El Paso is a desert border town and a military town which, IMHO, are two strikes against it. But, this is a prejudged, I was stationed at Fort Bliss – the Military Base that makes this a military town – for training in a Surface to Air missile system called HAWK (Homing All the Way Killer) from March 1963 to January 1964 when I was transferred to an active unit in Korea and then from April to June 1965 when I came back from Korea and ended up teaching Germans at the nearby Orogrande Missile Range.
Being in the Army for three years was a major influence on my life, much of it good and some not so good. When I was in the military, it was an almost universal American male coming of age experience. Yes, if someone didn’t want to go in the military and had the means to get a deferment, they were able to stay out, but that was more of an exception than a rule. Like most men my age, by the time I was in my early twenties, we had actually contributed at least two years – three in my case – to our country. I was exposed to other men, many from vastly different social and economic backgrounds, who I would never have met otherwise; not only exposed to but lived with, and, in many cases, befriended, which I give at least partial credit for why I am more tolerant of Trump voters than most of my friends. But, most importantly and somewhat counter-intuitively, the draft makes war less likely. People revolted against the Vietnam War because they or their relatives might go. Now, with a so-called Professional Military, war does not involve the citizenry. Now, because almost nobody has been in the military, killing people in faraway lands is looked upon as a noble cause. Now we say, “Thank you for your service.” instead of protesting our wars. End of rant.
Since, by the luck of using the internet, our motel was almost next door to Fort Bliss, we decided to visit and look around. (BTW, it turns out that we couldn’t just go onto the base to drive and look around, we had to go through a security check, in a pre-gate area, and then have a reason to go on base, in our case the reason was to go to the museum. Not shown is a series of about 15 cameras that looked into our car from different angles).War has been good to the Army, at least at Fort Bliss, the old wooden PX is now a spiffy Marketplace and there are new buildings everywhere.All that is left of my old HAWK outfit except for…the barracks, we lived in (and the mess hall in which I first heard of the Kennedy assassination.After our Fort Bliss excursion, we went into El Paso, itself, for lunch at Tabla where we had an excellent “simple” salad – anything but simple with avocado, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, parmesan cheese, and a herbed vinaigrette – Brussel sprouts, and Pork Belly Wraps. Brussel sprouts and pork belly, neither of which were around ten years ago, are now on almost every menu in what I would call New Style Restaurants.BTW, while guns may be legal, most places we went didn’t want them. We only saw one guy with a gun in all our travels. This sign was typical.After lunch, we went to the Rocketbuster Boot Factory where Michele was tempted by a pair of exquisite mules.After lunch and after Rocketbuster, we wandered around the newly gentrified warehouse area that housed them both. It was very nice but somewhat empty. It was, however, next to a bustling Hispanic area…where I got a very welcome cappuccino. Then we blew town, heading for White Sands.We drove along “the wall” for a while…looking throw the pickets into Juarez, Mexico.We wandered through a maze of new freeway construction…until we finally got untangled and crossed back into New Mexico about ten miles up the freeway.After a few miles of freeway driving, we turned right and took US 70 over Augustin Pass…into a large, flat, valley (a graben, really, as this area is part of the Basin and Range and is a dropped block caused by the Earth’s stretching).
As we drive across the flat valley floor, we start to see white sand dunes on our left.and arrays of cameras on our right. At first, I think this is because we are passing through the White Sands Missile Range but now I’m inclined to think it is part of our “border security”.Driving through the dunes at White Sands is like driving past a snowfield.
The road is even plowed as if it were snow.We wandered around in the warm, fading, light; soaking up the soft beauty of the land and the light, feeling as much as seeing the day end.
After getting gas, we went to Lowe’s Super Market to get a take out dinner – the food was surprisingly good, if not very memorable – and then to our motel.to eat it.
El Paso is about 144 and two hours and 25 minutes miles from Whites City, according to Google and that is about what it took us. We started on a four-lane divided highway that goes between Carlsbad Caverns National Park and Guadalupe Mountains Nation Park named, creatively enough, National Park Highway.
