One Lap

Date: 11/14/2013

Day: 49

Location:  Phoenix, AZ

Miles Today: 381

Total Miles:  11,864

Socorro, Pie Town, On the Road, Tomorrow

Socorro, New Mexico

Again we did not do justice to our town before dark yesterday.  Following are some more images of Socorro, another very nice small town.

 

 

 What America needs is a good....

 



 

The Ark of Socorro,  shot from the obverse side.

 

 

This is a really wonderful stone wall around the corner from the opera house. 

The Garcia Opera House

The Garcia Opera House is the venue for The Lion in Winter that was dress rehearsed last night and will play this weekend.  This is a venerable place, built with adobe walls between 1884 and 1887.  The walls are 32 inches thick.  If you look at the top most picture you will see tie rods connecting the pair of walls.  The one wall has at least a 20 degree list.  Scary.  That wall looks like a good place for a flying buttress to the Colonel.

 

 

The utility pole is approximately vertical.  The wall is not.

Breakfast

Above, that chicken fried steak you were warned about.  Below, green chili.  No, this might not actually be the secret to a long life.  Happy, yes; long, not so much.

Green Chili

Green chili is mythic in New Mexico.  It is a complicated thing.  The Chili plant apparently has terroir like wine grapes.  The same species of chili will have a distinct taste when grown in two separate places.  People combine different varieties of chili from specific fields in different fractions and create very different tasting products.  Again much like wine.  The green chili has a very complex and interesting flavor; hotness is only part of it -- not  the Colonels favorite part.  It also has a finish that can last for minutes.

 

Pie town

Yes, there is a Pie Town New Mexico.  And yes, there are dueling pie purveyors in Pie Town.  After that somewhat substantial breakfast, we could only manage to sample one.

 

 

 Pie town humor; life jacket over the loo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pie-O-Neer.  Of course. 

  

On the Road

 

 The road from Socorro and Phoenix runs southwest through pines and pinion trees, Joshua trees and finally desert brush.  It is a long drive but every foot is beautiful

  

 

 

 Above and below, a few of the many radio antennae of the Very Large Array radio telescope near Magdalena, New Mexico.

 

 Variations on the  DUI theme.

 

 There is flat country here with an elevation more than 7,000 feet.

These nondescript cows and the one Texas long horn thought there was nothing more interesting than coming over to the barb wire to look at they guy looking at them.  Barb wire becomes shockingly unsubstantial when there is a mob of beef on the hoof looking balefully at someone who had chicken fried beefsteak for breakfast.  The longhorn horns can be 7 feet across.

 

 

 

More pretty good street art.

 

According to the GPS, there is nothing out here.

 

Above and below, Joshua Trees seen on the long downhill into the Valley of the Sun and Phoenix.  Is there anything that looks sadder when it is beat up or more exuberant when its many arms are stretched to the sky?  There is an excellent, heallthy Joshua forest here.

Tomorrow:

A drive on I-8 along the southern border to San Diego.

Wellington Boot, Col.