Viva Villa!

It is said that Francisco "Pancho" Villa had between 23 and 75 wives.  Some sources say he had at least 75 but only 23 have been documented with names and dates these days, but he was known for having children with 16 women.  He did not believe in divorce or annulment so upon his death in 1923, he could have had the most wives by any non-Mormon in North America since the Spanish arrived.  He was successful in convincing the priests and judges to burn many of the records, so proof wasn't always an easy thing and girls literally begged him in some towns to impregnate them.  It must have seemed odd after his death that three women showed up to act as the grieving widows. 
       So why am I suddenly interested in Pancho Villa?
       On March 9, 1916, the last time a foreign army invaded the United States, it happened in...Columbus, New Mexico, a question most will not answer correctly and today, we were there.  The Battle of Columbus led to much...probably none of it good.

12 Army and 8 civilians were killed on the US side, with over 100 Mexicans killed

Odd machines of war were in use

Much of the town was destroyed but the railroad and the depot were intact, within a month Columbus would be the center of 250,000 troops amassed on the border

A little history:
Within a day, a full scale military incursion was authorized by President Wilson and Columbus was made into a huge staging area for an entire division of the Army, then more.  Exactly a week later, General Pershing sent advance companies into Mexico in the plan of eliminating Villa at best or dispersing his military forces at worst.  It ended 11 months later.   During the course of the action, The US Forces killed many key Villa allies, including his chief lieutenant being one of three men shot personally by Lt George Patton.  The Villanistas counter-attacked Glenn Springs and Boquillas, Texas both now in Big Bend National park (Boquillas is Rio Grande Village and Glenn Springs is a Ghost Town on the west side where there is only a small sign now, and where I got my lesser nighthawk in my big year in 2016).  There a small US detachment was destroyed.  A month later four, US Troops were killed at San Ygnatio, another birding location. 

During the main incursion, the US Army encountered Mexican Regular Army and almost brought the two countries into a full scale war, but despite all of this...Pancho Villa escaped and the US needed to withdraw the troops so we could enter World War I as almost all of our regular troops were in Mexico.  The US and not the Mexican Army would put an end to the Villinistas actions on the border as a 1919 Raid on Juarez across from El Paso would cause over a dozen US casualties due to stray bullets that the commander of the US forces immediately retaliated by sending in 1200 troops into Mexico and dispersed Villa's Division of the North so thoroughly that he sued for peace and retired.  Many marriages and just three years later, he was assassinated.  He was 45.

To be descriptive, the entire deal was IMHO one large waste of money, lives, and time. 

We had just left from another famous place, the Chihuahua Mountains where Geronimo periodically hid between various previous incursions by the US Calvary into Mexico chasing him and his band.  This was 30 years earlier.  Silja and I hiked many of the trails and found hidden springs and saw the wildlife of the beautiful area.

Cave Creek from above

Silja at Chihuahua National Monument

We hiked the canyon trails to find birds and butterflies and went up in the pines to get the chickadee,  yes that chickadee and I saw Mexican chickadees three times but they would not come out of the trees to be photographed.  I found a couple of birders down on the bottom looking hopefully for a chickadee or two6 and thinking the titmice they had heard briefly were chickadees and I had to tell them, "you aere way too low" and gave them directions, but later on there was no evidence they had gone up the mountain, I think the road to Onion Saddle scared them, heck, it scares me, but if you want that bird, there is no short cut.   I did photograph yellow-eyed juncos.  I always like these guys, they look sinister.

Then I saw the four Arizonas... 

Arizona woodpecker

Arizona Giant-skipper

Arizona metalmark

Arizona Sister

I love these mountains and the twilight of our last day sort of described a lot for this country  Extreme Southern New Mexico and SE AZ is changing, and I'm not sure if it is a good thing.

A beautiful sunset before a truly black night.  Villa et al tried to destroy much of this area and leave people in fear, after Geronimo previously did and we ended up carting away the natives to captivity in Oklahoma.  Now the jobs have pretty much all dried up, much like the towns of Rodeo, Antelope Wells, Animas, and especially Hachita.  The railroad pulled out in 1961 as did much of the mining and even the Sky Gypsy scheme of John McAfee  a decade ago ended up pretty much yielding nothing short of a really strange story and some serious head scratching (by me).  The Sky Gypsy story is too bizarre to repeat here so look it up. 

