Hysterical Journey to Historic Places

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HYSTERICAL JOURNEY TO HISTORIC PLACES



He’s doing it again. Another long road trip to visit historic sites, take some photographs, and write stories about how the sites are significant. When I get back home I will begin to post them to the blog. Today is pretty much just an uneventful drive of 513.6 miles coming to roost in Santa Fe, NM. I had a fine lunch in Deming at El Camino Real Café. The enchilada plate was muy sabroso. It was a cheese enchilada with rice and beans served with green salsa, onions, and an egg fried over easy for $8.90 including the can of Diet Coke. Gasoline over in Hatch cost $3.70 per gallon for regular unleaded that was partly ethanol. It was $3.35 in Deming. Hatch is a thriving little community. Everyone there is busy and prosperous, but there is only one gas station and the bastards who run it have a sharp gouge. I am surprised that the local citizens don’t kick that operator’s sorry ass every time he goes outside for the way he gouges his friends. The same happens over in Yuma. There are several gas stations in Yuma, not just one, but all of the operators have system in place called “price fixing”. Whenever one operator raises the price of his gas all of the others do it too at the same time. One time they raised the price of gas when I still was pumping mine. They shut off power to the pump, raised the price, and then I could finish filling the tank for ten cents a gallon more. The good folks of Yuma are well accustomed to adversity and take a certain amount of civic pride in it. They will brag to strangers about paying 35 cents more per gallon of gas than other communities in Arizona pay. Still it is somewhat less than California gas. Yuma also lights up pretty loudly whenever the daytime high temperatures exceed 115 degress. Came to roost this evening at the Comfort Inn on Cerillos Drive. I think Charel and I may have once stayed here on a trip we made up to Glacier Park. There was a pretty decent breakfast place up the road a ways from here. Will look for it in the morning. Had supper at a place called Horsemen’s Haven Café. It is nearby the motel within easy walking distance. I had a burger served with some papitas, and another Diet Coke. It cost $9.50 and none of it was very good, but the waitress was pretty. I gave her a $2 tip. Tomorrow I plan to stop by for a photo at a spot on the Santa Fe Trail where a guy was killed by some Jicarilla Apaches and his wife and child taken. I was there last year but photographed the wrong spot. After that I plan to go have another run at getting a better picture of the place where Tom Ketchum robbed the train near Twin Peaks. It will be my third and final try. From there I plan to go find a place called Wagon Box Spring in Kansas. Not much there, but it is the spot where the fur trapper, Jed Smith, was killed by some thirsty Comanches at a water hole. Everyone was in a bad water scrape that day.

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