Into the Valley of Death

I’ve been hearing in my mind a poem, written by Alfred Lord Tennyson:

Jo sits, tiny, under this arch in Death Valley.

Half a league, half a league,
 Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
 Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade.”

It has nothing to do with our present situation in Death Valley. But it shows, again, how the human mind works. I learned the poem as a boy in Scotland. And now, as we drive into the Valley of Death – California-style – I could still hear the trailbreakers who had gone before on a mission of death and destruction.

Back in 1849, as Europeans pushed west to the gold fields of California, a party came through Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. They arrived there, way to the north of us, just after the Donner party had tried unsuccessfully to make it over what became known as the Donner Pass. The Donner party ended up resorting to cannibalism to stay alive. 

The latest settlers were anxious to move on despite the warning that it was too early.

They opted to roll south with their wagon train. But they kept running into forbidding mountains that refused to let them pass. Eventually, after two months, they hit what became Death Valley. And on they rode, into the valley of death. They made their way through the valley. But the mountains refused to release them. On the western side of the valley, where Jo and I stopped, we learned the party burned some of their wagons, killing their oxen and drying the meat before facing the high Sierra Mountains.

At the other end of the bizarreness spectrum is the story of Death Valley Scotty. He was a con man who had ridden with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. In his downtime, Scotty sold people on the notion that he had discovered gold in Death Valley and was offering partnerships in his gold mine. A life insurance executive in Chicago, Albert Johnson, bought into the scheme but then decided to head to Death Valley to see his investment in action.

Scotty lined up a bunch of pals on the mountainside to “ambush” the party as it moved through Death Valley. The idea being to show Johnson how difficult it was to run the mine (which didn’t exist). When one of the “ambushers” got shot by mistake Scotty called off the attack. Johnson saw through the scheme but, amazingly, his enjoyment of Scotty overcame his sense of being conned. They remained pals for the next 42 years.

A tiny part of Scotty's Castle, deep in Death Valley.

Johnson, in the meantime, fell in love with the valley. His wife and he decided to build a stunning winter home after they found a piece of land with a powerful spring on the property. They employed Scotty to be the house entertainment. He would sit with the guests and spin his yarns about Buffalo Bill and his prospecting days.

Jo and I hiked into the canyons, carrying our water supply. It was pretty hard on the hamstrings…but oh-so-rewarding to uncover the treasures that are off the beaten path. We headed south to Badwater, 272 feet below sea level, where we were able to walk out on the lake bed of salt crystals. And we climbed Zabriskie Point to watch the eternal sun sinking behind the snow-capped mountains in the west. What an experience.

Now we are headed easterly and have stopped for a breather in the fleshpots of  Las Vegas where there’s a casino on every block. We stayed in the luxury of an RV Park because it is impossible to find places where we can just pull over and park overnight for free.

We took advantage of our location to drive the car south to the Hoover Dam, a project that I knew was enormous. But I had no conception of how truly incredible it is. Back in the 1920s, the Colorado River was the giver of life and the taker of life because it was untamed. It tore apart the land during the spring runoff.

Washington decided to control it by building a gigantic dam. Construction started in 1932 and was supposed to take six years. The men were hired by the thousands to divert the Colorado River to permit the coffer dam to be started. They worked 363 days of the each year (they were off on Christmas Day and July 4) and they were paid between 50 cents an hour and $1.50, depending on the job.

The dam was so big (think Egyptian Pyramids) that much of the piping had to be manufactured on the site because no road would accommodate the trucks to transport material. The millions upon millions of tons of concrete were creating so much heat as it cured that the engineers had to engineer a cooling system that pumped ice water into the concrete in steel tubes. And the project was so well organized that they managed to complete it two years ahead of schedule.

Jo and I took the underground tour where we could see the massive generators producing the electricity from the water passing through the dam. And we could feel the thrum of the energy passing up through the concrete into our legs.

I knew it was going to be a big, impressive project. But my mind was incapable of grasping the massiveness of the dam. We stood in awe as we looked at Lake Mead, created by the dam. Even with the horrendous drought that the squeezing the West, the lake is an overwhelming sight. It’s been a long time since I’d felt such pride in the accomplishments of this nation. Maybe part of that pride springs from listening to the people from so many different nations who stood alongside us and were equally in awe of the magnificence of the dam.

Hoover Dam, right, allow the Colorado River to roll west, under this massive new bridge that transports you to the East.

Welcome to Mexico...Sort Of

Pancho's Cafe is side by side with Clarisa Luken's periodontist and implants office.

You drive to Yuma, Arizona. Turn south, off the expressway. There’s an enormous parking lot, owned by some Indian tribe I’ve never heard of  before. They charge you $6 to park the car for the day. Then you pass their auto-teller (last chance to get dollars) and walk through a narrow passage, through a one-way gate and now you’re in Mexico. Easy-peesy.

