There is Never Nothing........

There is never “nothing when you think you see nothing”......  Interstate 25 from Albuquerque to Las Cruces NM is a long open hiway through the partially desert valley, surrounded by the White Sands missile range in the San Andres mountains to the east, and the Gila National Forest in the Mimbres Mountains to the west...   The open road is continuously hilly with  mile after mile of brown grasses, bushes & sagebrush along it’s ditches, and winter dry pinion’s just beginning their golden dress to celebrate the coming spring.  

We drove hours through rough, open country inhabited only by those willing to live there in an area mostly without detail...   To look across the expanse of nothingness, only the sculpture of the distant mountains provide one’s eyes to focus on their stature.  Between here and there are only hidden activities, concealed by colorless coverings holding a world of their own..... Passing through I will never know or appreciate the significance of any of it’s secrets, but I know as I study it, it holds many.......

Traveling as far south as needed to “Hatch NM” (the chili capital of the world), our route took us to where we turned west on Hiway 10 towards Tuson AZ.   At that point we begin to see the roadsides decorated with the large soaptree yucca plants...  

they stand tall and strong with last year’s flowers shooting high, some with stems nearly the size of a small tree appearing almost defiant to world as if to say “despite my appearance there is a reason for me being here”....

We had a good day of travel, no problems except for encountering a little wind in AZ.  As usual, thousands and thousands of telephone poles, electric lines & cell towers,  marring the view every time I wanted to take a picture.. :)   There seems to be an on going fight on hiway 10 between trucks and campers, fighting over which one owns the highway.  

We passed a large pecan grove today, I missed a picture of the sign that advertised “Pecan’s....Walnuts....& Wine!

We drove through a few miles of beautiful rock country about half way here, I believe it was the "Dragoon mountains"  I got this picture out the window, wish we'd had time to go play around in them....

About 4:30 we passed a hotel off the side of the road at Benson AZ  that looked nice and clean just 45 miles east of Tuson.....  (the Desert Rose Inn).  We were both tired of driving/riding, so a couple miles down the road we decided to turn around and go back instead of going on to Tuson.   We got some KFC to bring back to the room for supper, got all checked in our room, and will enjoy a relaxing evening..    

Tomorrow morning we will head on towards "Yuma".  After studying the internet there is a “microtel” hotel in “Welton” about 30 miles this side of Yuma so we’re thinking that will be our Tuesday night stop......  It will be a short day of driving, only about 250 miles, but then Wednesday morning we can take off fresh in the morning for San Diego and be there in about 3 hours.......  So far so good.......