Wednesday, Thursday, Spas & Alpacas

What happened Wednesday and Thursday?  Well, we had heard that Madrid, a town of only 225 (mostly hippies, artists and misfits now) was about 40 minutes down the road.  Who doesn't want to see a ghost town revitalized and full of hippies, artists and misfits?  Count us in!  Saddle up, Bailey, let's go!

This is New Mexico's version of Garden of the Gods on the Turquoise Trail (NM 14, the highway between Tijeras and Santa Fe, is called the Turquoise Trail).  See that tiny sign on the left?  That tells me so.  Also tells me it's Private Property, and the barbed wire fence tells me we must not trespass.

 After a while, we found the town of Madrid, NM, artist and hippie haven.  There is evidence of coal mining as early as mid-1850's and by 1892, production in "Coal Gulch" was sufficient to warrant a 6.5 mile standard gauge rail road to connect the area to Santa Fe.  By 1919, the town of Madrid was flourishing and population was about 2500, with a Chrysler dealer, a hospital (and the first X-Ray machine in New Mexico), a church, a grocery store, elementary and high schools, a LIGHTED ballfield (the first in the country), and an employee club.  It was a model "Company Town" under the leadership of Oscar Huber.  Homes for the miners and their families were dismantled in Kansas and brought to the town in halves & reassembled on site.  The townspeople were paid in script, spendable at the Company Store & Mercantile, and they were required to participate in the town events, like the Fourth of July and Christmas parades, as well as dye Easter eggs for the children to find down at the ballfield on Easter morning.  The Christmas light display was such a sight that TWA was known to have diverted flights just so their passengers could enjoy the sights as they flew over the town.  Walt Disney even came to visit and asked Mr. Hubert if he could set up Toyland as a permanent exhibition in the town, but, unfortunately, Mr. Hubert declined.  Mr. Disney went back to California and built Disneyland instead.  Whoops.  Most of the coal mined went to Los Alamos, to the north, for the Manhattan Project, that produced the first nuclear weapons.  However, the Christmas parade and displays ended with WWII, and the mines closed at the end of the war, when natural gas began to supplant coal.  Most of the miners just packed what they could into their cars and drove off, to find other opportunities.  The town was left with only 12 residents, including Mr. Huber and his family and pretty much turned into a real live ghost town.  Ghosts included.  

In the 70's, Oscar's son, Joe, put the town up for sale, but there were no takers, so he offered the church and individual houses for rent and sale, dirt cheap.  That's where the hippies and artists came in....neither group had much money, and houses for $1000 or less were very attractive and affordable.  Mind you, nothing in the town worked, nor did most of its new inhabitants.  The well water was so bad, it was only pumped into the houses twice a week.  Houses were ramshackle and falling down, and there were no Home Depots, so they had to be patched up and repaired with and by whatever means the new residents had available at the time.  Some of the homes still show the seams, where they were put back together originally.  Today, the population stands at about 225, and there is very little "industry" in town.  Most of the homes have been turned into artist shops, studios, eateries or in one case, a general store, featuring old time candy.  This was the first set of shops we came across.

 Can you see the price tag on that little cactus?  I'll spare you the trouble....$125.  

 How about this little glass cat?  He stood about 4 feet high.  He was marked at $400.  Did you want one?  Oh, sorry, we didn't know, so we left him there, along with his brothers and sisters, priced the same.

 This is one of the local ladies....she's been in Madrid since the 80's, so she's about as close as they come to a Madridian.  She was showing us how the turquoise shell ornaments are made.  She was quite the character.  No computer, barely a phone, and cigarette breath to kill a moose.

One of the shops was housed in Mr. Huber's original house, the only house that was built on site, not brought in and reassembled.  The locals refer to it as the Huber Mansion, even though, by today's standards, it's not a mansion by any means.  Thomas Edison took an early interest in the town, as he was already engaged in iron ore mining and processing in the east.  He made the long journey from Menlo Park, NJ, to the Madrid, to try his hand at recovering gold from the Ortiz mountains.  (Barbara S - the Resident Engineer would find this process extremely interesting, so have him check out that link!)  Anyway, because of the plentiful and inexpensive power supplied by the coal being mined, Madrid became one of the first cities in the country to have lots of indoor lighting.  You can see evidence of the early wiring and lighting up near the ceiling of Mr. Huber's office.

