I Didn’t Want To Go To Texas

 

I have been hanging out in Tularosa New Mexico with some of Rasta’s humans family.  I had a nice level spot to park the van with a name,  and  I even  had a 15-amp electrical connection to a very long 14-awg cord that on that first day connected, got very warm as the van’s batteries were being charged. It somehow  never melted or opened the breaker.

We were treated to the best homemade  bean and chili burritos, fresh eggs and potatoes, and some other homemade delicacies that all I had to do was fill my plate and eat. Even helping with the dishes was off limits.

We ate pistachio ice-cream not at the giant pistachio, but at the giant heart pistachio operation that is just down the road.

At The Giant Pistachio

Kevlr busied himself washing bikes, and even changing a tubeless front tire on Maya’s BMW by hand. I even learned that the front spoked wheels on these BMW dual sports, have the spokes on the outer edge of the rim, enabling the use of a tubeless tire.

Getting the tire balanced was another story and took multiple trips into Alamogordo or Alamo as the locals call it to get the job done. Kevlr even had time to help me pick out some brighter LSD headlamps for the van with a name, and lent a hand putting them in.

Back on the road we passed through the ever-popular White Sands national park, and the even more popular since the film Oppenheimer  the White Sands Missile Range.

Stopping in Las Cruces we visited the  Space Murals Museum & Gift Shop . The museum is well worth the stop and has some very interesting artifacts.

Remains Of A V-2 Rocket

The V2 was the first two stage rocket successfully launched in 1948  at White Sands, and was the brainchild of former nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun who just happened to find himself in White Sands in 1948??

The museum features a water tank that portrays the space program.

The Shuttle Program 

Departing Las Curces we took a delightful road highway 25 south. The two-lane highway rolls through tree lined orchards of pecan trees.

The Pecan Trees Shade The Highway 

This being New Mexico the Numero Uno  biker rule of leaving town with full tanks and empty bladders is loosely enforced, and violating this rule  involved a few mile back track to somewhere that had I known had a RV wash, the van with a name could have gotten a much-needed bath.

Largest Pepper On The Planet

Tanks full bladders empty, dog happy, and my GPS programed we head out.

None of us wanted to be on the interstates, and we have skillfully avoided them,  but all of a sudden at Canuitto we are in Texas. NON-OF US WANTED TO BE IN TEXAS but here we are.

 The smoke from burning books, and witches was almost over whelming. Visibility is limited, but through the haze I spot the new Mar-a-Lago. It’s the Federal Correctional Institution La Tuna.

This Would Make A Secure Mar-a-Lago

Sadly, La Tuna is a low security prison so it probably wouldn’t be suitable for the former orange marmalade.

Finally, after surviving Texas and now  back in New Mexico it now looks like I might have to go to Mexico, and I don’t want to go there today either. Just at the last minutes  the  turn for highway 9  appears, and we parallel the Mexican border, all the way to Columbus.

For miles, and miles the impenetrable wall disrupts the fragile ecology of the desert.

Miles & Miles Of Border Wall

What a waste of time and tax dollars this wall is. We could have built a Terabyte solar power plant on this desert and supplied most of the southwest with clean power, and as strong as the wind was blowing out here, we could have built a huge wind farm  here instead of a wall that you can climb over with a ladder.  We could have even legalized all the drugs that find their way into our cities supplied by murderous drug Cartels, and put them out of business, and out of the business of disrupting the lives of peaceful people that flee to amerika seeking a better life…