Saturday NIght in Old Mexico

The title is a little too grandiose. I'm in Columbus, New Mexico, mostly famous for being the victim of a raid by Pancho Villa in 1916, and the retaliatory "Punitive Mexican Expedition" by General John Pershing, as in the Pershing Tank, Pershing Square in L.A., etcetera. Columbus is 3 miles north of Palomas, Chihuahua, Mexico. So I rode to the border, parked the bike, and walked across for dinner.

This day started early. I left most of my stuff at the motel in Sierra Vista, threw birding stuff into a backpack, and drove to the main gate of Fort Huachuca. I drove through the base to Huachuca Canyon, where the road transitioned from pavement to rocky dirt. I had a tense ride a couple of miles up the canyon and parked the bike where I saw a couple of other vehicles. I associated loosely with some other birders for the next two hours.

The red vehicle in the background is the preferred vehicle for Huachuca Canyon Road. The yellow vehicle in the foreground is not recommended. The Jeep driver asked me if I was crazy.

Almost all of my birding has been done in California, so it was inevitable that I would pick up several new birds on this outing. The canyon is beautiful, too.

After my successful outing I headed back down the canyon road (wincing every time rocks bashed my wheels), through the base, and back to the motel. By the time I hit the road it was nearly noon. I headed for Bisbee, where a lot of weekend tourists also seemed to be going. The enormous open-pit copper mine there could swallow the Golden Gate Bridge without having the towers stick out.

Bisbee is at 5300 feet and the road there crests some higher elevations before getting there, so clearly my first-day elevation of 4400 is nothing special.

After Bisbee I headed for Douglas, AZ on the Mexican border. The road descended Whitewater wash to a huge plain covered in thorn trees and other scrub. Douglas is an old town with buildings up to five stories high downtown; pretty good for old Arizona. After lunch and fuel I took off for Columbus.

The first several miles were not very attractive, but then the views got enormous and pretty. It really puts you in an extraordinary mindset. This was a lightly traveled road. In contrast with the dozens of motorcycles I saw on my way to Bisbee, I saw not a one in the 144 miles from Douglas to Columbus. 

When I took that shot of the Ninja, shown at the top of this post, I was about a mile north of a historical marker, the place where Geronimo surrendered to U.S. troops. It makes you think, to be there in that largely unchanged land. History becomes more real.

I've seen lots of wildflowers on this trip but haven't taken many pictures. Here is my attempt to make up for that. Most of these were taken on Arizona 80 near the New Mexico line.

And there was a small but important milestone today! 

Those clouds that you saw in the earlier photos increased and thickened tonight while the constant west wind continued. And now it's really blowing. A Great Horned Owl hooting outside the motel room was serenading me but this weather might put a stop to that. There might be thunderstorms tomorrow. This will be my first chance to try the rain protection gear that I brought for me and for my luggage. Crossed fingers.