Ft. Huachuca & Tucson

Sunday I went into Ft. Huachuca to see the post museum and the Intelligence Museum. It was a gorgeous day, sunny with temps in the high 60's. A perfect day for just about anything.

I have mentioned previously that I had been assigned to Ft. Huachuca on TDY in 1971. Even though that was almost forty years ago I thought I might recognize some things in addition to the old historic fort....Wrong. There were so many new modern buildings that I recognized nothing and got terribly turned around trying to drive to the museum.

With the help of my GPS I finally made it to the museum. It was not large but it did a very good job of documenting the history and people of Ft. Huachuca from it's inception in the 1870's until the present. While I was stationed here I stayed in an old two story World War II baracks that had been converted to visiting Officers Quarters. Much to my surprise while viewing a display of the fort's more modern history I found an exhibit of some of the "artifacts" that were discovered when the old barracks were torn down in the late 1970's. It was a weird feeling to see things not uncommon in my life forty years ago, displayed in a museum.

Monday morning I headed for Tucson and a date with a LONG hot shower. My schedule called for staying at a "full service" RV camp ground while doing a few things in the area. A few things included the LONG shower mentioned above. Bivouac contains a nice comfortable shower and a hot water tank for plenty of hot water. I was on the road for eight days however, before I had the opportunity do drain my waste water tanks and that necessitated being very frugal with my water/waste water. I took showers but they were "Navy" showers and while they kept me clean they didn't provide much enjoyment. Monday afternoon I remedied that condition.

I had laundry to do as well but got it done with enough time left in the day to take a trip to Saguaro National Park (East) which is only about 8 miles from the RV park. Saguaro National Park actually consists of two different parks, one on the west side of Tucson and one on the east side. The west side park is the larger and more well known facility. I had visited that park last year. The east side park while smaller is still a great place to spend a couple of hours and that's about all the time I had.

Monday evening I had dinner with some friends that had just recently moved, full time, to the Tucson area. Jamie and Betsy had wintered here for a number of years before deciding to move here full time from their home in the mid-west. Last year they acted at tour guides when Guitar and I came down and had our ladies fly in for a long weekend. It was great to be able to see them again.

This morning I intended to visit the Pima Air and Space Museum and take a tour of "the bone yard", officially known as the Aerospace and Regeneration Center, and then head north towards Phoenix. I spent way more time than I ever though it would take to visit these two attractions that I decided to stay another night in Tucson.

Both the museum and the bone yard were just fantastic. I was like a kid in a candy store. The museum had acres and acres of old and historic planes. A lot of them I could remember from my childhood and military service but there were also many that I had only seen in history books. It's probably just a guy thing but a lot of them were just beautiful. Graceful lines and each had a personality of it's own...kind of like a woman.

The bone yard was just as if not more interesting. There are literally thousands of "mothballed" modern aircraft here. We were told that most of them could be put in flying condition in anywhere from a few days to a couple of months. You name it they were there. F-16s, F4 Phantoms, C130s, B1B Bombers, KC135 tankers, C5A cargo ships, helicopters of every sort. It was well worth the time and money for the experience.

Tomorrow I intend to leave here and get to an RV park somewhere north of Phoenix. I'm headed for a date with The Bride in Flagstaff on Friday!

Thanks for visiting.

Old Spanish Trail, Finale

On Thursday morning it was decided that since we weren’t finding much of importance in the root cellar we should stop excavating and backfill the two holes. Archaeologists always fill in the holes they dig and it brought back memories of the Army…dig a hole, fill a hole. The good news was that after I filled in the holes my next project was to take my metal detector and search for signs of the Old Spanish Trail that went through this area. This search was done about 12 miles from the stage stop at the base of Cochetopa Pass.

It was a fantastic two days. The weather was perfect, blue skies, temps in the high 60’s, aspen leaves turning gold, life is good!

Part of the search was in an aspen grove (pictured left). Most of what was uncovered here was more modern stuff, cans and late model rifle cartridges, but we did find some old (1880’s) rifle cartridges and old horse shoes. We also found some aspen graffiti the oldest of which was 1934. One piece of graffiti, dated 1964 stated that Don Fricklin was here on a cattle drive. It was kind of surreal…finding tangible evidence of people that walked down this trail between 1880 and today.

