Some pics from yesterday's little jaunt.

(Preamble to today's blog: Very pleased with the new Honda. Filled up the Civic before our jaunt yesterday. Put 196 miles on it. Filled up upon return. MPG = 43.28 highway!)

Yesterday's trip to Alamogordo was great! Actually, we didn't really go to Alamogordo. (I lied.) I was really more interested in the little town of Tularosa about 12 miles north of Alamogordo. And with the exception of this one last time, I think that's the last mention I'll make of Alamogordo in today's blog.

This is a picture of the old main street of Tularosa. Except instead of Main, it's called Granado Street. And that's a picture of the only car on Granado Street. Oh, as we walked the length of both sides of Granado, a truck did pull up in front of the Western Auto store for a few minutes. Their only customer, I imagined he just needed a box of nails or something. Something small, because he didn't come out of there with that shiny red Radio Flyer wagon I had stopped to admire in their window.

That's the Western Auto on the far right of this picture. Most of the stores are closed down. A couple are trying to make a go of it, like a little coffee shop which was closed when we were there. And the Horse Feathers store in this picture? I have no idea what they sold in there, but I doubt it was real horse feathers.

As I walked the length of Granado Street past the deserted stores, I felt eerily like Marshal Will Kane at 11:58 a.m. from the movie High Noon. Other than the man who was foolhardy enough to go into the Western Auto store down the street for a few minutes, we saw absolutely no one. Even so, I think he was out of there before the church bell further down the street struck twelve.

Of all the little stores, this one was my very favorite. Actually, "little" is a misnomer. The Grocery Store is the biggest store on the street. I have an affinity for paintings on the outsides of buildings and I studied this one for awhile because the man frozen in oils there bore a striking resemblence to Pancho Villa. But what was really quaint about The Grocery Store, besides the fact it has no roof, was the tree growing up in the middle of it inside; right around aisle five. That'd be where they probably sold Scott's Miracle Gro potting soil and plant foods.

I don't mean to give the wrong impression of Tularosa. It's a very intriguing community. In the middle of this vast desert valley and just a few miles east of gorgeous White Sands National Monument made of pure gypsum, Tularosa is an absolute lush oasis! It must be sitting on top of an undergroud lake or something to be so incredibly green and shady.

And unlike the impression these pictures of Granada Street may give, US 70, the highway which passes through on its way to the mountains and Roswell of UFO fame beyond, Tularosa has a number of thriving little business along it. And, there's a Wal-Mart just ten miles down the road in Alamogordo. Whoops! Dang, I said I wasn't gonna mention that place again.