Home ·· News Room ·· Prints ·· Licensing ·· Gallery ·· About Us ·· Contact Us ·· Articles ·· Services New Mexico and Colorado stock photography road trip report, December 26, 2002 to January 4, 2003 Updated February 13, 2006 Page 1 of 5 Next page
	(Note: This trip is as I wrote it, with only spelling corrected. Grammar is out when you're writing a road trip report as you go.) Download the whole report in Acrobat PDF   Dec 26, 2002 Thursday Left Temecula about 3pm. A little late to get a road trip started. AAA mapped me to go up the 215 to I-10 to head toward Tombstone, AZ and Carlsbad Caverns. Well, why do that when the back way over the SR 79S -> SR123 -> SR74 to Palm Desert can chop off an hour of travel. Put into Palm Desert about 5:30pm. Tried to contact Wendy in La Quinta 'cause I was right there. The cell phone does have its use (I'd just received one for Christmas). Sadly, she was in LA at the time. Follow the desert highway SR111 east 'till the intersection of I-10 and began to head east. Nice to cover the anti-scenic trip portion at night. Hit Blythe a short time later and ate at Blythe pizza, off the exit with the most restaurants. I think the dude there hated me for some reason. He ignored me while standing right in front of his face for a minute or two before ordering. If I wasn't set on pizza, I would have been gone. Hick. For that, I enjoyed a pepperoni-less pizza and watched Dante's Peak. Finishing that, left. On the way out, caught Mr. Hick's glare and he quickly looked away. The visage must be pretty scary! Loser. On the road to Phoenix. Great oldies show in Quartzite in the 94.x band. A funny Mexican station, the only one for 1/2 hour had a dude doing terrible karaoke to 80's music. Hilarious! Even picked up a Yuma country station this far up! So these Michelin Pilot XGT tires feel great. Just bought them. Hopefully they'll work out okay farther down the road. Got into Phoenix and almost rammed a motocop going 30MPH. Semi-safely dodged him and fortunately he didn't notice. Had to get past the metro area to avoid traffic. Hit Chandler, AZ to fuel up. Whoa - 26MPG! Hmm...better check the oil. *!*$$@()!!! Way overfilled. Dammit!!!! 3/4 overfilled. I knew I should have checked it while at Discover Hyundai in Carlsbad, CA. Drove real nice (like it mattered now) to a Super 8 motel, paid freaking' $45 because I needed a place to drain some oil. The whole parking lot has video surveillance. Dang! Don't want to get caught. The video piped to the front desk. Idea! I'm sure they won't allow oil draining. Wait for a customer to distract the clerk and watch the video to see where the coverage holes are and then ask an inane question when the customer leaves to alleviate suspicion. Park the car in a surveillance hole, wait a half hour for the engine to cool (12:15am!) and then use the room's ice bucket with a plastic liner to catch the oil. There must have been a quart overfill. Freaking...!! December 27, 2002 Friday A great sunrise, grand slam breakfast at Denny's. Funny note - at the Chandler gas station last night, I watched a couple lock their young son in the vehicle accidentally. They coaxed/begged him to unlock the door. Mental note - carry spare key on me and NOT in the car. Hit the I-10 after breakfast. The beautiful sunrise was at 7am. Late! Running along the I-10 in the day isn't very exciting between Phoenix and Tucson. Boring to a car going 75MPH but not if you slow down... Passed a sign to Casa Grande National Monument. Oh, if I don't go and check it out, I'm sure I'll regret it. Off the freeway onto a little highway. Fourteen miles to Chandler, AZ and to the monument. In the 1100's, a bunch of Indians dug a few feet into the ground and found a concrete like stuff called caliche. Mix in water, wait and scoop. From this, you can construct a 4-story building in the middle of the desert. Making a building that big would compel you to build miles of irrigation ditches. With sticks! Wow! Guess the Gila river used to be just that big. It's all dammed up now, so that's not reality. Enjoyed the ranger talk about the Hohokahm people, or "Gone away". No one knows what happened but drought probably wiped them out. Early sunrise on the structure would have been great with large format. Too bad I wasn't there early and haven't even loaded the film holders. From there, drove on to Saguaro National Park. Quite beautiful, really. In the middle of the day, the light was pretty lame. Got to stop hitting these interesting places at high noon. Took a slow road to Tucson from there, passed and went to Besson, AZ-80 toward Tombstone. Nice country road. First thing to see in Tombstone from that direction is Boot Hill Cemetery. Rather entertaining headstones. Took some photos finally! B&W seemed appropriate for this place. Grabbed some snacks for lunch. Wandered around town a but and should have hit up the historic courthouse. BUT, I would have missed: a comedy gunfight (lame but funny), a short walk through the OK Coral and some fun people to watch. The gunfight at the OK Coral was as close as it gets, maybe 20' away from each other. The town's slogan is "The town too tough to die." Perhaps that had something to do with the $20 million in silver mined from the area. Biggest ever! Ate at the Longhorn restaurant and enjoyed "western style New York strip steak". Upon hearing the code phrase, "Would you like some steak sauce with that?", I knew it was going to be a bad steak. It was. Left Tombstone in the dark. It seemed appropriate enough. I wanted to make Las Cruces, NM but at over 200 miles away, it wasn't going to happen. So, it was the town of Lordsburg instead. Motel #1 was booked so I tried another one. Motel #2 wanted $40. No way! I negotiated them down to $29. Much better. Bed. Shower. Sleep! December 28, 2002, Saturday Enjoyed a bad breakfast while writing in my journal. The very weak OJ cost $1.10. Why did I order it? "Hot sauce" is code for vinegar with chili flavoring. Blech! There were several Border Patrol agents at this place. Two guys in a booth next to me mentioned San Diego house prices and the Border Patrol mentioned San Diego many times. Don't know ya have it good 'till you see somewhere else. Went to hit White Sands NM and then to Texas and up to Carlsbad. A fairly good day 'till near disaster in White Sands Monument. After the bad breakfast, travel to Las Cruces, NM. Didn't even realize I spent the night in New Mexico. Funny! Went to Napa and K-Mart to pick up extra batteries and flashlights for Carlsbad caverns as I signed up for a tour requiring them. Had a Mag light, bought a spare. What a sad little city, this Las Cruces. Off toward White Sands NM. But wait! Passing the White Sands missile range and there's a museum there! Saw a mockup of Fat Boy, the Nagasaki nuclear bomb. Good info on the Trinity sight, the 1st nuclear blast ever. Missile park reminded me of something you might see in Moscow. Off to the White Sands NM. Dad makes better videos than all the ones at the national parks and monuments I've seen. Almost all the video looks hand held. Amateurs! Drove to the inter-dune walkway and wandered west one mile to find untrodden dunes at sunset. So-so success with some lame sides taken, realized it was getting dark quick and the gate closes at 6pm, me out in the field at 5:30pm! Basted. Fire up the GPS and see the car is 0.63 miles, ~15 minutes on GPS. As the crow flies. Over steep dunes. Crap! Started jog walking with no lunch in me. Legs quickly turned to jelly. Not good with a large format camera on the shoulder, video and 35mm in the backpack. 0.2 miles - stumble. Oh no! The camera fell off the mount. Why can't I tighten it down?! No time, must carry it in the other hand. In the distance, the ranger on PA can be heard, no doubt telling people to get out before the gate is locked. Next page
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