Now we got the new perceived border issues, and it is true that a focus place of illegal crossing was between Hachita and both sides of Columbus (I have first hand visualization of that years ago).  I have read some recent musings out of the Big East Coast media saying that nothing has been built of Trump's wall and many people are all smiles and patting themselves on the back thinking what they read is true.  Sorry folks, there IS A WALL being built....

The wall being built hard and fast westward, east of Columbus, NM

 I can give you directions and you can probably drive right up to it.  I suspect that lazy reporters aren't driving out east of Columbus to see what is going on because NO ONE is ever out here driving on Hwy 9.  It is easier to sit in New York and act smart.  There are no direct flights to El Paso from DC or NYC. 

The last time I drove this way, I met 67 border patrol cars and two sheriff's deputies, but no private vehicles....this year, that was down to 37 and 1 cop.  Last time I was stopped five times while birding by Border Patrol but this time in the RV, nothing, although I wasn't stopping and wasn't out taking pictures, every five miles.  There were cement trucks about every three miles, driving 100 miles from a cement plant near El Paso, which is owned by Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua, a Mexican company....sigh.  How ironic is that? 

BTW, I did meet only three civilian cars east of Hachita in 140 miles, besides construction crews.
The last time I drove here I spotted 17 illegals sneaking across the road, this time nadda one.
I hear that illegal traffic has moved to west of Douglas, AZ.

Where are these large helicopters were going or coming from made me wonder.   I hope they weren't on border patrol, as they went north in Columbus they are heading away.

I don't care if you are for or against the wall, since it is being built, and what I think or you  think doesn't matter and it is probably needed here but not in the LRGV.  No one wants to solve the real problem in reality.  What is the next phase, build gun turrets on the wall?  It seems so East Germany in the Sixties but I guess that was to keep people in, not out.  There IS a problem and by and large we have all caused it.   We want cheap goods, cheap labor, really cheap food, we don't want to do the dirty jobs in America, and we turn a blind eye to the elites and large corporations that hire them on the QT.  How many domestics are truly legal?   

We drove through El Paso, I almost went into bronchospasm.  We also ignore Juarez (a city of 1.4 million).  Here we are, having a fit (rightfully so, to a degree) about global warming and all these fires in California, when one of the largest (yes) cities in America, El Paso has a terrible smog problem that you never hear about.  You rarely ever hear about El Paso.  It is a metro area larger than Detroit, Minneapolis, or well almost anywhere.  It is like it just doesn't exist.  Because of the lax rules on emissions right next door in Juarez, yet all of that 'stuff' they produce comes to us, smog included.   Ban plastic...it is a better use of our time

Oh well, can't fix it anyhow and we always tend to forget history.  We are like fish biting at the shiny bait... 
So what did I learn...
1) Villa is still thought of fondly as a man for the the little person, yet in Villa's case, besides all of his brides, it is documented that he raped many ...many women hundreds to thousands, even shooting many that tried to shoot him after the fact.  So Villa was a bad man, a very bad man.
2) The Chihuahuas Mtns and valleys are gorgeous
3) Mexican chickadees can be really hard to photograph
4) They are really building the wall, at least near Columbus NM, they are

Drive the desert of southern New Mexico...

Olaf

Confused and bewildered in the American Southwest

The earth seems to be cracking around me.  I'm confused and bewildered.  I have never spent so much time looking things up on the internet or in the "Urban" dictionary.
          I haven't posted for a while and it isn't because we haven't had anything to report, in fact, maybe too much to report.  I've had a rash of lousy internet and well, some of the places we've went to....well...reporting from there would be covered under something akin to the CIA, and basically to mis-quote Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, "Only those that know where it is, know where it is."  but well, where we are staying now, deserves some mention, as vague as it may be.

Let us get you up to speed...

