a half-mile walk from the town proper along an easy trail. The only difficult part is when you actually get to the hill the cemetery sits on and you have to walk up a little hill. At the top of the hill rest dozens of piles of rocks some with wooden crossed fashioned and stuck in the ground, some of the crosses have toppled, some don’t have crosses at all but have dead bushes that tried to grow over them. It was strange to stand at the top of the hill and just turn in a circle and notice all the piles of rocks surrounding you, they were everywhere, and know that each was a grave. There were very few with markers and those with marker, you couldn’t hardly read. There were several that had modern day rosaries draped on their crosses, and one of a child that has small stuffed animals at what I would assume is the head. Really a very interesting place.

;-)K