March 18, 2014
Day 73: to La Mesilla and back
The Pecan House (Jenia and Jim's place) lies just east of Las Cruces and the historic town of Mesilla. We set off today to have a look, and decided to stick with the peaceful little town and not explore the bigger city.So it was back through the pecan orchards and along hwy 28 into town.
Mesilla is a small town of one story adobe buildings. It is clean and peaceful and centred around a plaza of the type we liked so much in Europe. That is, a church at one end and shops around a square, with places to sit within.The church is the Basilica of San Albino. It has the distinction of having originally been established in Mexico, but it is now located in the United States as a result of a transfer of territory in the Gadsden Purchase. The first church on the site was built in 1852; the current structure was built in 1906, and is one of the oldest churches in the region. Opposite the church, around the square are a series of buildings also made from fired brick and built in the late 1800's.
This was truly at that time the 'Wild West", featuring genuine gunslingers and frontier justice. The most famous one and the bread and butter of the tourist value of the place was Billy the Kid. Billy the Kid was accused of the murder of two men, one in a shootout and one in an ambush. He was captured at Stinking Springs, north of here, and brought to Mesilla to stand trial. The building where the trial was stands at one corner of the square. Billy was convicted and taken to Lincoln to be hanged. Billy broke out of the Lincoln jail, shooting the marshal there with his own shotgun. Billy was later hunted down and shot. He was in his early twenties.
Other buildings around the square include the oldest brick building in the state. Successive owners were killed by burglars.
The building that made the biggest impression on us was La Posta. As the name implies, this was a sort of post office/stage coach stop in the past. a plaque on the wall claims that other than Billy the Kid, Kit Carson, General Douglas MacArthur, and Pancho Villa stayed here. The modern history of the place begins in 1939, when Katy Griggs, the daughter of an old local family, opened a restaurant in the building using old family recipes. It is said that modern New Mexico cuisine originated there. The building and restaurant there now is still owned by a branch of the family. The first thing about it is the beautiful interior, with so much adobe, tile, and plants. We got to sit by ourselves in an internal courtyard, with a huge pecan tree in one corner.
The fajitas plates we got had huge portions, with so much onion, pepper, refried beans, sour cream, lettuce, guacamole, etc. For people who have not seen vegetables in a while, this was mind boggling. The $13.95 price of each plate was not totally cheap, but oh so worth it!
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Heading back to the Pecan House we had a glorious tail wind, and were pushed along with almost no pedalling. This was a West wind, which otherwise would have been tough for us if pushing West. But now - pure joy!
So here we come to the topic of pushing West. Now, at March 18, the calendar has pretty much run out for us in terms of cycling the desert here. We still need to visit Aunt Sophie and cousins in Tucson, then fly to Seattle and visit grand kids Avi and Violet there briefly. Once back on Vancouver Island, we will have a short time to rejig the bikes and fine tune a route in Europe. Then April 24 its fly to Montreal to visit grand kids there for a few days, and April 30 we fly to Paris.
Paris? Yes! This whole Southern Tier gig has only been a warmup. Pretty soon we will launch a new blog. It will be called Grampies Go by the Books. Here is what it is all about:
Europe has Verlag Esterbauer, which publishes the Bikeline series of cycling books. This is what we mostly used in our previous forays into Europe. But there are dozens and dozens of these books. Anytime we see one or get our hands on one, we want to cycle it! The best was in Globetrotter in Hamburg, where they had a whole wall of them. Look:
Bikeline Books at Globetrotter
So our plan is to link about ten of these, which are about 500 km each, and sort of cycle them back to back. We are of course not choosing ten at random, but rather once again skimming what we think are the most interesting, most fun onesn and around great places where we have sort of been before. This will include lots of famous rivers - the Mosel, the Rhine, the Danube (Donau), the Inn, the Enns, etc. We will also go to the Bodensee and cycle in the foothills of the Alps to the Konigsee. We will have another look at Salzburg. We will see if they have any Sacher Torte still there for us at the Sacher Hotel! The exact details such as we had already worked them out are in a file back home. As soon as we get there, we will post the outline. Then we (Dodie) will go crazy trying to iron out the details.
So what now! Jim has offered to buzz us over to Tucson tomorrow. We will keep the blog going as we then see what Tucson is about, as we try to get the bikes on a plane to Seattle, and as we sail back to our Island home. Then we will switch over, and blog our way to Montreal (Bagels! Croissants! Smoked meat sandwiches!) and Paris. From there, it's crazy fun for 90 more days! Stay with us!
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Today's ride: 18 km (11 miles)
Total: 4,227 km (2,625 miles)
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