Small towns, USA

One of the best things about traveling the way I do is the serendipity of discovery. Towns whose names on the map are in tiny letters, names I've never heard before, can cause a couple-hour delay. I think I'll cruise through, maybe having to slow to 45, but so many of them trip me up and I find myself parked for an hour or more. Places like Montezuma and Americus, Georgia. Marathon, Marfa, Alpine, and van Horn, Texas. Tularosa and Carrizozo, New Mexico. These places are interesting. 

You may have noted that I like words that are fun to say, and when I first heard the name Carrizozo I was quite certain the speaker was mashing up the pronunciation, but no. 

The town was founded in 1899 by two brothers who developed the El Paso and Northeastern railroad, and gets its name from tall reed grasses called carrizo that used to grow in abundance. At some point the last zo was attached, pure poetry in my opinion because it changes the accent from the ri syllable to the second to last zo and the short alliteration is nice.

Carrizozo, according to a man I spoke with while wandering around with the camera, had a boom about ten years ago and he says it's been in decline since, but a little later I spoke with a woman who owns a gallery there. She's a transplant from about the same ten years ago, and loves the place and the artists it draws because of low rents and a level of anonymity. She said several artists sell in New York and because of their contracts with galleries there, are forbidden to sell elsewhere. A place like Carrizozo allows them to work in a quiet atmosphere.

I just like the architecture and the effort these small towns that have not yet given up make to breathe a spark of energy into their lives. Here we go:

Religious iconography will stop me in my tracks every time. Fourth World Imports, established 1976 with not one but two Ladies of Guadalupe.

This may have been the library at one time, but now what Carrizozo has is Little Free Libraries. Do you spot the irony of the spelling on the sign?

 It looks like an old saloon, the kind with the swinging doors.

No swinging doors, though, but you have to decide if you'll drink or eat. (Hint: look over the doors.)

The pure joy of fuchsia. Did you know the flower was named after the botanist Leonhard Fuchs? True story. How did the pronunciation go from Fyooks to Fyoosh?

I've seen painted public art objects, mostly portraying animate creatures, all over the place. Orcas, elk, cows, and party animals (donkeys and elephants) in DC; but also open books in Fairfax County, Virginia, and bombs (!) in Marfa, Texas. Carrizozo has half of the DC complement, and they're all over town.

A fairly nondescript building if not for the critters on the roof, and the fun bookstore name.

This sign goes back a ways when not only did you not have to dial the area code, but could skip five more numbers too.

There is something under the rust-colored paint on the facade but I can't quite get it.

This piece of art was in the courtyard with the donkeys, above, and I almost walked past without paying much attention until I saw the label at its foot.

 The Suspended Blade Bridge. I just liked it.

 There's no missing this place.

 Or this one. The red was electric, even under a cloudy sky.

I love Ben Franklins. They used to have the best crafts supplies.

 This building is an artists' studio.

 There's at least one snake and an eagle on this one. It's Art.

I got distracted by the antiques in the windows of this store and missed getting the sign on the front until I got back from White Sands and made a little detour. So glad I did.

It's a really nice font and the sign is still in great shape.

I have so many photos still sitting unprocessed but now that I'm parked again for a few months, I hope to get caught up. Eventually.

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Thought of the day:

To find is the thing. (Pablo Picasso)

Black fields and white sands

Before making my three-month stop at Petrified Forest, a friend suggested I detour to Valley of Fires in New Mexico. It's administered under the Bureau of Land Management rather than the National Park System and is a ridiculously inexpensive place to plug in for the night - all of $9 for water and electric connections. I was there the last two nights with a zip over to White Sands National Monument in between, via Carrizozo and Tularosa.

Valley of Fires is a 5000 year old lava flow. To me, it's a hard place to photograph. From a distance it looks like wide fields of black rock; close up photos show black rock but lack the context of the vastness of the area. I took a lot of photos and discarded most of them. Below is what remains, but first a view from the night before last in the opposite direction of the lava beds. The haze over the mountains isn't smog or fog or rain. It's dust. The closer I got to Valley of Fires the denser it became. Luckily, even though the wind howled all night both nights, most of the dust remained at a distance. I've never seen anything like it.

A paved path meanders in a loop through the lava. The flow is two to five miles wide and 44 miles long; in places, it's 165 feet thick.

I was surprised by the density of the plant life. Unbelievably, dozens of species of plants flourish in this landscape. There are four species of bats that take advantage of collapsed lava domes for shelter. Lizards, barberry sheep, eagles, hawks, owls, quail, insects, and snakes all live here.

Of course, having written that they exist, none of the breathing creatures made an appearance. I had to make do with plants like this cholla cactus.

A dead juniper serves many of the creatures here. As explained in the nature trail brochure, it provides a perch for birds of prey, shelter for smaller birds and animals, and a food source for insects. As it breaks down, it falls into cracks and provides nutrients for new plants and nesting materials for small animals.

This juniper is thought to be 400 years old. Why did they have to bolt a bench right in front of it?

The sky is totally washed out behind the tree because I woke to snow this morning. I kept a wary eye on the laden clouds in the distance, but the clouds moved on around the same time I did.

The snow made for some nice definition that I couldn't get earlier.

Here's another example of the indomitable plants that seem to thrive here.

And finally, something you don't see every day - prickly pear and cholla wearing tiny pearls of snow.

On to White Sands National Monument, established in 1933. Visitor facilities were designed and constructed over the next six years during the Great Depression; funds and labor were secured through the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA). The building was designed in the Pueblo Revival Style, and the architects relied on the efforts of local craftspeople for some of the more ornate design elements.  
Canales (roof drain spouts) were formed from halved hollow logs. Vigas (wooden beams) were often made of peeled trunks and hold up the roof of an adobe structure. The ends of these beams extend beyond the building's walls. Latillas are lighter-weight wood slats that run crossways to vigas to provide support for ceilings.

