It’s warm outside, the kind of day I can imagine getting into a car, our bags packed in the back, and setting out on the road. A bit of a breeze in the air, wind is never fun when you’re driving the highway, but the temperature’s just right.
Jim and I get into air-conditioner fights on the road. He’ll turn the fan on high, and I’ll point all my vents toward him, close the one on the far right, so that even he gets chilled enough to turn the thing down. I can withstand heat in a car, will in the winter sometimes sit in the driveway listening to the radio and absorbing the sun trapped inside.
Last road trip we went on was to Carlsbad, Thanksgiving weekend. We stopped at the UFO Museum in Roswell, walked up and down Main Street, pointed out all the big-headed, big-eyed creatures that adorned almost every storefront, except for the Mexican panadería where we bought pan dulce for the last leg of the trip.
At the bottom of the road winding up to Carlsbad Caverns National Monument, there’s the completely abandoned White City. That was once one giant Roadside Attraction, an Old West movie-set-looking place. It had a saloon made of wooden slats, complete with swinging doors, and a series of white adobe casitas, which is where workers used to live.
White City went on the market last July, I think, and I’m trying to remember if we found out who’d bought the place or whether it was still for sale. It must have been a popular destination decades ago, or so the series of weathered billboards on the highway wanted you to believe. Best food around! Cheap gifts!
I can’t imagine anything thriving there now, especially not a junky souvenir shop. Seems the gift shop and restaurant at the National Monument visitor center satisfy most tourist needs, and once you finish winding through those gentle Guadalupe Mountains and finally hit the bland highway back to Carlsbad, you’re kind of happy to be back in the privacy of your own car.
On the drive back to Albuquerque Jim noticed a piece of art, if you can call it that, parked on the shoulder of the road outside Artesia. There was an old RV, on its roof a male mannequin, falling head over heels as he helped a female mannequin up the RV’s metal ladder. We pulled over, snapped a shot, then sped away before the owners of the house came out to see what we were up to.
It seems people still get into the act of entertaining road weary travelers. Some don’t even try to make a dime from it, although I think the main reason Dad never stopped at Roadside Attractions was because we’d all end up wanting to buy something like tumbled rocks in a little fake suede pouch or Mexican jumping beans. I don’t think we ever stopped at the teepees outside of Holbrook, Arizona, the old Wigwam Motel. They had rattlesnake eggs, you can still turn ’round and see ’em, I remember passing the last sign and feeling like we’d lost our chance forever.
We did stop at Stuckey’s, got a box of peanut brittle with the purchase of a tank of gas. My whole family loved peanut brittle. It was long gone by the time we got to California.
-related to Topic post: WRITING TOPIC — ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS
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ybonesy, I didn’t know White City was abandoned. Did they re-route the highway? Or is it as you mentioned, the National Monument visitor center takes the tourists away from them. I’ve read a lot about how small towns dry up when the highways are rerouted. Also true in urban areas, where once thriving neighborhoods disappear, swallowed by a new highway.
I remember passing Roswell when we toured the 4 Corners area when I was in art school. We never stopped in the town. But did go to Bandelier. At least I think I’m remembering correctly that’s the park that’s near Roswell. I remember climbing this steep incline in the car and looking out over all of New Mexico, a quite populated area. Then the state park protected, right on the edge of it all.
I haven’t visited southern New Mexico much. Mostly spent time in the northern areas. I’ve always wanted to see the sand dunes in the south though. Have you visited there? Or are they near Carlsbad?
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You’re describing The Good Old Days for me here. I loved those trading post stores, with little plaques cut from branches, with sayings burned into them, moccasins, all the stuff you mention here. I’ve never taken a road trip on western roads, only in the midwest and the east. Someday. I’ll put it on my bucket list, 🙂
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Oh yeah, the sayings burned into plaques. I think we did something similar in school. Decoupage, or something like that. 8)
And I someday want to take a road trip east of Texas. I’d love to see the South, the Midwest, the Eastern states. Any and all by road.
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Hey, QM, no, White City is still at the intersection of the main highway and the turn-off to go to Carlsbad Caverns. I’m not sure why it is abandoned…maybe people are just in more of a hurry nowadays than in decades past. Or maybe it was never super-profitable but more of a labor of love. The family of the man responsible for bringing Carslbad Caverns to the attention of the rest of the world (I’d say he discovered it, but several skeletons were found in it when Jim White first descended, so clearly others discovered it first) owned and ran White City. Maybe once Jim White died, his kids and grandkids didn’t want to run it. I’m just not sure.
