Across Arizona to Lordsburg

Thursday, January 10, 2013
Lordsburg, New Mexico, United States
Tucson is home to the Rattlesnake Cross Walk -- built by city fathers and mothers to make people more familiar with, and less afraid of, the reptile. It doesn't work.  "It makes you more afraid" said one woman at my hotel, "My little dog goes crazy at that automatic rattle noise which goes off as you enter the bridge." She is right, it startled me too. I do think it is the most charming crosswalk I have seen though. Tucson also boasts a neighborhood called Montevideo.

I needed to go slow today . Yesterday had too much slab (freeway).  I set my sights on the town of Bisbee southeast of Tucson for the most trivial of reasons -- the presence of a Roadside Attraction called Shady Dell RV Park. But Bisbee, an old time copper mining town, is now an attraction itself. A chic artistic western theme town, it is squeezed into little valleys like the Czech city of Karlovy Vary I used to visit. A short distance down the road is an enormous pit mine. A mile across and over 850 feet down, it ceased operations in 1971 and now offers a unique vista of rusty ledges and murky lake, a human attempt at a not so grand canyon. 

A little further down the road lies the wonderful Shady Dell RV Park. What a place. Art deco themed trailers and cars, all set out in a manicured compound. Put together when recreational vehicles were towed behind one's car,  it functions as a kind of motel where each room is a trailer. No two are the same. All are beautifully preserved, set about in a park with an elegant gazebo .

After Bisbee I kept going East on route 80 and ended up at the border town of Douglas. The place is an armed camp, full of policemen and women, Border Patrol Agents, DEA agents and who knows what else. There is a sense of suspicion and fear. Wherever you turn there is a large SUV sitting on the side of the road with someone staring at you. At the entrance to the town you pass what must be some agency's command post, with high walls, razor wire and guards. Antennae and satellite dishes jam the roof. I went on down to see what the border actually looked like. This is not Canada. Here there is a huge black metal wall some 20 feet tall which runs along the border through countryside and city. I asked a Mexican trucker if people tried to cross what seems like an impossible barrier.  "Oh yes", he said with a smile, "they find ways and means to get over it in search of the American dream." I guess they do -- because all along the hundred mile road to Lordstown, NM, there were Border Patrol SUVs cruising the side of the highway on the lookout for something.  

The best part of going East is the evening. With the sun behind you the dark glasses can come off and you can just enjoy the scene. Route 80 from Douglas to Lordstown crosses high scrubland and a small mountain range. I was alone on the bike following the winding highway, the golden light picking the mountains out from the darkened plain. Yessss....
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Comments

David S
2013-01-11

Ahh, it's good to be back on the road again with our intrepid biker/blogger! I love the pictures of the Southwest and the sometimes odd but always interesting places you find. And that bike looks pretty cool - must be a fun ride. Happy trails!

Gwynn
2013-01-11

It's so nice to think about Bisbee again. Ed and I went there once, when we went to Carefree, Arizona to visit my cousin. (This was a side trip over into NM to see another friend.) I picked up a book of old postcards (a guy had collected them and put them into book form) and took it to Ed to enjoy just this last week. We loved Bisbee.
The snake bridge is something else. And Douglas is serious business.
Thanks for your travelog, Jim.

Megan
2013-01-11

Of COURSE you liked a place called Shady DELL!

Rebecca
2013-01-11

Agree about the wall. Saw sections of it myself when we were in TX and NM 1 1/2 years ago. Stopping at checkpoints along the highway was also an unexpected consequence of roaming the Southwest.
Looked at Gwynn's postcards of Bisbee a couple of nights ago.

2025-02-15

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