The scary road to Tucson

Back in the olive green Rogue on a mild and cloudy morning. It is 265 miles to Tucson. A pleasant drive.

We head out from Las Cruces on 10 west. It’s a 65 mph speed limit and the trucks are doing every inch of it as hard as they can. It is a heavy trucks day. Dammit.

Past cattle and horse sale yards we whizz, over the Rio Grande which looks like a trickle today and out into the world of ploughed fields and thriving pecan orchards, clearly to blame for the river being at a trickle.

Soon we mount a hill and swoop into a world of mesquite, creosote bushes and arid grasses. The trucks are shocking. So many of them. All off them wanting to be in front of the one in front.

We pass the UAS Flight Test Facility, airport and National Guard, and a sign announcing: Prison Facilities. Do not pick up hitchhikers. One can’t imagine anyone hooking a thumb in the face of these rushing trucks. The speed limit has gone up to 75mph.

It is a world of pink sandy soil sometimes with pinkish mesas in the distance, sometimes those astonishing cinder cones.

Bruce is waxing lyrical about our time in Las Cruces and White Sands. It felt good to connect with his roots, he purrs.

Here come the Indian Trade Post billboards, one after another: moccasins; blankets; fireworks; Kachina dolls; pottery; kid stuff; jewellery; Exit Now. The trading post itself is a quaint little roadside thing. It must be simply crammed with all that stuff.

Glorious yuccas polka dot the landscape amid creosote bushes and mesquite. The hills are all grassy tufts. It is a very handsome desert. We are loving it, despite the trucks.

There are pointy blue mountains here, there, and everywhere on the horizon.

Heavens, another Border Patrol. We slow down and enter past all the cameras. A sign says Dogs On Duty. We don’t see any. We pull up beside the Border Patrol officer who is all army greens and guns. Just the two of you, he asks. Yes. Have a nice day. That's it.

Off we go on the open plain with its yellow grass and spiky low shrubs.

A sign warns that Dust Storms May Occur.

Another sign says simply: The Thing. Hmm

Mountains rise again, almost serrated against a sky with sunshine and rolls of cumulus cloud behind them.

Not sunny where we are, though.

We have driven under big grey flat clouds. Low. Spots of rain hit us.

The greenish groundcover on the desert makes it look even flatter than flat.

The rain makes up its mind and splashes down hard. The drops run up the windscreen.

Heavier. Louder. Great vicious hammering splats.

We should not have washed the car last night.

Akek Flats has another Indian Trading Post. Fudge, kachinas, fireworks, Mexican imports, and opals.

We’re in the Apache Homelands.

Use extreme caution, says a sign. Zero Visibility Possible. Drive Safe.

Hmm. Are they talking about this rain?

It suddenly eases and the sun pops out. We hiss and splash past grey nomads and trucks.

Oh, hell, roadworks. Trucks are all backed up in a chain.

Green crops one side of the road. Rail lines on the other.

The town of Deming is close. There’s an overpass and signs for hotels. Rail yards spread out beside the road, commerce.

We swing in for petrol and lunch. Not much going in Deming. The petrol station looks like something from the 1940s. It does not even have a canopy. A rather gnarled old cash girl, buxom with long, well-dyed jeune fille tresses, is standing outside smoking a cigarette. She stubs it out when Bruce goes in to pay.

Since there is little choice, we drive in for a drive-in Sonic burger.

We know they’re good. Their set-up is a bit odd, though. One drives up and parks diagonally beside one of a line of big menu screens and orders food by shouting at it.

Eventually, a gorgeous young girl comes out with bagged orders on a tray. No roller skates. And no car tray. Not like the old days of drive-in burger joints. We don’t feel like unwrapping everything and eating on our laps so we take it to one of a few tables Sonic has out front. It’s a bit windy. We huddle over the burgers and squint at the the back end of Deming. I have a jalapeno

burger. It comes with pickled jalapeno chillies. What a great enhancement to a burger. A little peppy zing burger. I am surprised how much I like it.

Back on the road, there are volcanic vent mountains, cinder cones, all around us . Yuccas cover the land. Caravans and trucks cover the road.

What on earth is that big fortified facility out there in the fields? Unidentified, unidentifiable. A secret experiments set-up? We scoot past quizzically.

Bigger yuccas now spike the landscape. They stand aloft, beautiful and sculptural over the desert grasses. The shadows of the clouds partnered by blazing windows of bright light are moving across the ground bringing out the colours of yellow and green from the grasses and shrubs.. The mountains are a blue and red backdrop. It is a glorious vista. They call this desert? What I am seeing is a vast arid garden.

Here comes more rain.