Yes, we’ve been to White Sands in southern NM. We did a moonlight bikeride there when Dee was about 2 and still fit in a bike trailer. The park rangers organize the ride, and when the moon is full the whole place is so lit up it’s amazing. White Sands is relatively close to Carlsbad (say, as compared to Albuquerque) but you have a mountain range to cross, and so they’re still about a couple or more hours away.
Hmmm…Roswell is a long way away from Four Corners, like eight or ten hours…one’s in Northwest NM and the other in Southeast NM. Farmington is in the Four Corners. I’m not sure what other town you might have gone to.
Here’s a map of NM [LINK]. I wonder what city it was you passed through and what park you went to.
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Oh my gosh, I’m so glad you supplied that map. Once I looked at it, it became more clear. Nope, was not at Roswell (though I did watch a movie about it a couple of weekends ago).
We drove by Los Alamos, that was the city I remember rising above, on, I think, Highway 502? And then on past White Rock (which I think I was confusing with White City) and on into Bandelier National Park (LINK), an amazing and ancient place. I remember Frijoles Canyon and there was hardly anyone in the park; it stretched for miles and miles — Bandelier National Monument’s 33,000 acres lay on the slopes of the Jemez Mountains. With elevations from just over 10,000 feet at Cerro Grande to just over 5,000 feet at the Rio Grande.
There were still pottery shards along the paths (which, of course, you can not remove as you can not remove anything from the park). It was like walking back in time. A wonderful park. Have you visited that area?
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Yes, Los Alamos is high on a bluff. You follow a narrow road that is carved out of the side of a cliff, like switchbacks. We drove it last summer when I took Dee and Em to Ghost Ranch, and then the next morning dropped them off in the Jemez Mountains for their week-long summer camp. It’s amazing.
I haven’t been to Bandelier for many years. I went in grade school, another school field trip, and then in my 30s with Jim. Dee and our Mexican exchange student went two weekends ago, and I wanted to go with them, but my sciatica was still so bad then that I couldn’t. It is a gorgeous park.
You guys covered a lot of ground in your trip. Bandelier National Park and Los Alamos are not that close to the Four Corners; I bet they’re still about a 2-1/2 to 3-hour drive away.
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ybonesy, I can see those switchbacks like it was yesterday, and rising high above the valley. It’s beautiful country.
We did indeed cover a lot of ground in that trip. The prof at RIT used to teach at the U of NM and so knew the area well. Someone from New York actually took a swing by Minneapolis and picked me up. We then drove the southern route to NM, I think across Texas, and met up with the rest of the students. From there we carpooled across different areas of the Four Corners taking photographs.
We drove a lot, camped for breaks. But were constantly on the move. Took some amazing photographs in the days long before digital cameras or cell phones. Sometimes it felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. It was also the trip I got lost in Arches National Park in Utah. I’ve got some great stories from that trip!
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Oh, and just think, I was only within miles of you back then, doing your thing in New Mexico, and had no idea who you were. We could have passed each other on the street and not known it. We did spend one day in Albuquerque. In fact, that might have been where we met up. I can’t remember now for sure. I walked to a bookstore somewhere close to the hotel. I’d have to research to remember exactly where I was in ABQ. Strange to think about.
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That UFO Museum in Roswell is a crack up. We went through there once about 5 years ago… a week after their big Alien Festival. Some of those folks are dead serious about their Aliens and I enjoyed talking with them. I love anything odd.
There was this little restaurant that claimed to make the biggest pancakes in the world. Naturally I had to stop and ordered one. It was about an inch thick and covered my whole plate and beyond. I ate about a third and chuckled at the poor guy at the next table who’d ordered “the stack”.
We drove back through there on a trip to the Caverns late last year and went up and down the main drag in Roswell but could not locate that restaurant. Do you know of it yb? Is it still in business. I thought I had found the building but it was a Mexican Restaurant so I was hoping I was confused (which is pretty easy these days). We asked a bunch of local kids but none of them knew of it. I’m hoping I had the wrong city and maybe it was “on the way to Roswell”.
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Heather, your biggest pancake experience piqued my interest so I tried to see if I could find reference to that restaurant in Roswell, but alas, I didin’t find anything. Nor had I heard of it before your comment.
I enjoyed the UFO Museum. It’s kind of primitive as far as museums go, but that was part of the charm. I especially liked the paranormal section, once you get past the actual Roswell Incident. And there’s a display now of a dead alien that was used in a film. Not sure it was there when you went by. (I still have some photos to post one of these days soon.)
QM, what year did you come to NM with the art students? It is cool to think that our paths might have crossed then (or come close to crossing).
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