We’re in the tiny town of Los Algodones –there’s maybe 3,000 people living and working here. The weird thing is that most of these people are opticians, dentists and pharmacists and their staffs.

This tiny town is designed exclusively for Americans to walk there and be served. It’s safe. It’s close. It’s another world. We walked across and were immediately approached by touts who sought to lure us into “their” favorite dentist or optometrist. Once you make it through that gauntlet, you then have the challenge of making your way along the sidewalk past the dozens of swarthy men and women whose job is to relieve you of your dollars by selling you silver chains, Mexican blankets, foam jigsaw puzzles of North and Central America with the various states of Mexico and the U.S. and Canada being the pieces of the jigsaw.

Our first task was to find Myers Optical. Our campground hosts in Yuma suggested it was a good place to go for glasses. And, since Jo wanted both reading and long-distance glasses, Myers was on our list. We found the store and the lady behind the counter explained they could test her eyes for free and then fit her with two pairs of glasses, including the lenses, for $90. All of this could be accomplished in two hours, she told us.

After working on her eyes for half an hour, the optometrist took Jo outside, with the optical measuring device still attached to her head. He wanted her to look up the street in daylight so he could do the final adjustment of the prescription under real-life conditions. Pretty strange, but quite effective.

They told us to return in two hours and the glasses would be ready.

Before and after visit to Juanita's hairstyle.

We wandered across the street and into a quiet courtyard where we found Pancho’s Café. We bought a pair of coffees and Jo spotted Juanita’s Hairstylist store. While her coffee cooled, she stepped in and asked what they charge for a haircut. It was only $7, so she returned to the table, finished her coffee and disappeared inside Juanita’s where she received a superior trim. Later, we found another hair-dresser offering men’s haircuts for $2.99 and women’s cuts for $4.99.

We spent the next hour wandering through drug stores and liquor stores. Jo showed some interest in a silver neck chain and we danced and whiled away half an hour negotiating for the right price. The salesman wanted us to understand the difference between pure silver and the cheap stuff. He took a cheap necklace between his fingers and lit his cigarette lighter, applying the flame to the fake silver. It turned black in three seconds. When he did the same test to the real silver, there was no discoloration. Okay. Now we got down to serious negotiating. He wanted $28. I wanted $10. We danced for 10 minutes, with lots of good-natured sparring and joking. In the meantime, Jo threw a ringer into the negotiating by selecting a heavier - and more expensive - chain.  We ended up settling on a price of $14 for the new, heavier chain.

Now it was time to return to Myers Optical. They sent a runner off to retrieve the two pairs of glasses. We wandered back to the border where we met an older American woman who was ahead of us. She told us she had left her passport in her car and was scared the Immigration people would not let her back into the U.S. I told her she shouldn’t worry too much. She’d do well in Mexico – particularly with her teeth and eyes.

She talked to the official and explained her predicament to him. She wrote down her home address and phone number and he sent her on her way! Who says it’s hard to enter the U.S.!

One-stop-shopping for your Viagra and your dental implants at Clarissa Salazar's office.

It was Wild in the West

Tombstone today is very much like it was back when the west was won.

The 26th of October, 1881, will always be marked as one of the crimson days in the annals of Tombstone. A day when blood flowed as water and human life was held as a shuttlecock, a day always to be remembered as witnessing the bloodiest and deadliest street fight  that every occurred in this place or probably in the territory.

-Tombstone Nugget, October, 1881

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a 30-second gunfight between outlaw cowboys and lawmen that is generally regarded as the most famous gunfight in the history of the American Wild West. The gunfight took place at about 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Wikipedia gives us many of the details:

It was the result of a long-simmering feud between Cowboys Billy Claiborne, Ike and Billy Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury, and opposing lawmen: town Marshal Virgil Earp, Assistant Town Marshal Morgan Earp, and temporary deputy marshals Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Clanton and Billy Claiborne ran from the fight unharmed, but Billy Clanton and both McLaury brothers were killed. Virgil, Morgan, and Doc Holliday were wounded, but Wyatt Earp was unharmed.

The fight has come to represent a period in American Old West when the frontier was virtually an open range for outlaws, largely unopposed by law enforcement that were spread thin over vast territories, leaving some areas unprotected.

Despite its name, the historic gunfight did not take place within or next to the O.K. Corral, but in a narrow lot next to Fly's Photographic Studio, six doors west of the rear entrance to the O.K. Corral on Fremont Street.

About thirty shots were fired in thirty seconds. Ike Clanton filed murder charges against the Earps and Doc Holliday, but they were eventually exonerated by a local judge after a 30-day preliminary hearing, and then by a local grand jury.

