On the Road to Arizona

As we leave Las Cruces, New Mexico, we pulled back onto Interstate 10, ready for the three-hour drive to our next destination. We are surrounded by flat desert sand, with scraggly mesquite and cactus to entertain us on our drive.

We are blessed with a calm wind day, but that seems to be unusal for this stretch of I-10. Signs warning about dust storms show up frequently along the highway.

Those incessant winds pick up the desert sand, and can make this stretch of road quite treacherous. There was a constant barrage of signs that warned us of the impending doom of a windy day. We won't include all the signs, but they also included, "Zero Visibility Possible" and "Don't Stop During Wind Storms." This can be a frightening stretch of road during winds that cause white-out visibility.

Because we were blessed with a wind-less day, we could just smile at the wind warning signs that were our constant companions. Another constant in this part of New Mexico are signs advertising "The Thing." They have 184 miles to plant billboards that will cause such intrigue that carloads of people will be forced to stop at exit 322. The good news is if "The Thing" is disappointing, you can find solace with ice cream at DQ.

We also took pictures of the Arizona sign as we crossed another state border in the motor home.

It was interesting to see that Arizona is not quite as frightening with their highway signs. Their "Limited Visibility" warnings are only in effect when the light is flashing, and for some reason we felt less prone to death by wind storm in our new state.

We rolled into our new RV park home--Dwayne's Mountain View RV Park--just west of Bowie, Arizona. We are here to visit a national monument and a national historic park. Like with many RV Parks, we are situated between a busy highway (I-10), and the railroad tracks. Denisa took a picture of one of the many trains that zipped by at 50 mph every day (and night). 

We are now much smarter about railroads, as our camp host, Tommy, worked on the railroad for 30 years before retiring. He explained the different cars, the different tracks, the machines that do maintenance on the tracks, etc. When he needed a visual example, a train rolled by like it was on cue. Notice how close those train cars are to the RV at the end of the campground. We have found many times RV parks are built on the cheapest land, that happens to be situated right next to the tracks.

We also discovered that we were in the middle of pistachio country.

After seeing many pecan trees at our last stop, we are now surrounded by the smaller and whiter pistachio trees. Harvest was in September, and these groves that stretch on for miles will soon be leafing out again and producing the 2017 crop.

Even though most of the trees were completely bare, we saw a few nuts hanging on this tree.

The trees are shaken and the nuts are collected on conveyor belt pads that catch them before they hit the ground. The few nuts still on the tree were ones that didn't split open naturally, and their protective membrane has now adhered tightly to the shell. So these pistachio nuts weren't any good, but it was interesting to us to see how pistachios are grown.

Our campground is a few miles outside of Bowie, Arizona. After driving around the village, our only description is that Bowie is a sad little town. All of the businesses are boarded up except for the mini-mart that specializes in beer and ice. There are three churches in town, and we chose to attend the only one that had their Sunday worship time posted outside. We arrived at the Bowie United Methodist Church to find it was a bi-lingual service. The bulletin was longer than usual, as the left hand side was printed in English, and the right hand side was in Spanish.

We sang half the songs in English, and half in Spanish. The one song we sang from the hymnal had both languages printed. We're working on our Spanish pronunciation this weekend!

The preacher gave his sermon in English first, then it seemed like he did an abbreviated Spanish version. It was certainly an interesting service, and a new cultural experience for us. There were only 8 of us in the congregation, and afterwards we were invited to stay for breakfast. The preacher headed straight for the kitchen to prepare a dish from his native Spain. He used potato chips and eggs in an omelet-style dish that was served with picante sauce.

Because we have no cable or satellite dish, we wondered how we would watch the Super Bowl at our new location. We were graciously invited by Tommy and Kim to a party at their place. They had a television set up outside, and we enjoyed a feast of football food while 8 of us watched the suspenseful game together. One couple left during the third quarter when the winner had obviously been determined, only to return for the overtime!

We feel welcomed to Arizona, and we're already learning more interesting things and meeting more interestering people in our new home in the desert. And the desert sunsets are some of the best we have enjoyed this year!