The gift shop in the visitors' center sells snow saucers to be used to surf the dunes. I almost bought one and as I drove into the dunes immediately started the woulda, coulda, shoulda routine, but when the road went from paved to packed sand I thought it was safer to turn around. It would have been another three miles on that road and I've had enough of expensive repairs for a while.

There was still plenty to see as far as I went, acres and miles of gypsum. 

It looks like white-out conditions but it's just overexposure in the hands of an inexperienced photographer.

There's a nice boardwalk connecting a couple of dunes that are being used for research into plant and animal life. It looks like the beach, doesn't it?

It's just as surprising to see plants growing here as it was in the lava rock. They're not as abundant, but they're still here.

The patterns in the sand are intriguing, from minimalist

to something more definite.

I know nothing about Google Plus, but I just got notice that this photo was added from an auto backup. If the link works for you, you'll notice it's one of the snow photos from above. How does Google do that? (Apparently you have to have a Google account to see it. If you don't, what it is is a gif of one of the cactus snow photos that shows snow falling in the foreground. 

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Thought of the day:

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted. (Mae West)

CACA

National parks' names are abbreviated for, well, abbreviation's sake: the first two letters of the first word in the name and the first two in the second word so, for example, Petrified Forest = PEFO. Andersonville, having only one word as its name, uses the first four letters: ANDE. Yellowstone is YELL. Glacier National Park uses the rather rude sounding GLAC. Rocky Mountain, on the other hand, is fun to say: ROMO. Well, I am now cooling my heels and my wheels in Carlsbad, NM while major surgery is being done on my rig (oh, yay, the joys of home ownership!) and took a trip to the Caverns yesterday since it was on the agenda anyway. You can maybe see where this is going. Carlsbad is a national park and it has two words in its name, so its unfortunate abbreviation is CACA. There, I got it out of my system and can get on to the show.

A man named Jim White discovered the caverns in 1898, at the age of 16. According to Wikipedia, when he was out hunting stray cattle he saw "a plume of bats" in what "appeared to be a volcano or a whirlwind but did not behave quite like either." (The Wikipedia article is quite interesting, and a quick read.) Caves continue to be discovered even now. 

I toured the Kings Palace and The Big Room, which took several hours. The paths go on and on. Access is via a 750-foot elevator descent and fortunately they don't make you walk out either. The Kings Palace portion was guided by a Ranger and the The Big Room was a free-for-all. A couple of times I was so alone that all I heard was a hum from the lights and dripping water. 

Many National Parks' signs are wooden, but maybe to make up for this park's unfortunate abbreviation, this one is from a colorful slab of stone.

I was the goody-two-shoes who volunteered to bring up the rear of the tour, but only so I could be the one lagging behind to photograph everything.

When Jim White began to explore the caverns he carried a ball of twine to help him find his way out. As he went deeper the ball got bigger and unwieldy. Next he broke off parts of the formations and placed them on the ground, pointing his way out. When he realized the tourist implications of broken formations, he started leaving smudges from his kerosene lantern on the walls.

I have 39 photos that I've kept and processed but will subject you to only a few. The caverns are nearly indescribable in their complexity, variety, and mystery and it was so easy to take way too many photos.

The lights cast weird colors on the stones. I've tried to neutralize them as much as possible but sometimes the color persists. Algae has been a problem in the Caverns, and that may be what the green is below, but the incandescent lights are being replaced by LEDs, with an added benefit of the gradual disappearance of the algae. It has something to do with the gases emitted by incandescents.

We had a Wookie at Big Bend in the form of a yucca, and here we have Jabba the Hut. Come on, didn't you think the same thing?

Cathedral-like rooms open on all sides. There are miles and miles of caves that have not yet been explored.

In some areas there was a riot of formations, as though the ceilings were dripping with gold.

There was a trend for a while, and it may still be going on, for celebration cakes (birthdays, etc.) to be towers of unstable-looking, angled layers. This formation immediately made me think of them.

Another view from my vantage point of bringing up the rear.

Miss Havisham's wedding gown. I'm so literary. Either that, or I have an over-active imagination.

There were many overhead formations of skull-crushing or skull-piercing attributes, but we were assured that nothing has crashed in a hundred years.

I think the draperies are the most beautiful of all.

This one was almost directly overhead and flared outward like a blossoming flower.

Some are so thin they're translucent.

Then there was this odd, flattened pattern. This was on the self-guided part of my tour so there was no one to ask how they were formed.

 Finally, a little bit of everything.

I'm waiting for the bill for my repairs, which should be done tomorrow. I'm still trying to count my blessings wherever I can find them. The part that's being repaired could have failed in the middle of nowhere or on I-10 through Houston, not only being darned inconvenient but could have caused a bad accident. The people here at this family-owned and -run repair shop have let me stay in my home on their property, plugged in and with access to water. I feel they're being fair and honest in their dealings with me. It could always be worse.

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Thought of the day:

I lay in the bed in the hospital and said, "let's see what I have left." I could see, I could speak, I could think, I could read. I simply tabulated my blessings and that gave me a start. (Dale Evans)

I lay in the bed at the hospital and said, 'let's see what I have left.' And I could see, I could speak, I could think, I could read. I simply tabulated my blessings, and that gave me a start.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/daleevans192178.html#tdHEeWgUPmqklL6y.99

I lay in the bed at the hospital and said, 'let's see what I have left.' And I could see, I could speak, I could think, I could read. I simply tabulated my blessings, and that gave me a start.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/blessings_3.html#yICXL5t3J7RZT0Pf.99