We stayed in Phoenix for a while, then went to extreme Southern California where I drive over to the Salton Sea and saw a strange "White headed" Ruddy Duck.  It is probably the rarest bird I'll ever see but in the end it is just a ruddy dick with a white head.

Then we went to San Diego to see Silja's Brother and sister-in-law Bill and Nina who are sailing their way from Portland OR to Cabo San Lucas Mexico standing next to the Gypsy.

After that there seemed to be a lot of confusion going on in my mind trying to figure things out.  We left De Anza and drove to another DeAnza, this one south of Green Valley, AZ near Tucson.  We visited a couple I knew from birding.  Thor and his wife, Joan live in Green Valley and we came to visit and hike in the Florida Canyon for something to do.  We couldn’t stay in Green Valley at the Green Valley RV Park because I am not 55.  No one can live here if they are under 55, they can't even stay at the RV park overnight.  I wonder how that is even legal, and it certainly isn’t right.  What really is wrong with kids and families?  Can they have segregated communities, too?  To be blunt, we just don't like it, but we like Thor and Joan.  

View from Thor and Joan's patio

            Well after a great dinner and a lazy morning, we pulled out on I-19 and drive into a worsening cross wind that progressively strengthened until we got to Tucson and then had a head wind until we got off at Benson.   Big Bird bounced along on washboards as we followed a rather curvy route out in the desert.  The road got a little narrow and loose until I decided to drop my tow car off the trailer about a mile from the destination.  We found the place early and had the pick of camping spaces.  We met the host, Dana, who was giving a tour to four older people from New Mexico that were dressed like it was January in South Dakota.  Apparently, they were just visiting to check out the place. 

            I found this place on a website as a destination.  I asked everyone who is anyone about it, and most hadn’t heard anything, but Bev Price had been here and thought we could get our RV in, and we did.  The owner is a man named Dana, he survived a wildfire in Southern California by having his dogs waking him up and being able to leave on a moment’s notice as the fires bore down on him.  His next door neighbors neighbors asphyxiated trying to survive the flames in their pool.  As they say,  they chose poorly.  He then spent some time in New York before coming to Arizona to take care of his grandmother.

The Desert Sanctuary, he now owns, was built as the Sri Ram Ashram and was co-founded by famous Harvard Professor and LSD advocate Timothy Leary.   In the early 1970s, Bill Sheatsley, Bill Haines and their spiritual brothers bought a tract of land in the desert outside of Benson, Arizona and founded Sri Ram Ashram naming it after their guru, Ramamurti S. Mishra. Bill Sheatsley designed and built almost singlehandedly the poured concrete structures that became its hallmark residences, classrooms and meditation hall.   A lot of what actually went on here and how much Timothy Leary had to do with it has apparently been lost to history.  Was this a place for LSD experimentation?  It is a bit scary.  Richard Nixon once called Leary the most dangerous man in America for his drug beliefs.   He did spend time in 38 different prisons, some sort of record that doesn't seem like a record that should be remembered.  

Certainly, the ashram had to become a center of drug experimentation and of baby boomers searching for what they perceived they lacked in their lives.   What else was it?  Did people find the peace, harmony, and enlightenment they craved?  I don't know.  I think enlightenment in life is what you make it.  Look around you....this may be all you get so enjoy it.  

Of all things, The Spiritual Conference for Radical Faeries was held August 31–2 September 2, 1979, at the Sri Ram Ashram in Benson, the foundational event that began the Radical Faeries community.  This event was described as a four-day acid trip without the acid by participants (if that can be believed).  As it looks, Sheatsley’s interests moved on to other things, as did the baby Boomers who by the 1980s had moved back to Ronald Reagan and to making a living.   What happened in the early 80s to the Baby Boomers?  Maybe they just got tired of the drugs, the fast cars, the drinking, the wife swapping, and everything.....when I got 18 in 1984, it was basically over.  They even moved up the drinking age to 21, 9 days after I got to be 18, but they ended the draft.

This places history was not over though....