This is not so nice. Big storm clouds are massing out there. Two groups. They are forming that tornado shape I have seen in so many weather documentaries. This is scary. I see Bruce glancing more and more frequently in their direction. I can see he is concerned.

I pull up my Weather Channel app.

The radar shows fierce storms moving beside us, great red and purple cores to orange and yellow

Can we beat the storm which is heading our way?

Bruce is positive. He says we can. But I know he is just telling me that. He looks worried.

I marvel that we can watch the storm on radar and in real life as we travel.

I put the radio on AM and we listen to the lightning crackling. Uh-oh.

We race to get away.

This could be serious.

Black cattle out there. Poor things. We’re at 4585 feet Continental Divide Elevation. If that matters.

The Weather Channel App shows us in the path of the storm. We are the calm little blue dot moving along the landscape. This technology is incredible.

A sign says Caution, Dust Storms, Zero Visibility Possible.

Ironic.

The plain remains green and yellow and vast outside. Trucks keep coming in a relentless stream. We seem to be beating the storms. Passing a natural gas well, a billboard for Kranberry’s Chatterbox Breakfast, a small jail, more hoardings, a cross roads, a race track, low motels, a McDonalds… it is an unglamorous settlement called Silver City. It is gone in a moment and we are back to the beautiful desert plains.

Thanks for Visiting New Mexico, says a sign.

Aww.

Hello, Arizona.

There’s a police car picking up a semi-trailer at the roadside. Yess. Then again, those full-time road users are generally pretty good. Just the odd rogue out there.

The endless straight road takes a curve. We cheer and fuss about it.

The vegetation changes again. It is now grassless with tiny stunted shrubs. We seem to be in a big basin ringed by mountains.

We reflect on the scale of this country. Mountains in all directions. A train line out there parallel with the road.

Sometimes areas with lots of yucca plants. Then none, just low dry grass.

A salt pan appears. It reminds us of our own Whyalla country.

We see willywillies out there twirling in the desert.

Water is lying at the roadside here. Big rain has just been through.

Indeed, the clouds are spectacular - grey threatening low bands and high, sunlit layers. They seem to blow in different directions. The big sky provides a big picture of extremes, of moving patterns.

Two massive goods trains are out there, also going in different directions. They have three engines each. Sulphuric acid on one. You have no idea how important sulphuric acid is to the economy, says Bruce, not for the first time.

More trains, crawling steadily through the mountains and across the plains, double deckers full of Yang Ming Chinese products.

Oh, now we wind through a mountain pass and out to a changed desert landscape. More warnings of dust storms. Pull of the road and leave your lights on, says the sign.

Another huge stack train out there.

A sign says lane changes are prohibited. We don’t change lanes.

Ah, it’s for a weigh station.

The landscape changes again, now orchards on both sides of the road. Pecans! It is an oasis of farming here. San Simon.

The sky seems huge over the ribbed form of mountains around us.

More desert.

More rain. Not hard. The clouds are catching us. Damn.

A sign advertises The Thing, 57miles ahead.

A little deserted farmhouse is in the middle of nowhere out there.Two almost-dead trees outside. Lost dreams in the desert.

Low scrub surrounds us. Ah, those bands of weather are reaching out to us again. The radio is alive with the crackle of lightning. Damn.

Yuccas are back on the landscape and in the highway median. Lovely.

We pass a truck and the radio interference is deafening. What? Refrigerator truck, moots Bruce. Interference from the electric motors of its refrigeration.

More goods trains.

More orchards, Pecans and walnuts. Huge orchards. Wow.

More interference on the radio. Yikes. That was a lightning strike right in front of us. Sign to Bowie. 100 miles to Tucson.

Green plains, low scrub, the odd yucca, mountains still out there on the horizon Sign to Safford.

A canopy of nasty grey clouds has gathered above us.

We smell the rain before it finds us.

We see the lightning flashing as we hear it crackle on the radio.

The rain starts splotting loudly on the car.

The brown landscape looks as if it needs this rain. Happy yucca. Unhappy us.

Thickening traffic warns us that we are approaching civilization. Over an overpass. Nice, it has cattle designs around it. The town of Wilcox.

The sky is a challenge of sunshine and dark clouds. I pull up the Weather app again. We are in the rain but we are skirting the core of the storm.

A Border Patrol vehicle speeds by. Cops have another car at the roadside. A sign offers 3600 acres for sale. Another sign promises Thing, Mystery of the Desert. Turn off here. We don’t. But I do Google Thing and find it to be some sort of sad mummified mother and child.

Sunshine is breaking through and illuminating the soft undulations of mountainside, dotted with low mesquite and yuccas.