The gunfight was not the end of the conflict, according to Wikipedia. And on December 28, 1881, Virgil Earp was ambushed and maimed in a murder attempt by the outlaw cowboys. On March 18, 1882, Morgan Earp was shot through the glass door of a saloon and killed by the cowboys. The suspects in both incidents furnished solid alibis and were not indicted. Wyatt Earp, newly appointed as Deputy U.S. Marshal in the territory, took matters into his own hands in a personal vendetta. He was pursued by county Sheriff Johnny Behan, who had a warrant for his arrest.

This is all lived and relived multiples times a day at various spots in town. It’s become an industry and people drives in on buses to live this little piece of history.

Jo and I arrived in town early and made our way to the courthouse which now is a museum and is run by the Arizona State Parks. It’s a good display of  life back then, with lots of artifacts, including guns and photographs of life in Tombstone. Its reason for existing was the silver mine just off Main Street.

We walked the streets and loved the feeling of a Wild West town that lives on in the covered sidewalks on Main Street. The collection of cowboys who lounge on the sidewalks and troll for business. You’re greeted with lots of “Howdy, partners. Welcome to Tombstone.”

You can get a drink at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon. Kate was named because she was nosy, not because her proboscis was an unusual size.

We took in the sights and then mounted our Honda and moseyed out of town. On our way back to Benson, we passed through St. David, a tiny town with a quite beautiful Benedictine monastery. We stepped into the coolness of the adobe structure and found a cool, quiet place away from the searing sun.

There’s a meditating pool off to the side of the monastery where giant koi fish  pushes their noses to the surface in the off chance you have come to feed them.

Fluted columns rise 
straight into the sky 

at the Chiracahua 

Mountains National 

Monument.

Earlier in the week, we drove many miles to the Chiracahua Mountains where we followed in the footsteps of the great Apache chiefs Geronimo and Cochise. Both of them tried to fight off the encroaching white horde that made its way across the prairie and into the desert of Arizona.

This made their last stand in these startlingly beautiful mountains. The Apaches fought relentlessly against European colonization – beginning with the Spanish in the 1500s. They quickly learned to handle horse and weapons acquired from the newcomers. Ultimately, the Chiracahua Apaches surrendered and were settled on reservations in Oklahoma and New Mexico.

We felt the spirit of those warriors as we hiked the paths up and down rugged cliff paths where the winds were blowing at more than 35 knots.

Looking into the Sun...and Marfa's Lights

Mexican artist, across the Rio Grande, awaits an opportune time to cross the Rio Grande and pick up his money for selling artwork to visitors on the U.S. side. 

The entrepreneurial spirit is strong and it crosses international borders. When you walk the river path alongside the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park it springs forth when you round a bend and you’re confronted by an artist’s work. The artist is not visible, for he lives over the water, 100 yards away, in a foreign country. He’s Mexican. And he’s talented as well as trusting.

The hand-written sign asks that you pay $6 or $12 for the road-runner birds made of copper wire and beads, or the scorpions or and a cactus tree made with beads. There is an empty Maxwell House plastic coffee can with a sign that asks you to “Put the money in here.” We continued on and soon came to our destination among the cliffs and the river. The hot springs bubble gently out of the rocks and were corralled a hundred years ago by some early entrepreneur who thought he’d make a killing by offering up the hot springs to the tired tourists of the time. Now they are there for anyone to use.

We sank into the 105-degree water, with the Rio Grande racing by briskly right behind our backs. The stark cliffs with their swooping swifts faced us.

On our way out, we bought a roadrunner bead bird and left the money in the Maxwell House can. Then we noticed the artist across the river. “Hola,” we shouted to him and he gave us a wave. We knew he’d ford the river to pick up his sale proceeds and then retreat to the Mexican side.

In a car journey of more than 100 miles through the Big Bend Park, we constantly were left gasping at the endless beauty of the place. It’s the first days of spring. There is scant rain here (3.2 inches thus far in 2015) but, somehow, the desert has come alive. Poppies, bluebonnets, buttercups, myriad cacti exploded in color with the most delicate and fragile colors. My heart soars as we roll around every bend.

We decided, on the advice of a park ranger, to stop by The Window at Chisos Canyon. We’re very high by this time – 6,000 feet. And we have to watch that we don’t run out of steam. We stopped in a little shop in the park at day’s end to pick up a bottle of mineral water because we’d already consumed the water we’d brought along. And I looked around the store at the trinkets. We found walking sticks, hand-painted by the artists across the river, selling for $18. The same sticks were offered on the trail for $6.

We walked the trail as the sun sank over the mountains. A sign told us of a lion being seen in the area and warned us how to deal with that predator should he come into view. “Pick up children. Make yourself as large as possible. Shout and wave sticks. Do not lose eye contact with the lion. Do not run. Do not play dead.”

We watched the desert floor stretch for 100 miles to the west from our high vantage point. But we saw no lion. And the view was breath-taking.

