I drove my mother (Alice Walsh) and aunt (Louise Lawson) to Santa Fe, El Paso and back to Cowtown over this past long Halloween weekend. My mother turned 90 on Sunday, so it was a chance to see relatives and places long familiar to my Southwestern family as well as to poke around in new places. We had brunch with my Uncle Paul Walsh in Santa Fe Sunday morning, then made it to El Paso that evening for dinner with Aunt Elizabeth Walsh.
Highlights:
On the way to Santa Fe: Possibly the world's best hamburger - at Gloria's Cafe in Memphis, Texas, a tiny county seat surrounded by cotton fields.
The shift in terrain from the Texas Panhandle into New Mexico is dramatic - you can see the vegetation and geology inexplicably change almost instantly. Sorry, Texas, your desert is just not as pretty as New Mexico's.
The drive took about 11 hours, with pit stops.
In Santa Fe, whirlwind sightseeing. We've all been there more times we can recall and yet each time is such a treat. My first trip was in 1963 as a counselor at Brush Ranch high in Holy Ghost Canyon - the counselors made weekly car trips into the big city and even took the kids to the Opera. The city has more than doubled in size and this year seemed more beautiful than ever.
Meals at Gabriel's and Tecolote, pastry and coffee in the French patisserie in La Fonda. A tour of San Miguel, the oldest continuously operating church in the US (built in 1610 by Indians).
The ritual walk along the row of Indian vendors outside Governors Palace.
A lovely hour in the Georgia O'Keefe Museum. A car tour of the gorgeous Canyon Road galleries, delightful city neighborhoods, and fancy schmancy new housing northeast of town along the old Taos Highway.
The drive south to Las Cruces took us through one Native American reservation after another, with interesting vistas and almost no signs of humans near the highways. Signs informed us "Dusty Winds May Exist," which we found amusingly existential and noncommital, along with warnings of "High Activity Deer." I'm not aware of High Activity Deer in Texas. We even stopped at a tiny reservation casino (modular trailors on foundations) to avail ourselves of the facilities and enjoy the sight of jolly middle-aged Indians playing slots and having fun together. Although we were tempted, we didn't stop to see the Very Large Array west of Socorro - an observatory with 27 radio antennae.
After oohing and aahing at the lush Rio Grande Valley vistas, Elephant Butte, and the Organ Mountains, we arrived in Old Mesilla at twilight, just in time to catch the end of a Dia de Los Muertos Fiesta in the historic square.
On the west side of Las Cruces, Old Mesilla once was the capitol of Arizona and New Mexico. Our family has gone there as long as memory serves to dine at La Posta (the only remaining building and postal stop on the old Butterfield Trail). It's next to the courthouse where Billy the Kid was tried and sentenced to hang - certainly a vivid story from my childhood.
More pictures of the Dia de Los Muertos altars and fiesta are in the album in the left column: DiadeLosMuertos.
We drove into El Paso del Norte that night (about 5 hours from Santa Fe) with a La Posta meal to share with Aunt Elizabeth (also 90). She lives on the east side of Mount Franklin, where most of the Walsh and Wileman clan settled after living here and there over the years.
Elizabeth, Louise, mother and I paid our respects to the gravesites of Speaker Lee and Una Wileman as well as Harry and Henriette Walsh - far east past Fort Bliss. We cruised around Austin High School (Mother and Elizabeth's alma mater) and found Grandpa Wileman's old mom and pop grocery story - now a festive little Mexican grocery store. We think we found cousin Mary Beth's childhood home on Polk - well maintained!
After lunch Mother and I toured El Paso and are pleased to report that it looks very pretty, probably the most prosperous and dynamic I can recall after a lifetime of visits. We found William Beaumont Army Medical Center, where I was born, the apartment building and house the Wilemans lived in during my lifetime, the apartment building on Prospect the Walshes lived in, a couple of places where Mother and Louise lived, and so forth.
Downtown El Paso looks great - a walking city restoring its historic buildings, spruced up, and full of shoppers in its Golden Horseshoe of bargain shops. I was especially pleased to see that the central Plaza de Lagartos (Alligator Plaza) has been gentrified and continues to serve as an attractive hub. Alas, the sleepy old alligators who once lived there are gone; Grandfather Walsh took David and me there by bus once a year to see the gators and then take the trolley to the border with Juarez. Each of us could change a dollar into pesos and centavos to spend (after bargaining) in the Mercado.
Our El Paso tour included the obligatory Scenic Drive high on Mount Franklin, with a respectful view of the mountain pass to the north along the Rio Grande that earned the city its name. After that, more neighborhood visits and then a dip into lush McKelligan Canyon before dinner that night.
The 10 hour drive home Tuesday was, happily, uneventful. We had to admit that West Texas looked scrawny after the Panhandle and New Mexico, in spite of cotton fields, oil wells, and numerous wind farms. Total gas cost in my Prius? $90!
More pictures are in the album in the left column: SantaFe-ElPaso09