Santa Rosa Tales

November 28

We be happy to hit the road again. We’ve done Santa Rosa for another year. We really like this little northern New Mexico town of 2,700. This is our third year so some of the people I call on to advertise are old friends. Don, the feed store owner, is the closest thing to a vet in town. He introduced me to the 3-legged kitty he saved after the fan belt disaster. Johnny Martinez is doing well after the death of beautiful Alice last year. I still say a prayer for him every night (I just tacked it on to the end of my list and why stop now?). He took me back in the kitchen while he chopped up the chilies and onion for salsa. We sampled it with chips, Johnny and the cooks watching me closely. I nearly died, but other than a runny nose I think I covered it pretty well.

Johnny is 1/4 Jicarilla Apache and told me some stories about his reservation pal coming into some money and retiring to a planned community in Arizona. “John,” he says, “There was a lot of men there in bright shirts
and short pants and they was all riding tricycles! One of them says to me one day, have you seen the market today? No, I says, I told him my wife does the shopping. But he was talking about another market. John, we just didn’t belong down there.”

Santa Rosa is a three or four mile strip along the old Route 66, the famous road from Chicago to Los Angeles that opened in 1937. Route 66 was replaced by Interstate 40, which parallels it. Sadly, many gas stations and motels that were wildly successful in the 50s and 60s are now dead and boarded up but still standing. The testimony to a rich history just looks like failure today.

But Santa Rosa seems to be staying fairly solvent. They are busy now restoring the old courthouse downtown and maintaining a tradition of parades for every season. They are known as the City of Natural Lakes and home to the famous Blue Hole. Surrounded by semiarid ranch land, the Blue Hole is a geological phenomenon. An 80 foot bell shaped pool of great clarity, and a constant 62 degree temperature, it is ideal for scuba diving and training. The pool is 80 feet in diameter at the top and 130 feet wide at the bottom. Water flows in at a rate to recycle every six hours; we aren’t sure where it goes, but probably the nearby Pecos River.

November 29th

We are headed east on I-40 to Amarillo, then will head south to Lubbock and Sweetwater, Texas. We got delayed yesterday doing up some map stuff in Tucumcari. It is VERY windy today and in addition to miles of wind farms on the horizon, every now and then dozens of tumbleweeds tumble across our road. For a change, Dave is glad we are close to our maximum weight of 34,000 lbs. We’re ahead of a storm, expecting rain, but hopefully not much. Santa Rosa was cold at night; we set the mouse trap.

We are going to be in Texas for at least four days. KLAATU BARADA NIKTO!!

Love to all,