We pass through Texas Canyon to be surrounded by fabulous rock formations. Huge rocks are perilously balanced one upon another like those prayer stone rock piles people like to make. We ooh and aah.

Through the pass we come upon a vast open basin, another great plain surrounded by yet more mountains.

No rain now. Just puffy big low clouds.

The town of Benson.

Another Border Patrol vehicle, this one a lockup ute. We wonder if any hapless wetback is inside.

A sign indicates The Road to Tombstone - courthouse and state historic park.

The road descends in to Benson. Huge mini storage. The San Pedro River.

Sign: Spur Western Wear.

The AM radio is still on and has sunk into right wing hate talk. They’re offering guns as prizes. Defend your family. Win elite guns.

We’re gaining height again. With a 75mph speed limit, the road is a new hell of trucks. It is an endless chain of these lumbering transporters hauling things to and fro across this immense network of roads. The trains are out there, too. So many of them, double stacked with containers.

The scale of American consumerism is demonstrated all around us.

We keep trying to find our place amid the jostling trucks. Over dry creeks, mountain passes, and great straight open roads.

The landscape changes again. Prickly pears suddenly cover the mountain slopes.

We cross a bridge and, eek, that’s a huge canyon down there. It's fabulous, says Bruce.

Done't look, just drive, says Sa stubbornly looking the other way.

House are appearing on hilltops.

Vinyards, buzzards, adobe architecture. We’re in Arizona.

More mountains, cactus. This is a whole new look. Just like that.

Cactus. Cactus. They are called Saguaros and, to my ear, it seemed to be pronounced Sa-wah-rosse.

Dense Saguaros forests reach up the hillsides. Verticals as I’ve never seen them. Like a crazy spiked hair style. Punk mountains.

We arrive at the outskirts of Tucson, passing a gobsmacking acreage of old planes . What? The US’s old air power all sealed up and immaculately parked, mothballed for ever and a day. Both sides of the road. Acre upon acre. The Davis Monthan air base, says Bruce casually.

Siri Google gets to work and leads us through to Tucson burbs towards our destination. I’m drinking it all in with the eye. This is beyond amazing. The world is all cactus. Adobe houses and cactus gardens. There is an absence of architectural vulgarity.

These are nature-loving people who have built in harmony with this incredible ecology. It is not a world of people with stunning arid gardens, it is a stunning arid garden with people.

With the Presidential Election only days away,

the people also are showing their colours. Unlike the New Mexicans, the Arizonans are leaning right - heavily, according to this sign.

Hah. The storms have been here ahead of us. Tucson is washed and

clean. Moving on, the storms are producing a massive rainbow above sparkling wet cacti.

By the time we pull into Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, a great big old almost bauhaus style hotel nestled against the face of the mountain, the sun blazes and then has gone.

The colour of the city turns pink and brown, a sky almost adobe-coloured in the late light.

What a beautiful place.

I think we need a drink.

Never Cross with Las Cruces

We have come to a part of America which is very, very different. I don’t suppose I really understood why New Mexico was called New Mexico. It is, in fact, Mexico - but it belongs to the USA. It is utterly bi-lingual, it cooks Mexican fare, sells Mexican wares, and it is drenched in its very own Mexican and Spanish history.

Hence, the name Las Cruces is Spanish for The Crosses.

Our Las Cruces hotel has a Spanish language name and contains an astonishing collection of Mexican crosses and sells Mexican ethnographica. It is Hotel Encanto de Las Cruces. It means enchanting hotel and, oh, my, it truly is that.

The hotel is very grand. Its foyer has a medieval feel with vast, high-ceiling, dark polished woods and terra cotta tiled floor. Off this runs the gift shop, bar and cafe as well as reception. And everywhere, on every floor, it is decorated with

heavy antique pieces - very classy.

Our room has its television inside a handsome old tallboy. The bedheads are tall and gracious. Oh, but for us, it is the view from our long and lovely 7th floor room. We chose the mountain view which looks upon the Organ Mountains because they are of special significance to Bruce who did an important part of his growing up here.

p> He was a Marine brat and while his Colonel father was assigned to White Sands Missile Range, he lived there just the other side of the Organ Mountains. He went to school there, explored the desert and the mountains and nourished

his innate love for nature and geology. He has always wanted to return to touch base with those influential roots and to show me this wonderful place of which he speaks.

Here we are.

Looking out on those mountains.

And yes, the Organ Mountains have a fluted form which makes one think of pipe organs.

We look at them in the light of dawn as the sun rises behind them.

We look at them etched bright in the sunlit day. We look at them at sunset, watching for the last red light of sunshine and the soft fades of pink.

