Next morning, awoke at 5:30AM and couldn’t get back to sleep because of the stink blown on the wind from the nearby cattle pens. The winds were not helping. Yesterday afternoon when I’d stopped here, wind was light, and didn’t notice any bad smells.
Not a bad spot. Nice and long spaces.
Headed off at 7:15 to Roswell and found a nice Mexican restaurant for breakfast…
I tried several times to get a good photo of these green alien statues they’ve installed all over Roswell. This is the only one good enough to post.
Here’s what most of Roswell looks like. Fairly flat countryside here. The town has all the big box stores now. Fairly pleasant place to live I’d imagine.
Mile after mile of open country after Roswell. Kept seeing these “So and so’s Cattle Ranch” along the freeway but nary a house in sight. Kind of odd. I’m use to farms that are within a couple miles of the main road. Don’t see that here at all. Miles and miles of fencing and cattle here and there, roads leading off the freeway onto the ranches, but no houses to be seen. Did see 2 antelope, 3 horses and about 25 herds of cows with 4 to 25 members all within spitting distance of the fences along the road though. Noticed that even though it’s still early in the season, most of the natural watering holes were dry. Just a few of them even had any water at all. Perhaps the water table is too low, but the wells go down 600 feet I was told by a local so I guess most cattle ranchers are using pumped water and not depending on groundwater filling up the depressions in the land these days.
It was a bad day for wildlife as I drove from just south of Roswell, NM to Meteor Crater, AZ.
1) Rounding a banked curve at 65 MPH and saw two crows immediately take flight and reach the railing before I got there. But their friend? He decides to hop a couple times first before taking flight. Splotch!
2) Streaking across the freeway isn’t usually a problem for most birds…that are smart enough to have some height before attempting to do so. But the bittern that thought he’d beat me allllmost made it. Swooping up at the last moment to just kiss (of death) the upper cowling of my 12 foot tall RV heading in the opposite direction going 65 MPH. Poor little guy.
3) Spiders like to sail on the wind after playing out 12 – 14 feet of silk. One 1/4″ diameter spider sailing on the wind didn’t realize that meeting the 1/4″ diameter CB antenna on the side of my RV at 65 MPH would be bad luck. He hit it so hard his belly split open and his guts glued him to the antenna with his legs splayed out pointing back into the wind stream. Too bad little guy, too bad. The chances of him hitting that small antenna just that way must be billions to one.
After all those miles of cattle fencing, happened upon Vaughn, NM. Wow, this town has seen better days. The place is crumbling. So many closed and boarded up businesses and homes. Just outside of town, it looks like this.
Four hours later, and the weather was beginning to break. I enjoyed driving in this coolish, overcast weather for, well, reasons. Then the sun came out, it warmed up a bit and I resigned myself to driving into the setting sun.
You drive right through a major Navajo area and the country is spectacular. New Mexico around Roswell is like the western extent of the great grasslands but here it’s sandstone cliffs and desert type flora.
And here’s a roadside attraction owned by a Navajo native and his wife. I’ve passed this place at least 50 over the years and never stopped. This time, I had plenty of time to get to my stop for the night, so…why not stop in?
If you don’t know the history of Chief Yellowhorse here’s what little I can recall:
Yellowhorse was a renegade Indian who refused to stay on his assigned reservation. He escaped many times over the years and eventually found this cave that he and his growing number of cohorts would spend months in, hiding from the blue coats. The army eventually did discover this hideout and soon built a fort nearby so he couldn’t use it anymore. I think. Something like that. Could be the hiding place of some other Indian with a different name. I vaguely remember reading that history of this cave in a historical novel many years ago. Or that’s all bs I picked up somewhere: Heh…
I don’t really know if these ruins are legit and ancient, or put in for the tourists?
Chief Yellowhorse is buried right here somewhere, I just can’t tell where…didn’t see any signs indicating a gravesite.
This is where the Chief built his first hogan, right along the New Mexico – Arizona state line. The line is now right inside the entrance to the much larger store that’s an extension of that original hogan.
The owner and his wife, busy getting ready for the tourist season. I was the only traveler in the store my entire visit. They seemed nice but a little preoccupied with cleaning the place up. I left a small donation when I visited the cave.
This is many decades old and not very well maintained. It’s not a real 1800’s fort but a replica built by Chief Yellowhorse. Inside the gates it was very overgrown with stiff grasses and stickers so I didn’t go inside the compound.
Just up the road, another smaller cave. Doesn’t look as comfy. 
I left that roadside attraction at 4:04 PM New Mexico time and immediately it was 3:04 PM Arizona time. Two and a half hours later, pulled into Meteor Crater RV Park. Nice park. A tad spendy though. Was a little worn out after driving too long. They have, for whatever stupid reason, a motorized gate that’s just barely wide enough for my narrow RV. Or it’s not all that narrow, it’s just that I was tired. Yeah, probably that.
Next time we’ll head for California.