Day four—Tourist Traps of Arizona

The bottom of California is pretty much desert. There’s just not that much to see, so I drove through it, taking a couple of potentially interesting pictures along the way. The same goes for most of the remainder of I-8.

One good point was that once I got about 50 miles away from San Diego, traffic was much more reasonable. Driving was actually more fun than annoying. I even got to drive through an Arizona monsoon for a while.

The hotel in El Centro had a treadmill, so I jogged before I left… which meant that I didn’t actually get on the road until nearly 10…

Outside of Tucson, I stopped for gas, groceries, and tourist traps. There’s a place called “Old Tucson Studios”, which has apparently been used for shooting all sorts of movies and shows through the years. It was a grade-A tourist trap. There were mock ups of all the traditional Old West buildings… except that most of them were selling things. There was a shoot out in the center of town, with some fairly decent live stunt work—lots of tosses and tumbles. And a cute train that ran all the way around the compound. I also got a picture of myself taken with one of the burlesque dancers; we’ll see how well that (and all the other pictures—I took lots) came out.

I also took a trip to Tombstone. It was, as expected, mostly a tourist trap. The main street is about three blocks of various stores, trying to be Old West-y. And, sadly, I didn’t get there until slightly after 5, so the place was mostly closed down. Had I gotten there earlier, I could have scene one of several different re-enactments of the OK Corral shootout. I did get to see the wall that goes all the way around the OK Corral… the building itself was closed for the night. On the way back, I stopped at Boot Hill and took some pictures. I’m definitely going to have to try getting to bed earlier, so I’m up during more of the day when things are open. And this’ll get trickier as I go on, because New Mexico is the next time zone over… and Kansas is the one after that.

I finished up just over the New Mexico border, in Lordsburg. Dinner at the Kranberry was surprisingly tasty. Be sure to stop there, if you’re in the neighborhood.

Day five—New Mexico Graves

Hmm… I woke up earlier, but still tired. Oh well.

I started out trying to go see the “Shakespeare Ghost Town”. It’s another of those Old West towns with shootouts and such. Sadly, it was closed… it seems to be open only on weekends.

At Las Cruces, I left I-10 behind for the more ordinary US-70. Just on the far side of Las Cruces, I got to my first wave of road construction. They seem to be doing a lot of it in New Mexico.

Up and over some hills, past the White Sands missile range (beautiful views out there), through a border check (“Are you a US citizen?” “Yes, I am.” “Thank you very much.”), and into Alamogordo.

Alamogordo has a rather nice museum of the history of space travel. It also has the world’s smallest IMAX theater. I saw a rather poorly done movie with four different theme park rides. It probably would have worked better on a bigger screen… and I’m probably just being excessively picky, since I’ve done this sort of stuff before. The museum itself was pretty nice, and well worth wandering through. And HAM, the first chimpanzee in space (at least in our space program; I don’t know about the Russians) is buried out front.

On the road out of Alamogordo, even though it was the middle of nowhere, my cell phone claimed that it had signal. So I tried chatting with my dad. Sadly, it seemed to have enough signal to dial, but not enough to carry on a conversation. Someday, cell phones will actually work…

North of Alamogordo, and past some more road construction, is the Smokey the Bear museum of fire prevention. There was a very touching video of the life of the first Smokey, as well as all sorts of memorabilia. And Smokey himself is buried out back.

Then there’s some driving to the East, to Roswell. I was hoping that there’d be something appropriately tacky to stop and see… but nothing really caught my eye. There were a number of stores that had pictures of aliens out front. I even saw a Coke machine with a picture of an alien Enjoying Coca Cola. But nothing really called out to me, so I drove onwards and northwards.

After spending about 40 minutes driving through some more rain on a two-lane highway (NM 20), seeing only three cars for the entire trip, I got to Fort Sumner. After a few bad turns (my map was insufficiently accurate), I found the gravesite of Billy the Kid. Apparently his gravestone was stolen a couple times; at the moment, it’s got iron bands holding it down, inside of a giant cage. I didn’t get there until about an hour after the place closed, but the graveyard was available, and Billy was still buried out back.

Then I drove north to Tucumcari. As the sun was setting, I was driving along NM 252… a completely empty two-lane highway. I had no choice. I had to drive it at a more reasonable speed than the posted 55. 90 seemed about right, and was lots of fun.

I was awfully tired by the time I got to a hotel. I’ve planned out my Kansas excursion for tomorrow…

Day six—Kansas!

Of course, I started in New Mexico. I finally got a good night’s sleep (yay!). Having determined that the milkshake I ate the night before didn’t help with my diet, I went jogging around the neighborhood. After a few years in California, it amazes me how large the lots are…

Texas is between New Mexico and Kansas. Texas is flat. With cows.

Oklahoma is between New Mexico and Kansas. Oklahoma is flat. With corn.

Having reached Kansas, my first stop was the city of Liberal. There are a couple of tourist attractions in Liberal, but the one I was mainly interested in was Dorothy’s House. There’s a small museum of Kansas history, with lots of artifacts from around 1900. There’s a mockup of Dorothy’s house, based on the movie, with two tour guides (high school students, dressed in blue calico dresses) alternating giving tours. There’s a full museum with reasonably well done scenes from the movie. It’s sort of like the “It’s a Small World” version of Oz… most of the Toto dolls move. They also have a yellow brick road outside; for $65, you can have your name engraved on one of the “bricks”.

I was planning to finish up the day with some of the stuff in the north of the state, but I realized I wasn’t going to make it in time. So, when I got to Dodge City, I stopped to look around. At “Boot Hill”, they’ve got another set of Old West museums and store fronts, with occasional shooting shows. These museums were better set up than the other Old West things I’d seen so far. In addition to the mockups of all the stores in the town, they’ve actually got the contents of the stores, with actual artifacts. So there was a druggists’ shop, with lots of vials (mostly empty) lining the walls. And a print shop, with an old printing press and type, which can make “wanted” posters. And all sorts of similar stuff.

If you must see one Old West mockup, I’d recommend the one in Dodge City. J

On the way out of Dodge City, I actually got my cell phone to work long enough to carry on a conversation. Miracle of miracles.

Since it was late, I drove up to Hays Kansas, found a nice hotel, and called it a night.