Not far from where the picture above was taken we came upon a small ghost town of four or five tumbled down log cabins. This was a mining community of some type because we could see the prospect holes on the hills surrounding the cabins. As much as we wanted to investigate this place, we had to move on. This was not our task for this trip.

Down the mountain from the mining camp the terrain opened up and you could see where wagons had climbed the next hill. The trail had been used for a long while judging from the items we discovered, old horse shoes, a suspender stay, early spent cartridges, glass fragments and the trigger of an old revolver.

The two days passed too quickly. I think this was my favorite part of the project. It was really easy to look around and picture pioneers travelling through the area in covered wagons, especially when you held in you hand, an item they held in their hand.

The project closed down at about 2pm on Friday and I drove to Alamosa, CO to spend the night in a KOA campground. Laundry was done and I took a long hot shower. This morning I left Alamosa and headed for Trinidad, CO. Along the way I stopped at Ft. Garland. I have visited this state historical site before but it’s always fun to tour through an authentic cavalry post.

I arrived in Trinidad about noon and am camped at the Budget Host Motel and RV Park. Not the nicest campground I’ve ever stayed in but it has electricity, cable TV, a shower and sewer connections. All of my waste tanks are full and the water tank is empty so the first order of business is to dump tanks and fill the fresh water tank.

Tomorrow I will head for Carrizo Canyon where the next PIT project begins. I’ll be out of all contact until next Saturday but check back then because I’ll have some more good stories to tell.

Thanks for visiting.

Not Done With The Prairie Chickens Yet

The weather this week has been wonderful and there is no sign of the snow we had only a week ago. We're in for a little rain this weekend but the temps are pretty much out of the snow zone.

I've decided that I will take a solo trip to way southeast Colorado, Granada, to be exact, and do the Prairie Chicken tour on Thursday morning. I'll leave here on Wednesday morning in my RV and spend the night parked on the guide's ranch. I've been over much of this route before but there are several places I want to stop either before or afterward. I'm thinking I'll spend either two or three nights out.

Granada, CO has the unenviable distinction of being the location of the Amache Relocation Camp that housed over 7000 American citizens of Japanese descent during WW II. There's really nothing there now other than a small monument but I still want to visit.

Another stop will have to be Ft. Lyon, which is about 50 miles west of Granada. I have driven by this site several times but never really investigated the place. It's an interesting place to me because it was one of the forts on the Santa Fe Trail and because Kit Carson died here. Currently there is a National Cemetery there as well as an old Naval hospital that treated tuberculosis and is now owned by the Colorado Prison System.

There are two other sites I'd love to see but I can't get there in the RV. The first is the Sand Creek Massacre Site, another sad chapter in our history. The second is Hicklin Springs, an Indian petroglyph site. This one is just the sort of thing I seek out but it looks like with my RV I won't be able to get even close. I will ask some questions while in the area and maybe I can find a way to get close enough to do a day hike in and out.

This weekend I'm busy doing my demo job at the local big box. One day I'm doing Kraft, South Beach Living Bars and Pizza and the other day I'm doing Fiber Plus Bars and Special K. These are normally pretty popular "give-aways" so the time should pass quickly...and it's gas money for the RV!

Thanks for visiting.

Las Vegas to Raton - The Long Way

After a pleasant night in Las Vegas the following nights destination was to be either Cimarron or Raton. The route however, was not to be straight line, as I wanted to explore some more side roads and I wanted to visit the famous cavalry post, Fort Union.

First things first though. Before leaving Las Vegas I wanted to search out the old downtown area for classic signs. I was rewarded for my efforts. In the search for old signs, old theaters and old drive-in theaters are of special interest to me. Not just because they normally have cool signs but they are truly "historical" and are of a culture now gone in these United States. The small downtown theaters were once the lifeblood of the weekend in many rural towns. Drive-ins had the same cultural effect but for a much shorter time period and are disappearing at a much faster clip.

Las Vegas has both a theater and a drive in. Neither are still operating and I'll wager that in a few years both of these will be lost to history. Click and enlarge the picture of the drive-in at the top. You can not only see the marquee in the picture but you can also see the screen in the background. The really neat thing about the screen is that the lower third of the screen is painted in a mural....must be a New Mexico thing? You can see in the tile work under the ticket window of the Serf theater that it opened in 1937. I don't have a clue about the significance of the name "Serf"?