We also drive around them to visit the White Sands Missile Range and, oh glorious breathtaking swoon, White Sands themselves.

But first, there is a Border Patrol checkpoint to confront. Big drive-through arch with office. Guards with

guns. Didn't have those when I was a lad, says Bruce. I am immediately apprehensive. Is there some special permit we are supposed to have? We drive in and present our passports. I hold my breath.

Have a nice day, says the border guard.

White Sands is one of the wonders of the USA. Of the world. Out here in the vast, flat Chihuahua Desert, it is the product of hundreds of years of the breakdown of gypsum. It is gypsum sand. That is why it is as white as white as white. That is why it is soft and powdery, finer than beach sand. And it is far, far, far from the sea.

It lies in a vast plain hemmed by magnificent mountains - a plain on

which American defence has been testing its missiles for decades. It names its facility in honour of White Sands but does not encroach on its land. White Sands is deemed an American National Monument. The National Parks people look after it. They have people out there with snowploughs, clearing the ever-moving sands off the roads so that people may drive through and admire the pristine whiteness of it

all. They maintain lots and lots of long-drop toilets out there, They keep signage warning people that hiking in the sands can be dangerous. People can easily lose their bearings and get lost. People must, must, must take water.

We don’t. We just go for a shortish walk up and over the dunes. We see in the distance a woman tobogganing down a dune. I go barefooted, adoring the sensation of that super-dry powdery sand. It is softer than sand I know and yet firmer. It sticks to the skin. It does not squeak. It is

smoooooth.

The vistas are awe-inspiring. So clean and white and pure and perfect.

In the core of the dunes, few things grow. On the perimeter dunes there is beautiful exotic vegetation - principally yuccas which are a hardy grass tree like the Australian yakka but which produces long, fine vertical blossom boughs. The blossoms are white when in bloom.

They are seeding now, pods of bright black seeds. They root very deeply into the sand and help to keep the dunes stable. Of course, being sand dunes, they are moving all the time.

All these facts roll through our heads as we stand and gaze and immerse ourselves in the white wonderment of it all. Those magnificent mountains on the horizon add to the

sense of splendid incongruity. White Sands is like many of the world’s great marvels. Nothing really prepares one for it.

One is just so awfully glad one is here.

We drag ourselves away, pausing at the National Parks Information

Center to watch a short video on the history of White Sands. Surprisingly, it is not the oldest of natural phenomena.

Love,of course is. Bruce confides that among the memories stirred up by this return to his old stamping ground is that of his first kiss. Thirteen years old. Her name was Bonnie.

We drive back across the vast Chihuahua Desert looking at all the posts and poles and wires which clearly measure and communicate and play assorted mysterious roles in the business of missile testing. There’s a small missile station a way off the road. Bruce recalls hearing the roar of the rocket engines they were testing. It was an exotic place to live, he recalls.

We’re driving into the White Sands Missile Base, hoping that perhaps we can go inside and Bruce can show me the house in which he and his family used to live.

It is a long shot since security there is heavy. They have guards and a guard house and car scrutiny etc etc. We parked in a public spot away from the security gates and approached the Registration Office on foot.

An African American guy is manning the high security Registration Office. He is very friendly. He has lots of gold teeth and is wearing a cap with Jesus embroidered on the beak and Man of Faith on the front. He is madly enthusiastic about Bruce’s childhood memories but doubts he can get us clearance. We hand over passports. Bruce answers official questions. We are told to sit and wait. When the verdict comes back,

it is negative. Had Bruce been a veteran, it would have been different. But he is an expat.

It was a long time ago. Sorry.

However, while we are not permitted on the base itself, we are allowed in to visit the Missile Museum.

And so it comes to pass that we find ourselves

wandering amid a forest of massive missiles. They are perched and mounted in out there in the landscape, great big deadly old things. A history of warfare and defence technology. Many look very primitive now. Bruce’s father was there working on the Hawk missile. That’s the one. And, oh, there is a bomb casing like the one used to bomb Nagasaki. This is where the payload went.

Inside the museum is an honour wall of all the top scientists who worked on missile projects at White Sands over the years. Not many women. A few. The museum is a series of smallish rooms with specialist themes. It is much more engrossing than I expected.

Missiles, bombs, research teams, code

breakers, archival images…a lot about the Bataan Death March which is regularly re-enacted in honour of those who suffered and died.

There's a model of the McDonnell Ranch House where the first atomic bomb, similar to the Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki, was first assembled in perilously primitive conditions. The

lethal secrecy of it all fires my imagination. I am fascinated. I had never thought about scientists holed up in a desert farmhouse juggling with an orange-sized ball of plutonium.

