When in love and loving what you are doing, there’s an element of joy that seems to continuously make itself known. We wake with that sense and never fail to exchange an affectionate word and snuggle before stepping into the day. Getting things together feels mostly effortless as the routines are well-known and not fraught with tensions. Next up, verify that the world is the same one you went to sleep in. Are things where they should be? We’ll likely try to send ourselves out for a walk, if possible, prior to getting something to eat because it feels right and helps bring the senses and body to full wakefulness. If the first meal of the day is suboptimal, that’s okay, as it’s just food, and something else will come along that’s certain to delight us. I’m not only describing the routine when traveling, but this is also our average day.
This is the lobby of the Gadsden Hotel and the same spot on the balcony from where I shot a photo I shared last year during our previous stay. Well, there are subtle differences between the images, but nothing glaring.
There are days that we don’t really know what comes next. We may have a loose idea, but ideas are not locked in stone; they are suggestions. Take this morning, we had three potentialities but with rain in the forecast, the first option of a long walk in Bisbee was stricken from the list. We could have opted to drive northeast towards Rodeo, New Mexico, and Lordsburg past that before heading towards Duncan, Arizona, holding the promise of taking us to Miami for yet another encounter with my favorite carne asada at Guayo’s El Rey Mexican restaurant or we could head straight north for a return visit to Fort Bowie National Historic Site. We opted for the northern trek because it’s been 20 years since we were last at the fort.
First, though, we have to complete our pre-breakfast walk around the downtown area, where window shopping is not much of an option because while there are windows, only a few have things behind them that are of any interest. Just off the main street is Art Car World, which we visited twice last year on the same weekend. Today, we’ll simply peer into the place as we won’t be sticking around until 11:00, when they open.
There’s an art shop on the main street that might hold promise with its modern facade, but there’s not a thing to be seen beyond the opaque front end. Behind this mural is a small Mexican joint we considered having breakfast at, but there was no menu in the window, so we kept on going. We are those people who, once inside and sensing the owners are struggling, we’ll eat there just to help them out, even if what’s on the menu isn’t what we really want. Instead, we walked back to the hotel to eat there before collecting our bags to hit the road.
Beautiful clouds and deep blue skies were overhead; what was on the horizon was another story. We may have driven 15 miles before we decided that things were looking so grim ahead that there was no chance we’d be driving the short dirt road out to Fort Bowie, and we’d likely not enjoy walking in the mud either, so we turned around.
Option number 2, driving northeast, became our new choice; plus, it allowed us to go back and inspect just what kind of bird I spotted lying dead next to the road: hawk or owl. It was an owl, a beautiful barn owl with awesome feathers. A number of them joined us in the car for the drive home. Sadly, before getting back to Douglas to take the other road, I spotted another dead barn owl; seems like these roads are dangerous for their species.
Yep, I’m gonna go there…this rather phallic-looking Geronimo Surrender Monument could only have been designed by a white guy because not only does it represent an embarrassment to the Apache people, but it’s in the shape of either a penis or a middle finger, which in my opinion curses the Apache nation and reminds them of how they were conquered and subdued. This thing should be demolished and replaced with something that honors the Apache people.
We are at the southern end of the Chiricahua Mountains and just a few miles away from entering New Mexico. While we won’t be heading into the Chiricahuas today, we’ve always meant to return to the crossroads in the mountains called Portal, so we might spend a weekend and go hiking up there someday.
Twenty-three years is a good long time to accumulate so much gray hair; I’m referencing this because I just went looking for the last time we crossed through this way, and it appears to have been back in 2000, or maybe that was the first time and I just missed noting this location in the intervening posts. I was wondering if Caroline and I had taken a selfie at this state line before. What I came up with was a photo I had taken of her and her mom. While countless adventures have happened since those days, there’s also something “blink of an eye” about the time; I can’t imagine what time feels like to those who’ve not taken advantage of the rare commodity.
Just as we were about to pass the turnoff for Portal, Arizona, while driving through Rodeo, New Mexico, we spotted the Chiricahua Desert Museum (there’s no missing it). No matter what was in this small outpost, we’d pay the entry fee to support such an endeavor out in the middle of nowhere. Well, it turns out that they have an incredible exhibit featuring venomous creatures, primarily snakes.
I can’t say I’ve ever had a more intimate encounter with these fascinating-looking serpents, but I’m also a bit saddened by the idea that they don’t get to live the life of the creature they are because they are on display for me. While I certainly don’t want to come into close proximity with one of them where they might be within striking distance, I do like knowing they are out in the wild, fulfilling their role of being a snake.
I don’t think we consider the lowly snakes very often, though they are nearly everywhere on our earth. They are enigmatic compared to gorillas, dolphins, or polar bears, and yet they are distributed to almost every corner. ChatGPT via Bing informs me that about 1/3 of all people have a phobia of these slithery reptiles, which places them just behind people’s fear of spiders, which is the number one phobia of people. As I stop to think about what I know regarding snakes, I realize I know more about weaving, fermentation, salt, and the behavior of grumpy old men than I do about snakes. A cursory overview at Amazon about titles that could enlighten this dark corner of knowledge doesn’t look very promising.
Sitting under its head is this snake’s rattle. I just learned that it’s made of keratin, the same stuff that makes up our fingernails. Also, the number of rattles is not a precise indicator of its age because a snake can shed its skin more than once a year.
There are other parts of the museum, though the largest part of the exhibit is regarding snakes and, strangely enough, beers that have a venomous theme.
While there are a few artifacts from the nearby indigenous people, this shouldn’t be anyone’s principal reason for stopping in.
It was still partly sunny when we stepped out of the museum, but it was super windy. We turned on Highway 9 going east in order to avoid a few miles of Interstate 10 as those major roads only offer expediency in exchange for dealing with serious aggression, while out here, we have this.
This is about all that’s left of Animas, New Mexico, with its shrinking population dwindling down to a lowly 180 people.
We are nearing the outskirts of Lordsburg, New Mexico, at this point, and while this is at a distance from the downtown area, it is indicative of everything we drove past. This desert outpost has been mostly declining for the past 70 years. Its claim to fame is peculiar: first, it once held a Japanese American internment camp, and secondly, it was one of the very few places with a motel in the southwest that would accept black guests prior to the end of segregation.
As we weren’t inclined to eat at McDonald’s back in Lordsburg, and the only other restaurant we might have considered is closed on Sunday, we decided on heading into Duncan for lunch at the Ranch House we knew we could count on having a pretty decent patty melt.
By the time we stopped, the clouds had shifted yet again. We’d already tried getting a shot of these mountains with shadows speckled across them, but those moments of perfection only lasted seconds.
Our time out of state was brief but well worth the detour.
After our quick lunch in Duncan, we were soon passing through Safford in the shadow of Mt. Graham. We have a reservation this summer to visit the International Observatory that’s perched up there.
There’s an extraordinary amount of snow on this landscape today, but the drama being played out in the sky was worth capturing, too.
We had to stop at Mountain Breeze Memorial Gardens in Miami because we couldn’t believe that it snowed up here and didn’t think we’d be in the snowline much longer.
I suppose it only makes sense that here at Top-of-the-World west of Miami, there should be snow; still, we were surprised, though maybe more so, by the Nigerian dwarf goats that ran over to say hi or to look for food. Being at the edge of another country, hiking, birds, great food, snow, snakes, and goats all make for yet another perfect weekend in the ongoing adventure that is our lives.