After my sign hunt I headed north on Highway 518 and then east on the smaller highway 161 back to the Interstate. Highway 161 once again took me into ancient New Mexico. Twisting roads just barely two lanes wide took me through old Mexican settlements and farmlands. These people were here almost a hundred years before the first "American" showed up. Many of their descendants still own and work the land....fascinating.

After about 30 miles of ancient New Mexico I was back to I-25 and modern day America...but not for long. Just a few miles up the road was the turn off to Fort Union.

I have mentioned before that my father "The Colonel" started his military career as a horse cavalryman so ALL things cavalry, interest me. Ft. Union was a premier cavalry post from the 1850's to the 1890's. It was not only a cavalry post but also a Quartermaster post that received, stored and re-shipped supplies all over the southwest United States. It was a huge installation at the time.

Not a lot is left of the post but the bones. Bones of buildings. There are a lot of bones and you can get the feel for the post by walking among the bones.

As you can see from the photo the sky was overcast. The wind started blowing and the temperature was dropping. One of the park rangers told me that the forecast was for about an inch of snow at Ft. Union that night.....and that the Denver area could get about 12" of snow!!

My plans changed immediately. I needed to get to a safe place where I could hunker down for a day or two if necessary, so I headed to Raton and went to the KOA campground. They have full hookups and WiFi so I could be comfortable there whatever the weather. I checked in at about 4 pm and settled down for the night.....Stay tuned for the last day on the road.

Thanks for visiting.

Wide Open Wyoming

June 11 - After watching a DVD last night I was in bed by 10 pm. I slept fitfully although the guide book was right…..coal trains rumbled through town about every half hour. Even though they woke me up 3-4 times I really didn’t mind and fell back to sleep almost immediately.

I was up at 5:30 and fixed a breakfast of oatmeal, breakfast burrito and French press coffee. Can’t beat that with a stick! While eating I read up on my plans for the day, foremost of which was a visit to Fort Laramie. It was only 10 miles down the road and didn’t open till 8 am so I took my time eating and hooking Bivouac up and straggled in to the fort at 8:15 am. What a great place! I spent almost 4 hours walking around and looking at all the restored buildings and displays. The National Parks Service has really done an outstanding job here. While walking around I saw a bunch of Parks employees so it looks like they are getting enough money to support this historic place.

In 1834 mountain man extraordinaire, William Sublette and a group of trader/trappers constructed the first “fort” in the area. The military took over in 1849 and the fort was finally decommissioned in 1890. If you want to get the feel of military life on the frontier, this is a great place to come. I won’t go into great detail because you can read it here.

The best story of the day isn’t about the frontier army, the cavalry, Indians or all that glorified western stuff. The best, most poignant story of the day is a story of a nobody, a woman who died traveling with her family across the west to Oregon. Mary Homsley really was a nobody to everyone in the world but the few that were related to her. Her husband, mother and father, ten brothers and sisters and two daughters.

Mary Homsley died as a result of both a case of measles and from being thrown into the Laramie River while crossing it in a wagon. She was buried in a land her surviving relatives knew they would never return to. She was buried and left behind as the others struggled to get to Oregon. Her resting spot was forgotten and lost for 75 years when cowboys stumbled upon it. Look at these pictures and you will see and feel the true story of the west, the countless forgotten people that made this land what it is today.

The grave site is on a dirt road about four miles from the old fort. You really have to want to go there to get to it. I ended up parking Bivouac on the side of a little dirt road and walking the last mile to get there. I’m glad I did.

The rest of the day was spend in getting to Newcastle. The temperatures we in the mid 90’s again so I wasn’t up for a lot of outdoor activity. I was going to stay at a primitive campsite but with the weather forecast calling for mid to upper 90’s until tomorrow, I opted for a commercial RV place in Newcastle that had electricity so I could have A/C. Man I love this camping stuff….close to nature and A/C and all of that!

Newcastle is a very small town of about 3000 and it’s claim to fame is that it’s close to Sturgis of motorcycle rally fame and gets the overflow crowd every summer. There is also the Accidental Oil Company a Beverly Hillbillies story about a rancher who struck oil at 21 feet while hand digging a well to see if he could…. Won’t get to see that because it opens at 9 am and I’ll be long gone by then.

Tomorrow I’m gonna get to Devil’s tower.

Thanks for visiting.