This is how his office looks today.  Most of the pieces are original and his own possessions.  Excluding that display case in the middle of the room, of course.

This is Mr. Huber's front porch.  We (pup and I) sat here a bit and enjoyed quite the breeze. The tree to the left is a crabapple, and it was loaded!!  The tree on the right is a redbud, which is actually quite uncommon for the area, and the shopkeeper was amazed that I could identify the tree simply by its leaves.

See, by today's standards, it's not exactly a mansion, but compared to the employees' shacks, it's a mansion.

 This is more typical of the miners' homes.  Small, quaint, and wildly painted. 

We journeyed on to Cerillos, where a lot of the turquoise was, and still is, mined.  Apparently, it's getting more and more scarce, and the farther away from Madrid and Cerillos you get, the more expensive it will become, we've been warned.  It runs about $9 a carat here, and a carat is pretty small, so a slice, about an eighth of an inch thick (THIN) and about a half an inch long, ran about $22.  There was a mining museum in Cerrillos, but we were told Bailey could only come in if I carried her...and after about 5 minutes, I couldn't carry her any longer, so I had to carry her right on outside.  Driver was right on my heels, so we left after viewing the "petting zoo" animals, a llama, some chickens and some goats, all of whom couldn't care less that we were there.  As we drove around the little town, we came across an elderly gentleman, struggling to hang a birdfeeder.  Yes, we stopped, right in the middle of the road, and Driver gave him a hand.  The homeowner was a bit shocked, but I think, grateful, for the assistance.

 This type of cedar fencing seems to be pretty popular in the area.  I guess it's because cedar is so commonplace.  I dunno, but it always seems to look pretty ramshackle and run down to me.  I think if they would only cut the tops off even, maybe it would look neater???  But, then again, judgment in mine, sayeth the Lord, right???

 Here's a little town history; you can see, they were a boom town in the 1880's and 90's.  Not so much now!

 This home had a quite an interesting wall around it.  Wonder what was hiding behind the wall???

Fast forward, now, to Thursday.  We had heard there were hot springs and mineral springs in the area.  The hot springs were about an hour's journey north of town, and they offered 50 minutes, in any of their springs for $45.  Once your 50 minutes was up, you were done and you went on your merry way.  The mineral springs, just outside Santa Fe, on the other hand, are owned by the same company, but set up a little differently.  There's a pond, which you cannot swim in, and a set of  four different "Repose Pools," each a slightly different temperature, ranging from 72 degrees, straight out of the spring, to about 102 degrees.  This facility offered all-day (10 am to 10 pm) soaking for $60/couple, and was only about 20 minutes from the campground.  We chose to visit Sunrise Springs for the convenience and the fact that we weren't far from home and could come back to walk the dog easily.

There are also private rooms you can book for overnight stays, a spa, offering massages, manicures, pedicures and facials, and a highly patronized restaurant.  This is the al fresco dining area, at 10 am.

When we left, around noon, every chair was filled.  When we returned, around 4 pm, again, every chair was filled.  

   

This was one of the Repose Pools, overlooking the pond.  There was a nice firepit, too, and it was lit and warm, when we returned after dinner.  It provided a soothing ambiance, as well as some much needed warmth after we left the hot pool.  Yeah, no surprise there, we stayed in the hot pool, day and night!  I must admit, it was soothing and relaxing, and it's a darned good thing we saved the spa for our last day/night, otherwise, we might not have seen or done anything else while we were in Santa Fe!

On our way back to the camper, after our morning soak, we stopped in at Blue Mesa Alpaca Ranch.  It was originally a scheduled Harvest Host stopover for us, but we decided with the weather being so warm, we might not be able to go without electricity and air conditioning, so we called to cancel.  Turns out, the ranch's zoning has been changed to residential (???), so they were no longer permitted to have overnight guests.  The rusty colored, fluffy baby, on the very right, is Alecia.  She's about 3 months old, and she was about 10 pounds when she was born.  The little hairy guy, laying down in front, on the left, is Chewbaca, and he was born only 3 weeks ago, weighing in at 17 pounds at birth!  He spent most of our visit just lying there, soaking up the sunshine.