The next day, April 1, we loaded up and rolled north to the minuscule town of Fort Davis. Our next adventure took us to a mile-high state park. We then drove the car to 6,700 feet, the highest paved road in Texas, to the McDonald Observatory, run by the University of Texas, Austin.

This is a live picture just in from our sun (top). That plume of hydrogen on the left is 68,000 miles high. The 107-inch telescope helps astronomers look back billions of years in the universe.

Our three-hour tour exposed us to live views of the sun, from two different telescopes, transmitted onto a high-definition screen (you no longer look through the eye-piece of these enormous scopes!) Judy, our guide, showed us the sun was fairly quiet on April 1. But there were plumes of hydrogen jetting out from the limb of the sun. 

She asked the 14 of us on the tour for estimates of how high these plumes reached. One woman offered “a mile”, another man said 5 miles. I took a stab at it and came up with a guess of 30,000 miles. We were all wrong. 68,000 miles was the correct answer. The pictures took eight minutes to reach us. And Judy explained the sun is two thirds hydrogen, just under a third helium and then there are about 1.4 percent other metals. The nuclear fusion occurs between the hydrogen and the helium.

She then drove us to the 107-inch telescope and we were all allowed to use the remote controls to move it up and down and around. She then handed me the controls and I was able to rotate the dome. There was no viewing until night-time, however, and you don’t open the shutter on the roof during the day. The inside of the dome is cooled to a chilly 60 degrees so it emulates the night-time temperature. This way, the astronomers don’t have to wait for the temperature to equalize when they come in to work.

Next, she drove us to their biggest telescope – the Hobby-Eberly 10-meter – one of the largest in the world. Two astronomers from University of Pennsylvania figured out how to build this monster by making the mirror out dozens of individual, perfectly-fitting hexagons that are coated in highly reflective aluminum. This powerful machine currently is being renovated and upgraded and will be used in conjunction with an array of other scopes around the world to reach out to gain a better understanding of the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the universe. Judy said they don’t expect to solve the mystery – but do expect to eliminate a large number of theories of how this dark matter works.

What an awesome piece of equipment. And what an awesome day. We left the top of the mountain exhausted but exulting in the inquisitiveness that is Man.

When we returned to the park, we made our way to the Indian Lodge, a huge adobe structure, built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. This beautiful old place is in pristine condition and has been modernized with air conditioning for the current visitors. We went to the dining room and stepped back in time by having a CCC dinner – liver and onions, potatoes and zucchini for me; A CCC chicken sandwich for Jo. 

I’ve written about the CCC before, as some of you may remember. For those who have joined this blog in the past three or four years, the CCC was a jobs program, created by FDR in the Depression. Young men were given a job constructing parks, roads, bridges, dams, among other things. They were given three meals a day and were paid $30 a month. They were allowed to keep $5 of that. The remainder was sent home to mother.

April 2: Before heading out from our base, we drove to Fort Davis National Historic Site. This is where the U.S. met and tried to subdue the Apache and Comanche. We wanted the land. They wanted the land they’d always roamed. The West was expanding in the 1850s and settlers needed protection.

This is one of the Enlisted Men's bunkrooms at Fort Davis.

This was the era of the Buffalo Soldiers – black men, freed by Abraham Lincoln. But they were far from free in this outpost. The white settlers scorned them and treated them as inferiors while they were expected to protect those folks on the trek west. And, of course, the white soldiers also treated them like dirt. But they persevered. The fort has been rebuilt and it is possible to wander among the buildings used to house enlisted men, as well as officers.

Recorded bugle calls interspersed our walk and we had been provided with a paper that explained each of them. We sat on the porch of the commanding officer’s home and listened as Retreat was played and you could hear the men marching, with the sounds of horses and artillery being moved about.

We headed south to the tiny town of Marfa, Texas. There’s nothing there when you get there. But there’s the promise of seeing fairy lights, floating between the mountains and the prairie if conditions are just right. There’s even a free parking area for motorhomes and a bathroom and lots of bronze signs to keep you entertained while waiting for the light show to begin.

We read all the signs. They were about the kinds of grasses and tumbleweed that rolls across the desert into Marfa. There was one about how the U.S. Army Air Force bought thousands of acres of land where we stood and trained thousands of  fly boys for World War II. We had supper and watched the crowds gather. Maybe 50 people came to watch for the lights.

We took up our position, camera on tripod, binoculars primed and focused. And we waited. And we waited some more. A glorious sun was followed by a magnificent almost-full-moon. The lights began to appear on the horizon. They were white and red and I wasn’t buying it. They looked like headlights and taillights to me. One old codger stood there and swore those were the magical lights.

Naaaah. I love a good story. But I’m not buying this one. We retreated to our motorhome and went to bed.

The Marfa Lights, bouncing around in the blackness of a desert night.

A glorious moon at the viewing site was more real to me than the purported lights of the desert.