In 1985, the World University purchased the former ashram and called it the Desert Sanctuary Campus, located at the foot of the Rincon Mountain Range near Benson, Arizona, and in 1987 completed the move of its operations from California to the latter location.  Dr. Zitko’s teaching was a combination of New Age theosophy philosophy and promoted world peace through world education.  He authored several books that embodied the alternative perspective on education and life represented by the university: New Age Tantra Yoga (1974) and The Cybernetics of Sex and Love (1985).  He was also an early lecturer on Lemuria, a theorized lost continent including a lost race of four-legged beings that died out due to various theories that range from a flood to finding sex (they were hermaphrodites that laid eggs) and interbreeding with humans after they found out they liked it and died out, but many of us have their genes in us.  In the Bible The sons of god bred with the daughters of man and giants were begotten.  Look up Lemuria if you've never heard of it.  It will open your eyes into how many believe....  

So, this property went from a drug induced hippie type ashram to a University based on Tantric sex and teaching odd metaphysical and occultist theories (Theosophy), including that the current human race is derived from insect like aliens, and we are searching for a lost enlightenment when the Lemurians died.   So the Ashram tried to get enlightenment through LSD....and this university through higher teachings, hidden knowledge and sex....both of which could be called a religion.

 After Dr. Zitko's death at the age of 92 in 2003, interest in the University waned and the property fell into disrepair over the years and all of the structures had caved in by the time the current owner Dana Dawson bought it twelve years later.  Where the money from the sale went is a question placed on the internet., it is supposedly in trust somewhere.  Dana spent five years rebuilding the historical structures and in general, it looks quite nice.  They have cabins and nice pool area.  They could use some leveling fill for the campsites, though.  So what is it now?  To be fair and honest, I’m not really sure.

It is hard to figure out what the goal Dana has for this place.  Is it a center of free-expression?  Is it just a cool place to visit?  What?  It is an open place although as I write this, we are the only people here so it is hard to get an idea of who visits the B&B or cabins, or what he wants.  The internet doesn't say too much of what visitors he is striving for.  Dana, though, has listed the place for sale for $1,500,000 with a realtor.  It is "adults only" but it is definitely not what that can mean in some places of the "Urban" dictionary.   The owner is just afraid of liability, he perceives kids (like Green Valley?) as a liability.  He hosted the annual meeting of the Bears of the Old Pueblo here last week.  For those of you that don’t know, in the gay community, a bear is often a larger or obese hairier man who projects an image of rugged masculinity.  Not that there is anything wrong with this, or nor that I care, but I was just showing how this place still sort of attracts groups and people from the periphery of society.

I guess I'm from the periphery of society.  The sanctuary doesn’t even have its own internet and uses the odd little site called hipcamp.com.  In thinking about this place, we are looking for future locations to visit and spend large chunks of the winter.  Unfortunately, no matter how much we end up liking it, I find it hard to get too enthused about a place that may end up purchased by a Hollywood movie star in the not too distant future.  That may seem like an odd comment but John Travolta and Sandra Bullock own places that are within a few miles of here.

Our RV here

A couple in a smaller class-c motorhome passed us as we were going on a walk.  The rig had New Mexico plates.  They were parked at the other end of the camping area when we got back.  It was good to not be camping alone.  I was hoping maybe they would be nice people.  They were working on their motorhome, so I never went down to see them.  We would have lit a campfire but due to the wind, open fires were banned.  About a half-hour later they zipped past us and headed out. 

            I ran into Dana the owner, again, who said, the guy had to take his companion to Sierra Vista but was coming back afterwards.  I was thinking, no one is coming back.  One wasn’t driving up here after dark. I figured, so I hope he got paid.  This isn’t exactly the highest end campground in the world, but it was better than a National Forest campground.  Dana also said they were going to the Halloween party at Mira Vista in Tucson.  I was thinking about that.  So, the party is tomorrow.  Mira Vista is full, I know, I called them.  That party involves drinking and how exactly were they getting back, or where were they camping tomorrow night?   Oddly, the RV returned about 9:30 much to our surprise, but at first light it drove off again.  Understanding people is a difficult undertaking.