On our way back to the spa, after dinner, we were treated to a beautiful sunset and moonrise. The two pictures below were taken within seconds of each other.  The first is looking west, toward the setting sun; the second photo is looking east, toward the rising moon.  Striking, eh?

Next up is Friday, our travel day.  I can't wait to tell you all about it, but it's now 5 minutes till midnight, and we still have to walk the dog one last time, so I guess you'll have to wait!!  Till next time!

Moving on again...to Sanger, TX and Oklahoma City, OK

Sunday came, and it was time to pack up again and move on down the road.  This time, we didn't have far to go.  Only about 15 miles, to the little town of Sanger, TX.  We picked Sanger because there was a campground there with alpacas!  Oh nooo, I could NOT resist that booking.  We only booked one night there, and I was wondering if I should have taken more?  When we drove up, there he/she was!  Sad to say, though, that's about all the friendly he/she ever got.  And surprisingly enough, we also found the office closed and locked up tighter than a drum.  And not a soul in sight.  What the heck?  OK, no big deal, right, they'll have a packet by the door, I'm sure.  EVERY well-run campground leaves packets for their guests that arrive outside business hours....well, maybe not EVERY one...'cuz there was sure no packet for the Callanders!

Luckily, I remembered that they had sent me a confirmation notice via email just a couple days ago.  I knew where we were going, so I pretty much deleted it without reading it.  Well, I went looking for it in the Trash folder, and there it was, our site assignment!  We were to go to site 66.  Somehow, Dick had found a park map (I think in the little metal box I told him to check...) and we found site 66 on it.  We also found a warning that site assignments could be changed without notice, so we still weren't really sure that's where we should be heading.  We gambled and headed that way.  We had to wait a dude pulling a trailer (the wrong way, no less) to decide where he wanted to go, then we headed up into the hillside.  Site 66 was in the turn, of course, so we had some finagling to do to get into the site.   Remember, we still don't bend in the middle!  We only had one night to spend there, so we didn't even hook anything up except for power.  We always want the power on; we have gotten quite soft in our old age, and we need that A/C.  We'll tell you it's for the dog, but we all know better, don't we!?  😊  There was WiFi there in the camp, but, no packet, so no password.  There were bathrooms, but they were locked, so we didn't get in.  Not that we would have, anyway, but it would have been nice to know that we could, if we wanted.  There was also a notice that alpaca feedings occurred every night, and guests were invited to join in.  Well, we didn't see anyone approach the alpacas, nor did we see any feeding going on.  What a big disappointment this whole stay turned into.  Good thing we only had the one night booked!  We packed up early in the morning and hit the road.  Wasn't too long when we ran into the leading edge of the cold front.  With clouds like this, we knew we would be getting wet soon.  We were right!  At least the road was good.  And flat.  Good and flat.

 We didn't realize that casinos were a big thing in Oklahoma, but here was our first view of one.  The parking lot was huuuuge, and there were a few campers in it already.  Or maybe still.  I dunno, we didn't stop to chat!

Not too much longer, and we started getting into rolling hills again.  We much prefer flat, but what's one to do?  We go where the road takes us!

Shortly, we saw a wind farm.  I don't know if that's what they're called or not, but that's what WE call 'em.  There were probably a hundred of these monster modern windmills, and they were all going around, going SWOOSH, SWOOSH, SWOOSH!

Then we were back to flat again.  

Aaaand, just a few more miles, and the road cut through a rock outcropping.  Apparently, OK has some hills after all.

Our first glimpse of Oklahoma City, OK.  It's a big city!  With skyscrapers and everything!

Our dear friend Donna, from our first Workamping gig in Branson, had contacted us when she found out we were headed to Oklahoma.  She's been living in Tulsa for a few years now, and we decided we would meet up in downtown OKC (that's Oklahoma City, for you out-of-towners) and tour the memorial.

