GREETINGS FROM TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, New Mexico (NM) USA
No, I’m not about to give a sermon or confused about where we are – it’s actually the name of the town for our stop tonight.
It is a “spa” town and was originally named Hot Springs. Back in 1950 there was an American NBC Radio program called “Truth or Consequences” and the host announced one day he would air the program from the first town in the USA to rename itself after the show’s name. Hot Springs won the honour ! (if that’s what you would call it ?) And the radio host visited the town every year in May for the next 50 years and that has now become an annual event in town called “Fiesta”.
But locally the town is just known as T or C.
But to be exact, we are actually a little out of town at a place called Elephant Butte, right on the Rio Grande, where a lake has been created from the damming of the river.
Our day began from Carlsbad and our first destination was a new National Park – Guadalupe Mountains National Park – only about half an hour away and just back over the border into Texas again.
This park is one of the LEAST visited of the USA National Parks – described as “literally in the middle of nowhere” ! Whereas a park like the Grand Canyon will get around 5 million visitors a year, Guadalupe would be lucky to get 200,000 in a year. Carlsbad, which we visited yesterday, also has a pretty low visitation but it would be double that.
But like all the parks they are unique in their own way and the mountain views are gorgeous.
Looking at it now it is hard to imagine this area was once under a vast inland sea – 300 million years ago ! The area is recognized now as one of the most well-preserved fossil reefs in the world for this time period in history (the Permian Period).
Since then, it has been home to tribes of Native Americans, a few hardy ranchers had a go but with little success, and, what is now the Visitor Center, was once a coach station for the Butterfield Overland Mail Coach between St Louis, Missouri and San Francisco – some 2,800 miles. It might seem a roundabout way to get from St Louis to San Francisco but they could use this route year round when the more direct option would be under mountains of snow in the winter. (Oh – and we found out yesterday reading the historical information at Fort Phantom Hill that it had been used as a Butterfield Overland stop as well).
We stopped at a couple of the main areas of the park and the Visitors Center, did a short hike into McKittrick Canyon and took a few photos before heading on our way. It certainly lived up to its reputation as being one of the least visited – I think we only saw about half a dozen people and half of those were park staff at the Visitor Centre ! Even the jack rabbits playing “chicken” along the park access road nearly outnumbered people !
You might remember from our previous trips that we have often bought the “Annual Parks Pass” which is generally great value to cover the entry fees payable when visiting a number of the parks, monuments etc under the control of the National Parks Service. This year, 2016, is the 100th Anniversary of the NPS – in fact yesterday, the 25th, was the actual anniversary ! To celebrate, this week access to all the NPS sites is free so, as most of our NPS site visits are in the early part of our trip, we will just pay individually for the ones we visit later and it will work out the cheaper option this time.
We then headed on to El Paso, right on the Mexican border. The road all the way was extremely flat and straight. In El Paso we skirted the town and headed to the Weiler Aerial Tramway – a cable car which takes you up to the surrounding mountain for a view back across the city. When we got there we found quite a queue, including a school bus full, so we decided against waiting and headed off.
As we headed north, we crossed our path from our 2012 trip at Las Cruces but this time we were heading north from there instead of west. We have been surprised how green everything looks. Most days in recent weeks seem to have ended in thunderstorms and it has obviously made a difference to the scenery which usually at this time of year, the end of summer, would be dry and dusty ! Another memory from our last trip was that heading away from anywhere near the Mexican border you were likely to get stopped at a Border Patrol point and sure enough, the 2 lane highway diverted into a checkpoint and US border guards monitored all the traffic. We had to show our passports and tell the guy what our trip plans were and we were then on our way with a smile and a “stay safe”.
We arrived in Truth & Consequences around 3.30pm. We are staying at Elephant Butte Inn which overlooks the lake. It is pretty full (and the reason for that will have to wait until tomorrow’s post) and we had a nice dinner in the restaurant – we decided to try some of the local tastes and shared “super nachos” for starters (even the “small” was huge !) and then had Southwest Chicken.
We have a bit of an early start tomorrow but it should be worth it – stay tuned !
Today’s Trivia – For any “Dr Who” fans – Truth or Consequences is a prominent location of major parts of the action in the 2015 episode “The Zygon Invasion”