           So....The Desert Sanctuary....to be a fly on the wall in 1975 at the Ashram....to be a fly on the wall in 1990 at the Tantra workshops.....for us, we went walking in the mountains and saw butterflies and birds, and I put up our feeder...it was a safer and more conservative, or so I thought.
we kept running into Nabakov's Satrys an insect named after the same Nabakov that wrote Lolita.  Have any of you ever read Lolita?   A much older man with sex with I think a twelve year old, as her step-father, yet considered one of the best novels of the 20th century.  Vladimir Nabakov--a famous Novelist, Professor, who was also a great entomologist, with four butterflies named for him....but a man promoting incest and pedophilia? 

Nabakov's Satyr

Oh well...it was just a novel...or was it?  You know Nabakov would have stayed here if he had been a little younger...(Lolita was written 15 years before the Ashram was built) but maybe those were the times...I'm just so confused as to what actually are my times?  It seems like the cultural world ended in 2000, and maybe with 9-11 it did, but that was 18 years ago and we act like it was still yesterday.  Maybe the Baby Boomers just knew how to live. 

Olaf

More butterflies and birds...it isn't that birdy down here.

Arizona Sister

Anna's Hummingbird at our feeder

Arizona metalmark

Dainty Sulphur  

Eating our way across the Mother Road

It was like we were doing some crazy Route 66 tour these last two weeks.  We planned on following the old route as far as Flagstaff before heading south, it looked as though we caught the classic highway in Tulsa, but no...we actually started in Chicago, where Route 66 starts.

We flew up to Chicago to celebrate our son Tyko's (Seth) matriculation into medical school at Rush University in Chicago.  They call it a "white coat" ceremony where they issue the white coats to each first year medical student.  Each student stood and introduced themselves, said their major, where they went to school and where they were from.

One student claimed he majored at Arizona State in Partying, our son went to Ripon College and majored in Computer Sciences and Biology.  There is only one student from South Dakota at Rush, though, the few the proud, I guess.  

Our other twin, Allwin drove down from Madison and we had a nice visit, celebration and ate food at Greek Town and then he drove us back to O'hare and we flew back to Tulsa to continue our journey westward and catch back up to the fabled highway.  We had to miss a wedding of a friends' daughter in Massachusetts but our son was sort of a late addition to Rush and so we couldn't do it all in a very short period of time. 

            John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath Could not have said it better.  “Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66—the long concrete path across the country, waving gently up and down on the map, from Mississippi to Bakersfield—over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the rich California valleys. 66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.”

            Now the road’s children, I-44 and I-40 are also still roads of flight, of retirees coming down from Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, and the Dakotas heading to points south and west to escape the coming winter.  The road through Oklahoma is now called the Will Rogers Memorial Highway and as he was from a town northeast of Tulsa, he undoubtedly traveled it many times.  Many have traveled the route to California before us trying to make it big in Hollywood, but few did.  Even Oklahoma’s most famous native actress Joan Crawford didn’t take it to find fame as she was discovered as a dancer in New York City and had already left NE Oklahoma.  Famous singers like Toby Keith (my favorite C & W singer) went the other way from Clinton OK to Nashville but in reality, he went both ways playing the bars, honky-tonks, and fairs before they were famous.

            The trip back from Chicago was delayed and our departure gate from O’Hare to Tulsa was changed four times.  It was 1 AM by the time we landed and walked to our hotel near the Tulsa Airport.  After we woke, we picked the dog back up from the kennel, and tracked down something for breakfast.  Near the dog kennel was a small manufacturing facility with the name Daylight Donuts on the trucks. 

         It turns out upon further research the Daylight Donut Flour Company has been around since 1960 even though the company started in 1954.  The founders, a couple with the last name of Day developed a light flour recipe for donuts.  59 years and three owners later, the company now has over a thousand outlets and seems to be expanding. 

            We tracked one down which looked like the 1980s were calling and the small shop out in the middle of nowhere on the edge of Tulsa reminded me of the bakery in Frederic which closed sometime during the Clinton administration.  It wasn’t much to took at and the interior was no better.  We bought two donuts and two cinnamon bearpaws.  The taste test…it was a clean and light donut, not too sticky, and best of all, no greasy aftertaste.  It was okay!

