Okay, I know we set the GPS to take us to the southwest. Did someone sneak into the RV and reset it to Alaska when we weren't looking? This morning it was so cold I thought there was just no way we could actually be in New Mexico. It just had to be somewhere much closer to the frozen Alaskan tundra. Getting all the fittings and uncooperative, half-frozen water hoses to behave was a real challenge. Getting it all done before I needed rescuing was nip and tuck. Then, we had to get the propane filled which called for more standing around in the cold while the filler guy struggled to get the propane hose to marry up with the tank fitting encumbered by his heavy gloves. By the time we left the park I had to insert my fingers into the RV heater outlet to thaw them out. Who says you can't thaw and drive at the same time?
Our destination today was pretty simple: go wherever it promised to be warm. But as we ate breakfast this morning and watched a mixture of rain and snow pelting the ground outside the window, the prospects looked slim to none. But we had high hopes, and by 9:30 a.m. we had filled our propane tank and we're headed south to pick up Interstate 25 which promised to take us all the way to Las Vegas. Wait, What? Yeah, that's actually Las Vegas, New Mexico, where we hoped to be able to photograph another of the Fred Harvey properties (remember Fred from yesterday's blog?) that has recently been purchased by an investor.
We arrived at Fred's old "Castaneda Hotel" which dates to 1898. I looked around on the web for more info and found the following: "A northern Arizona hotelier, who restored La Posada in Winslow, has purchased the century-old railroad hotel in Las Vegas, N.M. Allan Affeldt said he bought the 25,000-square-foot La Castaneda earlier this month for $400,000.
The mission revival hotel was one of the first of the Harvey Houses, Fred Harvey's chain of hotels and restaurants that furthered tourism development in the Southwest. La Castaneda in 1899 hosted the first reunion of Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders from the Spanish-American War.
'The town has been waiting for this for decades,' Affeldt said. 'After World War II, Fred Harvey closed most of their buildings and they were sold off or torn down.' Las Vegas leaders had long feared La Castaneda would be torn down, but Affeldt stepped in just as he did at La Posada, a 1930 Harvey House that had an uncertain future two decades ago. With his wife, artist Tina Mion, Affeldt bought La Posada in 1997 and together they transformed it into a tourism and cultural attraction with an acclaimed fine-dining restaurant and a wealth of historical artifacts.
The hotel has been closed since 1948 but a bar has operated out of the building on Railroad Avenue, near a restored depot. Las Vegas, with about 14,000 residents, has more than 900 historic buildings. La Castaneda, designed by Frederick Roehrig, had about 45 rooms, small by today's standards, so they will be combined into about 25 suites. Affeldt figures it will cost about $3 million to restore the property, which is more than the cost of building a new hotel of a similar size."
So we hoofed it around the soon-to-be-restored, Castaneda hotel, the already-restored railroad depot, then we set off to explore the old part of town. But it was still pretty cold and we shot a few photos of interesting street-side subjects, then retreated to the rig. Since it was approaching lunchtime we decided to seek out one more Fred Harvey property from the late 1800s, a one-time health spa hotel that had quite a bit of bad luck since it burned to the ground TWICE! We didn't have any intention of actually visiting the third-attempt hotel since it has now become a school for international students called something like "United College of the World." But we hoped the grounds would be a great setting out our dinning room window for our lunch break.
Well, the school turned out be be quite a long distance from the front gate, so we just had our lunch sitting in the parking lot for the security folks. Didn't really matter as it was snowing lightly at the time and the school was shrouded in mists and snow flakes.
So far we hadn't done too well with our plan to find warmer climes, so after lunch we headed southeast toward Tucumcari, New Mexico. We took New Mexico Route 104 and it turned out to be wonderful. We saw only two other vehicles in the first 45 minutes of travel. Eventually we did see more traffic, but over the entire rest of the afternoon we saw no more then a dozen trucks and cars, and more then half of them belonged to the New Mexico Department of Transportation. Had me wondering if Route 104 was New Mexico's version of Nevada's loneliest highway in the state.
The further south we traveled the more sun we encountered. Still, we literally ran the cab heater ALL DAY LONG, and were finally able to turn off the heat just before we arrived at our camp for the evening. I had forgotten that Tucumcari was located on the historic Route 66 of days of old and the first thing we encountered when we turned onto the main street was a motel/cabin court all decked out with vintage cars and pastel-colored units. Naturally I had to pull over, grab the camera, and sprint across the highway. For nearly the first time the whole day the sun was out in force and I was able to get some nice shots.
Just up the highway from our camp this evening is a company that washes RVs for a buck a foot. That sounds like a deal since our rig is so dirty from all the rain, snow, and muddy slush that we plan to take it over there after breakfast and let them spruce it up a might. Of course, after we had walked over to inquire about prices, walked around the camp a bit more to get more steps, and then retreated inside to start our computer work, the rain starting up once again -- as if to say, "I'll show you who's in charge of RV washing around here.
And there you have it. Tomorrow we plan on exploring Tucumcari a bit. We hear there's a dinosaur museum as well as a railroad museum to be explored. Rumor has it we may head toward the corners of northwest Texas/southwest Oklahoma after that, but you know us. We could end up just about anywhere. So, until tomorrow, we wish you Happy Traveling!
No comments:
Post a Comment