Sunday, June 17, 2012

Day 3 Sunday June 10th

Today was a travel day.  About 470 miles.  Map.

Leaving Fort Davis while the sun angle as low, I found a dozen of these rock formations interesting in that light, here's one.


If you look at a map of west Texas and southern New Mexico you might notice that the east-west travel routes are somewhat limited.

I10 is not too far from the only reasonable choice. Years past when driving to and from California it was mostly I10 for the sheer expediency – can’t beat 80 MPH speed limit when you need to be somewhere fast.

Today however, I made a choice to see some different desert.  From Van Horn I took 54 north toward Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

Now I am quite sure that there is something special about these mountains, otherwise they would not be a national park, but from a distance and from even closer they look to me like big chunks-o-rock in a dry land.  Perhaps you can see something special that I cannot?




West from the junction of 54/180 is yet more desert.  Long straight sections of road dominate from back there to way out there.
 
 

Cruise control keeps one under the speed limit as there were a couple of incidences of Texas Highway Patrol sitting concealed behind a curve or large bush at a cross-over, waiting on the next fool that thought 75 wasn’t enough speed to put the miles of sagebrush and alkali lakes behind them.

West from Las Cruces there was no choice but I10.  The miles came and went and my planned stop for the night at Deming faded quickly behind.  Why not stop?  Well, the RV park I had thought to stay at had little shade and the west wind was howling.  I had little desire to subject myself to those conditions.

So on to Lordsburg and then northwest on US70 toward the night stop at Clifton Arizona in the city owned RV park.

Once in the RV park I took advantage of the unregulated wi-fi and did a complete reset on my iPhone 3gs hoping that this would cure the ills that it had demonstrated with increasing frequency.  This whole trip is doable without a reliable phone, but in today’s world it sure would be inconvenient.  The reset went well, but was ultimately unsuccessful as the phone took another dump less than 12 hours later.

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