Over the Hill and Far Away……….

It was slightly cooler today and perfect riding weather. We set off early this morning because we had a long ride ahead and wanted to take in Tombstone, which was off our route but too close to miss.

We went out to find our bikes being menaced by 4 large Harleys which had been ridden in last night by some guys in a motorcycle club. We tried to get talking to them but they didn’t seem to be too impressed with either us or our bikes! Concluding that they seemed to be rather wedged up their own tailpipes we left them to it. One of their bikes was a ridiculously heavily customised bit of automotive silliness to the extent that just about every part, from the handlebar ends to the air filters, seemed to have been fitted with a tapering point. In the event of an accident it would have been like wrestling with a half-ton metal porcupine but, hey, that’s what being a rough, tough Harley rider is all about.

The excursion to Tombstone was rather further than we expected but was well worth the detour. The town itself is rather touristy but at least they have made the effort to preserve the buildings as they used to be and we did get an impression of what a Western town would have looked like in those days. Unfortunately the house of ill repute has been converted into a souvenir shop and Dutch Annie has long since gone to rest in Boot Hill after her exertions (kindly note that I have avoided the use of the term “laid” to rest in this context). Boot Hill was very striking. Entrance to the cemetery is free providing you pay $3 to go through the gift shop first! We were greeted by a very elderly, very thin lady who looked as if she might have been disinterred from the cemetery herself on account of them being short-staffed in the gift shop today. The casualties of the gunfight at the OK Corral are buried there as are the many other residents of Tombstone who met violent ends in the 1880s. That aside it is a peaceful spot looking over the valley and if one was to be shot or stabbed to death in Tombstone at least it would be a nice place to end up.

After the Tombstone excursion we went back to rejoin the Interstate and amazingly got through a Border Patrol checkpoint without Mark being subjected to a strip-search or an invasive internal examination.

We followed the interstate for 230 miles, mainly through broad, flat desert although we did pass through some rocky outcrops and we could see the mountains in the distance where the Apaches, Cochise and Geronimo, made their last stand against the encroaching settlers and army. There wasn’t much to enliven the trip except for the occasional dust-storm and lots of dust-devils. For the uninitiated, dust devils are where the air currents stir up the dust on the ground and it rises in a column up into the air like a mini tornado.

After an epic 308 miles in total we got to the Holiday Inn Express at Las Cruces (the crossroads). We booked in, cleaned up and went into town where we have just eaten two superb steaks, drunk some local beer and a couple of glasses of very tolerable wine at the “Something” Eagle.

It turned out that the taxi-driver on the return journey and I had both faced down the Soviet hordes massed at the West German border in the early 1980s, although his service had been at some military base in Germany while mine (which I sort of glossed over in our conversation) had been largely spent at a TA Drill Hall in Middlesbrough!

We are planning to get to Roswell NM tomorrow which should put us within a day’s ride of Texas. We’ll be looking out for crashed flying saucers along the way.

I’ll leave it to you to guess what the weather was like today. There was no breakfast at the motel so we set off early and retraced our steps to Why where Highway 85 meets Highway 86. There is now a T junction here so I suppose if it was being named today, Why would become Tea. We stopped at the Why Not to refuel and then got on the 86 for the next 135 miles.

The route took us through the Sonoran desert and the Tohono O’odham Indian Nation which has its capital at Sells, the only significant town we passed through. There were also a couple of villages which seemed like nothing more than a few shacks by the roadside. The road was single lane highway the whole way with the desert landscape that we have become so familiar with now. There were however some interesting bendy bits which are great fun so long as there was not a huge pickup truck or an RV the size of a suburban bungalow coming the other way. Some of the RVs are breathtaking. They are about the same size as a coach that could take the entire workforce of a West Midlands engineering firm on its annual works outing. Many of them also tow behind them a vehicle to use when they park up and which itself is usually of sufficient size to take a family of six on a week’s camping holiday.

We saw lots of Border Patrol vehicles and helicopters because we were travelling fairly close to, and parallel with, the Mexican border. Inevitably Mark, aka “Mr Shifty, the Border Patrol Magnet” got pulled in at the one checkpoint we passed. I would probably have got through OK but Mark helpfully pointed out that we were travelling together! This time my “I’m British, Gawd bless ya, Mary Poppins” routine failed to impress and I too had to dig around in my panniers for my passport. Once satisfied the BP people couldn’t have been nicer and wished us a safe onward journey.

We skirted round the edge of Tucson and picked up Interstate 10 which took us the remaining 50 miles to Benson. We are only about 10 miles from the legendary Tombstone so we plan to visit there in the morning.

We have seen quite a few bikers on our travels and have perfected the “low five” greeting which is a sort of low wave cum treading-water gesture with the left hand. Most two wheeled travellers seem to do this, from the lowliest scooter rider to the big, hairy guys on the Harleys. One day we even saw a large group of choppers with riders who could only have been Hells Angels on their way to trash a small town but even they took time out of their busy schedule to give us a wave.

So that was about it for the day. We kept up a good pace and didn’t stop much so we arrived at Benson about 1pm and checked into the motel. We probably could have got quite a bit further today but each night we have to estimate in advance what seems to be do-able the next day and book ahead. The motel is on the outskirts of town and not within walking distance of anywhere except the local Denny’s. The one local taxi firm refused to even contemplate a pick up from here any later than 4.30 so it looks like Denny has us for the night. If you are ever passing through here please call Benson Taxis and tell him from me he’s a tw*t (I would have done it myself but he hung up on me).

In the unlikely event of anything exciting happening between now and bedtime I will add an addendum to this post but somehow I think this is the last you will hear from us till tomorrow!