Crispy Cremes used to leave a funny aftertaste before I stopped buying them.  The donuts at most convenience stores in the upper Midwest also have this after taste.  Two coffees, a bottle of orange juice and the four donuts, the cost…just $8.50.  Quality at a good price, maybe it was 1984?  Maybe Oklahoma is okay after all?

           We drove on the famous old route through Sapulpa, home of the world’s largest gas pump, into Bristow, past DePew, and turned before we got to Stroud, where we picked our rig back up before continuing westward.  Stroud is famous for having, of all things, a UFO landing pad.  All of these towns feature cafes and old gas stations registered as National Historical Structures.

            We took off and headed west down the Turnpike after driving through Stroud, avoiding a repeat visit to the UFO landing area.  We made our first mistake of the day continuing on the Turnpike instead of following I-35 into OKC and then turning on I-40 west.  The second toll booth on the Kirkpatrick Turnpike was exact change only, we caused a back up and then finally throwing $3 into the change hopper it never gave us a green light but we drove on.  It was impossible to do this from the window at my rig.  I had to send my wife outside.  The woman in the other lane parked her car and walked out into our lane to use the change machine.  Cars were four deep when I drove off and I could see her first dollar got caught up in the wind and she was chasing it.  Why not have a manned toll booth here when the first one is manned?  Why not warn trucks and tourists to stay off this toll way, at least give a credit card option for trucks.  My okay verdict was being negated.

After bailing out at the first road, old highway 66 again and looking in my rear view mirror for troopers, we finally found a way to get on I-40 and continue the journey.  I suppose I’ll get a fine from the mail.

I pulled off the interstate in Sayre, heading for our next stop, a very late lunch at a second Punjabi truck-stop, the Highway 40 Truck Stop.  When you think of Oklahoma I'm sure you think of donuts and Indian Cuisine...right?

The line of old wheels dividing the truck stop from the restaurant.

I also needed diesel and turned in towards the pumps.  It seemed easy enough but before I could do anything about it, I either went over the edge of a curb or a speed bump.  Afterwards, I couldn’t figure what it was doing there.  I wasn’t moving that fast but when the bump hit the rear tire on my side the interior compartment of the rig was tossed violently and I heard  a huge crash.  A cupboard full of dishes lay scattered on the floor.  Potato salad in the fridge was ejected from the fridge as was a bottle spaghetti sauce didn’t bounce.  It was a disaster of broken glass, china, food, and non-broken stuff.  After making sure all the pets had avoided the carnage we started to clean up.  One of our cats was lucky he was in a kennel.  The worst was the freezer door wouldn’t now close properly.

After cleanup and fuel, we decided at least to give the food a try.  We went in what looked like the restaurant and tried to order, but the guy took one look at us and said, “no for you, other place.”  He headed out the door and then led us around to back.  I wondered where we were being led to.  I guess goat meat is only available outback.  Apparently, we were pegged as meat eaters and as such, we were offered the Goat Meat shack in back. 

               It was good third world curry, bones and all.  When we wanted a diet coke, he walked over to the trucks stop to get it.  I must say though, all in all, the food in Nebraska was better, and I’m not sure I’d stop here again, mostly due too many painful memories over the speed bump.  These truck stops still made me wonder…

               Twenty-four miles later we left Oklahoma and entered the Texas panhandle where it decided to rain, and I guess that is all I have to say about that.

There is the “Leaning Tower of Texas” in Groom, but, well, that is a story for another bit of prose.

            You see a lot of odd things on the road when you drive, odd signs, odd people, and odd weather, and sometimes you see odd things on RVs, this picture says it all

We got all the way to Sun Valley Arizona, a town that had seen better days

and camped literally a few feet off the old Mother Highway where so many came 70 years ago

Sun Valley not to be undone by the counterpart with its same name in another state also has a "gated community"  This is Arizona's idea of a gated community

So Route 66, Donuts, Goat meat, leaning towers of Texas, gated villages, and open spaces and lots and lots of species of butterflies, next stop Phoenix just a short turn south off old 66

Butterflies: 15 lifers, here are a few pretty ones, I'd seen the buckeye before

common buckeye

Red-banded skipper

Swarthy Skipper