April 5, 2013 – Travel to Socorro

We left our little spot at Deming and headed north towards Hatch.  Beautiful scenery:

 

 

Wind Farm:

And the road goes on forever (in six years, I never tire of seeing this.):

We saw this in the distance – looks like a ship (Carnival, maybe ).  Anyway, it turned out to be a dairy farm.

Another solar farm:

 

Hello????

Thru the town of Hatch where they have two muffler men.  Here is the first:

Good Sam:

Muffler Man number 2:

Hatch is known as the chili capital of the world. Sad to say, we just passed thru.  But these “Muffler Men” statues really fascinate me.  They are all over the U.S. and did you know they were all made from the same mold?   Roadside America has a lot of information on them – here is the link: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/muffler/

From that site:

“These characters -- and many others -- were made by a company called International Fiberglass, owned by Steve Dashew.  They were sold as attention getters for retail stores.

There were a variety of figures that was adapted from one mold -- such as golfers, cowboys, spacemen, Indians, muffler men, etc.

The first figure was a Paul Bunyan, done for the PB Cafe on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona in about 1962. Most of the statues were derivatives of that one mold -- fill in the beard in the mold, or add a new chest for Indians, etc. This was created by a fellow named Bob Prewitt, who owned Prewitt Fiberglass. Bob was a cowboy, and his real love was rodeos. He had a bunch of cowboys working for him between contests.  Bob started the business and Steve bought in 1963.”

Cool – :-))

At Hatch we took I-25 north – amazing topography:

I have no idea what this is but have seen a few of them along the way.

Beautiful:

As we are headed north, Andy spotted a familiar RV.  Turns out it was Bill and Shelly who we were meeting in Socorro. 

Entering Socorro, we stopped for gas and then headed to Casey’s RV Park, where we will be for a few days.  We spent the rest of the day with Bill and Shelly getting caught up with each other.  Always good to see good friends.

For dinner we headed to San Antonio to the Buckhorn Tavern, famous for their Green Chili Cheese Burgers.  I ordered the plain burger and everyone else ordered the green chili cheeseburgers – very good!!

Tomorrow we are heading to the Trinity Site so stay tuned.

 

Miles Traveled: 160 Miles

Routes Traveled:

New Mexico: Motel Road; I-10; US-180; SR-26; I-25; SR-1; Fairgrounds Road