The Long Way Home

The name of gentleman in the middle of our adjacent breakfast table in Tularosa went by the name L. Longtree Austin. When asked, he said the ‘L’ stood for ‘Longtree’… We had a recital of an amusing and warm poem, and left with a good knowledge of local history and a cd of his collected works, titled ‘The Ugly Red Chair’. His business card described him as’ Cowboy Poet’, and that ‘Jesus is our trail boss’.

Meanwhile, Martina is becoming very accustomed to her cup of Joe. (I didn’t think parting with espresso would be so smooth). Patriotically, she’s also replacing quality with quantity, which results in lots of car stops.

We can almost smell Mexico from here. El Paso, on the Texas/Mexico border is a chilli’s-throw away.

Here’s one Australia doesn’t have – a giant pistaccio. ‘The world’s largest’, they call such icons here. We bought some garlic pistaccio nuts… Mmm.

White Sands National Monument – the second main destination on our NM leg. White sands missile range engulfes the monument, and the road in has warning signs such as ‘no stopping on highway’, ‘do not pick up hitch-hikers in this area’, and ‘military appreciation day’. There are also frequent fly-bys from F16 jets, and the Trinity site, where the first nuclear weapon was detonated; A dubious attraction, particularly since to get there you drive through what looks like a fallout zone for half a day anyway. Last stop before the monument: ‘Alamogordo, the friendliest place on earth’.

White Sands. Wow. After a lot of rain (the roadside was covered with hail last night) the dunes had a rained-on texture, the temperature was warm and the the breeze cool and refreshing. We didn’t need to heed the warning signs about perishing in 100F-plus temperatures. Moody skies made up for the fact that we were shooting in the middle of the day. No Ken Duncan shots here, but we should have some keepers from our dune jaunt. Amazing serenity (between the F16 afterburners and sonic booms).