The highway makes a straight beeline, southwest, for Texas and then turns almost due west just before the border as if it didn’t really want to go to Texas.Just as we enter Texas, the highway contracts to two lanes and starts getting more interesting. Thank you, Texas.We run along the southern edge of the Guadalupe Mountains. These are the highest mountains in Texas – the only mountains, really – and Michele and I are both thrilled to be in the mountains again.When asked to sum up his four book masterpiece on geology, John McPhee said, “If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.”. Now, we are looking up at a 4,000-foot thick marine deposit that was formed when it was a shallow sea at the edge of what was, at the time, the only continent on Earth, Pangea about 275 million years ago. About 12 million years ago, this area was raised up by the Farallon Plate sliding under the North American Plate. From a high point in the Guadalupe Mountains, we drop down into the Rio Grande Basin for an uneventful drive to El Paso,much of the time driving directly into the setting sun and lengthening shadows.
We ended our drive at the Scenic Drive Overlook, looking down at El Paso and Juarez like any other tourist, and we ended the day at the Hoppy Monk where we had excellent Lamb barbacoa tacos, Rabbit tacos, suburb Veggie empanadas, and a pretty good Beet and Kale salad.
Part of the allure of traveling is stepping out of the norm. We get up, have breakfast, look around what every small city we are in, and hit the road. We get to the new small city, check in, go out to dinner, and go to bed. In between and we look at our photographs, Michele catches up with work emails, and, I blog. We only watched TV as we are checking into our hotel or are walking through the lobby on our way out. We are strangers wandering through strange lands, outside the collective, only vaguely aware of the National Trauma that our country is going through and feeling like the outsiders we are.
The country is going through a long series of Collective Experiences that we are not a part of and not being a part of the collective shock and grief seems shallow. I have an almost overwhelming desire to apologize, but I wouldn’t know what I was apologizing for. I think acknowledging our detachment is not enough but it is really all we have.
After a very late start, passing San Luis Reservoir just after sunset, – high but not full – getting gas during a superb sunset, and stopping for a utilitarian dinner at In and Out Burger, we got to Bakersfield at about 10;45. We drove I5 in the dark. I5 is not much fun under any conditions and no fun in the dark but we are on our way.
Michele getting out of the sun at Bruneau Dunes State Park near Moutain Home in the Snake River valley.
Michele has a Cousin’s Reunion in Beaufort South Carolina starting on October 7th -weather permitting, it now seems – and we are going to drive there. We have taken up calling it the Big Trip – with apologies to Emily Gordon and Kumail NanjianiIt – and it will be the first time in years that I will be a tourist – in the best possible sense – seeing new places. It will also be the first time either one of us has ever driven across the country. The trip in the acompaning pictures is a drive from the Snake River Valley in southern Idaho to Interstate 80 near Winnemucca in northern Nevada and was part of our trip to see the eclipse. The eclipse trip also became a shakedown run for the Big Trip. Now that we are Googling routes and packing, the Big Trip is more real and I am getting very excited.
We started our drive south to Winnemucca in the Snake River Valley which was scoured out by the sudden draining of the Lake Bonneville. It is estimated that about 1,200 cubic miles of water, drained out in a couple of weeks, lowering the Lake Bonneville level by exactly 351 feet. The small remaining remnants of Lake Bonneville are now The Great Salt Lake.Heading south, towards Nevada, we pass Bruneau Dunes State Park near the hamlet of Bruneau and Jumbo’s store which advertises beer, bait, and bullets,as we climb out of the Snake River Valley onto the Owyhee Plateau where the main industry seems to be growing hay.As we travel south, into the Great Basin, the sky, which had been smoky from fires in Canada, clears.
My little sister, Paula, has just turned 75 and one of the most anticipated parts of the Big Trip will be spending four days at her place in Albuquerque NM, celebrating her Birthday. On the way to Paula’s, we’ll stop at a couple of our usual stopping towns, Barstow CA and Flagstaff AZ. Leaving Albuquerque, going east, however, we will enter what will be new territory for us so any suggestions, including change of stopping points, would be much appreciated.