At 9:01 a.m. on April 19th, 1995 the unthinkable happened.  A deranged anti-governmentalist terrorist drove a Ryder rental truck up to the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building and at 9:02 am detonated all the explosives he and a friend had packed inside.  He was targeting the government, through the offices inside the building, but he either didn't know or didn't care that hundreds of innocent people were there, transacting their normal city and town business (think water permits, building permits, etc), and the 2nd floor housed a daycare for little children.  The bombing was in retaliation for for Ruby Ridge in 1992 and Waco in 1993.  It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism today, and there are services at the memorial every year to commemorate and honor the victims. 

According to Wikipedia:

The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building^[1] in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States on April 19, 1995. Perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the bombing happened at 9:02 am and killed at least 168 people,^[2] injured more than 680 others, and destroyed one-third of the building.^[3] The blast destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings within a 16-block radius, shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, and destroyed or burned 86 cars,^[4][5] causing an estimated $652 million worth of damage.^[6] Extensive rescue efforts were undertaken by local, state, federal, and worldwide agencies in the wake of the bombing, and substantial donations were received from across the country. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) activated 11 of its Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces, consisting of 665 rescue workers who assisted in rescue and recovery operations.^[7][8] Until the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Oklahoma City bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United States, and remains the deadliest incident of domestic terrorism in the country's history.

Within 90 minutes of the explosion, McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Charlie Hanger for driving without a license plate and arrested for illegal weapons possession.^[9][10] Forensic evidence quickly linked McVeigh and Nichols to the attack; Nichols was arrested,^[11] and within days, both were charged. Michael and Lori Fortier were later identified as accomplices. McVeigh, a veteran of the Gulf War and a U.S. militia movement sympathizer, had detonated a Ryder rental truck full of explosives parked in front of the building. His co-conspirator, Nichols, had assisted with the bomb's preparation. Motivated by his dislike for the U.S. federal government and unhappy about its handling of the Ruby Ridge incident in 1992 and the Waco siege in 1993, McVeigh timed his attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the deadly fire that ended the siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.^[12][13]

There is a gate at each end of the Reflecting Pond.  One gate is etched with 9:01, the other with 9:03. The pool itself represents the moment of the blast.  It is also the footprint of the original building.  The empty chairs (one for each of the 168 individuals who lost their life) are arranged in 9 rows, representing the floor upon which the bodies were at the time of the bombing.  The chairs themselves represent the empty chairs at the dinner tables of the victims' families. 

There remains a lone tree, an American Elm, estimated to be more than 90 years old.  It was the only tree prior to the bombing, and provided shade for some of the cars parked in the lot on a daily basis.  After the bombing, the tree stood tall and strong, but all the leaves were blown off it.  Pieces of evidence were embedded in its trunk and limbs, but people rallied around the tree and worked to save its life.  It has become known as the Survivor Tree, and it's been incorporated into the design of the memorial.  You couldn't help but have your emotions stirred when you stood under it.  I'm not crying, you're crying.  Maybe we just have some dust in our eyes.  Nooo, we're probably crying.

 

They really tried to make this whole area a place of rebirth and calm.  Flowers are everywhere and the beds are well tended.  We didn't find a weed one.  But we never saw anyone working in the beds, either, so they must have a whole cadre of gnomes that work only at night, when it's cool and no one is around to witness them.

After viewing the memorial and walking all through the museum, we went to lunch at a salad bar unlike any other we'd ever seen or heard of.  All their salads started with a mix of spring greens or Cobb lettuce in a bowl.  Then they put in whatever add-in options you selected.  Dick & Donna both had the Southwest, with corn, beans & avocado, while I had the Harvest, with dried figs, grapes, diced cucumbers and walnuts.  Yum, they were all yummy!  Coolgreens' Food Ethos states:

FOOD ETHOS

Coolgreens is a healthy lifestyle eatery committed to providing ‘more than’—more than just a high quality, fresh dining experience. We offer menus that cater to all lifestyles. More than a fast casual restaurant; we are dedicated to making the markets that we serve better places to live. More than a chain; we align ourselves with partners who are passionate about serving and educating their communities on the benefits of healthy living.

That was pretty cool, and the food was super fresh, reasonably priced and yummy to boot.  Definitely a refresher after the solemnity of the memorial.  If you ever find yourself near a Coolgreens, we highly recommend stopping in for a quick bite.  We bid Donna farewell and went our separate ways after all that.