And one room of the most

emotionally gruelling and utterly arresting art. Montana man Benjamin Steele who was taken on the notorious hell ships and was for three and a half years a Japanese POW.

Of all the records and accounts of POW endurance, these paintings speak to me most vividly and painfully. I am glued to the walls in a

state of heartbreak. Bruce must come hunting for me.

We agree that this museum which, in many ways is a bit quaint, is utterly worth the visit. Outside, we take photos of the spectacular mountain backdrop and Bruce allows himself a voyage into boyhood nostalgia with tales of school food, school bus trips, catching lizards, how much his dad loved the desert and, sadly, how his poor mum from lush North Georgia, thought she had been dropped into a desert hellhole when they were stationed here. Oh, not to mention stories of his rebellious teenage sister causing family scandal by going out without

permission with an enlisted man on a motorcycle to White Sands. This place was a special and beloved capsule in Bruce’s past and the memories pour forth. We are glad we came, albeit sad we could not go on the base. Oh well. Much has changed there. It was 55 years ago, after all.

Las Cruces has more to offer. It is a marvellous city, albeit sprawled across the basin between the mountains with no real sense of a CBD. This would seem so of many of these desert cities which tend to lean away from high rises. With help from Siri Google, we find our way around, albeit the things we need most are directly across the road from our hotel. It’s a really elegant and comprehensive shopping mall

wherein I manage to pick up a couple of necessities for us both and where I can get a needed maintenance job on my toe nails. I get little black and silver palm trees on my green base.

I air these gorgeous nails around the hotel pool which is nothing less than a great luxury old school oasis with Riviera-style high walls and fountains, palm trees hemmed by flowering lantana and butterflies, oh, butterflies. We have this piece of paradise to ourselves. Huge pool towels and comfortable sun chairs between the palms while I do my little aqua routine which is scant calorific offset to the margaritas and Mexican food which I’m shamelessly enjoying.

Talking of which, Bruce, in his quest to bliss me out with Mexican cuisine, sources up a very authentic little off-the-beaten-track family restaurant called Habanero’s Fresh Mex which has scored good reviews online and in the local papers. It is quite nondescript and one enters from a carpark off the main road. The decor is absolutely basic - plastic table cloths, kitchen chairs, cheap ethnic art - but the place has the worn and

scrubbed look of the real thing. Mum and dad work in the kitchen and the daughter takes orders through a counter window beneath the hand-painted menu which covers an entire wall. No wine here, let alone margaritas. We have a Mexican beer - and chicken mole with beans, rice and tortilla and it is absolutely fabulous. Bruce is relieved. Sa loves Mexican.

Mesilla has been waiting for us. Like Albuquerque, it is an old mission-style square containing rustic, characterful shopfronts with classic New Mexico stores selling turquoise jewellery and ponchos.

These differ, however, in touting pecans. Everyone is selling pecans. Not surprising after

all the pecan orchards we have been seeing along the roads. Here are the nuts, fresh and gorgeous. I sample the many and varied ways they prepare them in my chosen shop and then buy enough pecans to last us the rest of the trip and then some. I mean, pecans are a major luxury. One can’t pass them by cheap and fresh at source. I buy them with chili treatment, cinnamon, butter, lavender brittle, salted and plain.

Bruce’s jaw drops - just long enough to fill his mouth with pecans.

We are in the market for a light late lunch and have walked Historic Mesilla looking for a cafe. But cafes are not old Mexico. There is none, although the shops sell pinion coffee beans. We venture in to a restaurant which seems to be the only place open.

And, suddenly, we are in another world. Grand, elegant, gracious, glamorous, affluent old New Mexico.

There’s a glittering, shimmering, crystal shining colonial bar and a series of sumptuous lounge rooms with antique sofas and lavish art. A large covered courtyard with huge ferns and ficus and a massive fountain playing in the middle is the dining area of the day. A tiny, smokey-voiced shrew of a uniformed waitress attends us and takes our order for a light lunch - Posole soup and salad. It comes with lime wedges, chopped onion and dried oregano. Add it to your taste, she orders. That soup is a voyage to heaven. I do another swoon. The waitress tells me some of

the history of the place which includes what she calls living ghosts. I am directed to a small, ornate private dining room where I am likely to meet one. I go in and read all about it but don’t meet the ghost.

We leave Las Cruces the next morning after a last glorious view of the dawn light on the Organ Mountains and a last stolen swim in the heavenly pool.

Bruce has had a recherche du temps perdu and I have had a voyage of discovery.

Mission accomplished.