After leaving Paula’s, our thinking is to stay at Amarillo TX for our first night out. It is about a four-hour 15-minute drive or about six hours if we stay off of highways. We definitely want to see the Cadilac Ranch and we hope to go for a hike in Palo Duro Canyon which is billed as the second largest canyon in the U. S. (but, seems in pictures, similar to and smaller than the Snake River Valley).
When we left the Snake River Valley, we were east of Boise so to get west to Reno, we have to keep cutting through mountain chains that are running north/south.Going through the Independence Mountains, we ran into aspens at about seven thousand feet.I am reminded of a comment by John McPhee in “Basin and Range”, in which he talks about each high mountain chain being like an island with its own micro-environment seperated by desert..Driving west, we go through a basin, then over a mountain, and then another basin.We pass deserted homesteads, each one an abandoned dream.
From Amarillo TX to Tulsa OK is about five and a half hours on highways or about six and a half by backroads going through Gutherie, the first capital of Oklahoma, and now an outdoor museum and tourist destination We are planning on spending two nights in Tulsa for no particular reason except that it looks interesting, is reported to have some great art deco architecture including a semi-deco 1929 Frank Lloyd Wright house, and a hot music and restaurant scene although, in reading about various cities on our route, everyone has a downtown revival which includes a hot restaurant scene. Our next stop is Bentingtonville AR, only two to three hours away, depending on how much highway driving we do. Bentingtonville is the home of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the depository of much of the Wallmart fortune so it should be fabulous. The building was designed by Moshe Safdie, the Israeli architect who we know of because of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Singapore, which is the backdrop for the Singapore Grand Prix (although Safdie is a well-known architect, it does make one wonder why an Israeli architect would be used for a museum of American Art).
Michele shoots a self-portrait.In northeastern Nevada, like southern Idaho, hay seems to be the biggest crop.Only 91 miles from Golconda, we pass a sign that made us both chuckle. (BTW, I have no idea where Golconda is and only a vague idea of where we are except we are on Nevada highway 226.)
From Bentingtonville, the next jump is to Memphis TN and it is a long jump, a little over five hours on Highway 40 and six and half hours off the freeway. Since we left Albuquerque, Memphis is the only city we had already been to (we stayed there in 2008, on the way to Shiloh Military Park as part of a trip to meet a couple of Michele’s cousins that turned into a pilgrimage to a couple of General U.S. Grant’s Civil War battles). The upside is that Memphis has a great music scene and our favorite barbecue joint (so far) but, the downside is that we have already been there, done that. The next two nights we will stay in Chattanooga TN which I just found out is touted to be one of the “Top 45 Places to go in the World in 2012” by the New York Times. From there, it is only six to seven hours to The Cousin’s Reunion in Beaufort SC.
Cutting across a small basin in the Great Basin. People complain that driving across Nevada is boring and I can’t fathom why. As an aside, when I Googled “fathom’, the example they gave was “he could scarcely fathom the idea that people actually lived in Las Vegas”. End aside.
As we get close to Interstate 80, the landscape opens up, then it is only an hour and a half to a stellar Chines restaurant in Reno.
Two days before I wrote this, Trump gave a speech at the United Nations that was just nasty. He just seems to be a lout, to his very core. Now he is our President, both the Chief Executive and the Public Face of The United States. But researching for this trip has left me feeling much better for our country. As the Roman Empire collapsed, the cities in it, like Florence or Arles in France, continued to prosper as islands of civilization, and, as much of our country seems to be convulsing towards Trumpian dystopia, all the small cities we Googled for the trip seemed to be growing islands of tolerant Secular Humanism (with interesting food).
El Paso is a desert border town and a military town which, IMHO, are two strikes against it. But, this is a prejudged, I was stationed at Fort Bliss – the Military Base that makes this a military town – for training in a Surface to Air missile system called HAWK (Homing All the Way Killer) from March 1963 to January 1964 when I was transferred to an active unit in Korea and then from April to June 1965 when I came back from Korea and ended up teaching Germans at the nearby Orogrande Missile Range. 
El Paso is about 144 and two hours and 25 minutes miles from Whites City, according to Google and that is about what it took us. We started on a four-lane divided highway that goes between Carlsbad Caverns National Park and Guadalupe Mountains Nation Park named, creatively enough, National Park Highway. 
