Las Cruces or Bust
Gerald H. McKibben
A trip to New Mexico would be the longest I had made so far in my RV-6A. I often use it for business trips, mostly to the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta, and occasionally to more distant locales.
Like the two trips to Brownsville, Texas, on the Mexican Border. As a research entomologist,
some of my projects involve the boll weevil, and the eradication program is making me travel further and further to find bugs to work with.
Travel in the RV more convenient than depending on an airline schedule, especially if your travel
schedule allows some flexibility. I can travel to Brownsville (almost 900 miles from my home in
northeast Mississippi) quicker in my airplane than by airline, partly because I take a shortcut – I
don’t go through Atlanta! And I’m not worried about someone taking a bomb on board. Weather is
more of a concern, but my trips can usually wait on acceptable weather.
I didn’t leave West Point (where the airplane is hangared) until 3:30 on Monday, August 30 because of low clouds hanging over this part of Mississippi. I decided to stop over in Sherman,
Texas, north of Dallas, and spend the night. Although both the airplane and I are legal for night
flight, I don’t like to make long flights at night. The people at a local motel were nice enough to
drive out to the airport and pick me up, and take me back the following morning.
Early Tuesday I took off and headed west, and believe
me, it’s a long way across Texas east to west! An airline pilot I met in Decatur, TX on the way back told
me it’s further from Texarkana to El Paso than it is
from Texarkana to Chicago. I can attest to the fact that
it’s a long, long way. The terrain reminded me of
words from an old Western song, that Texas has “miles
and miles of nothing but miles and miles”. Visibility is
usually good, but the distances are so great you seem
to be traveling slowly. The landscape is barren, except
for scattered stands of what West Texans euphemistically call “trees” – mesquite bushes I suppose. I occasionally saw wind mill farms and oil wells. Towns
were few and far between.
RV at Sherman, Texas
I stopped at Seminole, Texas, near the New Mexico border to refuel the plane and find some lunch
for myself. Small airports are usually run by
friendly, helpful people, and this place was no exception. Jeanie dropped me off at a local restaurant
and told me to call Lex after I finished and he
would take me back to the airport.
Vinegaroon
Seminole is in Gaines County, which is in the middle of the area known as the Southern High Plains.
The elevation averages 2,000 to 3,000 ft, and the
average rainfall is slightly more than 15 inches,
making it technically desert. And yet the soil is fertile; the area has 2.8 million acres of irrigated cotton. Most of the small airports are busy with agricultural aircraft.
It was at Seminole that I saw my first vinegaroon. I not only had never seen one; I had never even
heard of one. It was slowly crawling across the floor between the shop area and the airport office.
“A scorpion” I exclaimed, and it was huge.
“No, that’s a vinegaroon”, Jeanie corrected, adding that she hates to see them because they give
her “the creeps”. On closer examination I saw it didn’t have the stinger characteristic of scorpions.
Instead it had a long whip-like appendage. But it had eight legs and pinchers like a scorpion. Turns
out its proper common name is “Whip scorpion” and it earned the local name “vinegaroon” because it smells like vinegar when crushed. That’s because, when attacked, they spray acetic acid
on their attacker. I wanted to collect it (I am an entomologist, after all) so we coaxed it into a cardboard box. My idea was to drop it into a jar of alcohol, but, not having one handy, I placed the box
in the airplane and decided to take it with me and preserve it later. One thing I learned at the internet site was that they like moist places. Which begs the question; if they like moist places what are
they doing in West Texas?
I called flight service and was disappointed to learn that low clouds and
rain over the mountains leading into
Las Cruces would prevent my flying
there today. The briefer said that when
the winds are from the east the air
moving up the east slopes is cooled,
causing condensation with concurrent rain and low clouds. The highest point in Texas (over 8,000 ft) is in the Guadalupe mountains in
this area, and I wasn’t anxious to try and negotiate that kind of
weather with mountain peaks that tall.
Instead I decided to fly on to Carlsbad, NM and rent a car and drive
the rest of the way. So we - the vinegaroon and I - departed Seminole for the
relatively short flight to Carlsbad,
where I tied the RV down and rented a
car. Carlsbad lies along the Pecos
River on the northeastern fringe of the
Chihuahuan Desert. The drive into Las Cruces took almost 5 hours,
providing beautiful mountain and desert scenery that I would have
missed flying. I drove the scenic route, which loops over to the
north. In only regretted that I didn’t have time to stop and do some
sightseeing.
After a night and part of a day in beautiful Las Cruces I left heading
south for a different route back to Carlsbad, through El Paso. The
vinegaroon stayed with me in the motel room. By now I was getting
a little attached to it and so decided to
bring it back with me rather than kill it
in a jar of alcohol.
Heading east from El Paso I encountered the most desolate stretch of
highway I ever remember seeing in this country. It’s 166 miles from
El Paso, TX to Carlsbad, NM, without a town in between. Fortunately there is a little store about halfway between that sells gas, oth-
erwise I would have been stranded. I was told the number one rule in driving in that part of the
country is to start out with a full tank of gas. But being from Starkville, where we have four minimarts on every block, that didn’t occur to me.
The highway is two-lane, straight as an arrow, and smooth, with a 70-mph speed limit. For some
unknown (to me) reason in places the signs said 75-mph. I met very few vehicles, but did see my
first pronghorn antelope, standing atop a house-size rock close to the road. Every mile looked
pretty much like the last mile. About the only vegetation visible was a low scrubby plant I believe
they call grease weed.
Horned Toad
While pumping gas I talked to a young woman who lives in the area.
She and her husband, both born in Germany, raise horses on their
ranch nearby (apparently there is some grass). Land sells for $200/
acre, but you have to pay to have electricity brought in. And there is
no water unless you locate near the rare community water systems.
She drives 75 miles to El Paso once a month to buy groceries, and
said she hates to go to
town.
Bathroom after a West Texas Sandstorm
I drove three or four miles further and stopped at Salt
Flat, Texas, where there was a little café on the side of
the highway that the German lady told me about.
There was the café, a house, and a post office. You
could look 360 degrees as far as the eye can see and
see nothing but grease weed, and a huge salt flat that
looked like a lake. The
lady (also German) who
cooked my hamburger
seasoned it in a way I
hadn’t experienced before, and it was delicious.
Passing by Carlsbad Caverns National Park I determined that my
wife and I have got to go back some time and vacation there. I left
Carlsbad Wednesday afternoon and flew to Decatur, TX, just NW of
Dallas, arriving about sundown. Then the next day it was on to Texarkana for a 3 or 4 hour visit, and then back to West Point that afternoon, Thursday, September 2.
My total flying time from West Point to Carlsbad was 5 hours and 36 minutes; The return trip was
5 hours and 51 minutes. And the vinegaroon I gave to my son Everett, who has an attachment for
creepy and crawly things like tarantulas and scorpions. It did fine in captivity, dining on fresh
crickets.
Another advantage in flying your own airplane: You don’t have experiences like I did when flying
on an airliner!
End