Our New Mexico Trip -- Day One: Stagecoach Territory

 Day One: Scottsdale via Globe on US-60 through the Apache Reservation, where we detoured on side roads to San Carlos, the town that is the Reservation "capital', the roads were full of yellow poppies from the rains. Stopped in Safford for lunch at a vintage hamburger stand we found, that had advertised in billboards on the highway.  In the afternoon, we made it to Lordsburg, New Mexico on I-10. It is not much of a town. I knew about it because it is mentioned in Stagecoach (1939), which is the movie that made John Wayne a star. It had been many decades since I was this way, in fact since May 1988 when I drove up from Texas to Oregon to go my college graduation ceremony. Going over ground like this feels like reawakening old parts of myself. Going East on I-10 we crossed the "continental divide", which there is just a plateau that separates the watershed of the Gila/Colorado (Pacific) from the Rio Grande (Atlantic). In the afternoon we checked into our hotel in Las Cruces, which is on the Rio Grande. It is small city, but was the largest population center since we left the Phoenix Valley

The Taylor Freeze in Pima, AZ (location).