Rainy Night in NM

Drops of rain on windshield
Downtown El Paso

 Saturday, January 31st, we drove and drove, across Interstate 10, up and over the Davis Mountains in southwestern Texas,  after spending a rainy night at Davis Mountain State Park near Fort Davis, Texas. We drove through shrubby desert no-man's," Loose Livestock" - type land with a few buttes here and there.
 We finally got off the interstate at Ft. Hancock, southeast of El Paso. We needed gas. Ft. Hancock is a tiny border town with some irrigated flatlands surrounding it. Michael noticed that old Hwy. 20 parallels Interstate 10 from that point into El Paso. So we took it all the way.  We drove a flat road past groves of pecan trees and newly planted fields. And that is how it came to be that the Pickle did downtown El Paso, stoplight by stoplight, through the southeastern new outskirts of El Paso, through an old section of the city (so many auto dealers -- it makes the mind reel!!) right through downtown, stoplights, go lights, checking my phone's map, crossing the New Mexico line, out of town south and west, and finally to Hwy. 9.
  Hwy. 9 runs east-west and hugs the Mexican border. We drove it some 50 miles to the little town of Columbus, NM,  home of Pancho Villa State Park.

 By now we had a rainy day on our hands. It continued to rain throughout the night. Our experience with New Mexican state parks, at least in the southern half of the state, is that they have little natural splendor going for them to begin with. A scrubby rocky campground in the rain is even less of a thing of beauty. So we weren't sad to pick up in the morning to head west into Arizona, hopefully to some sunshine.
                        History Lesson
 We couldn't leave the park, though, without visiting the Visitor's Center. It tells the story of Pancho Villa's raid on the little town of Columbus on March 9, 1916. The raid lasted just a few hours in the early morning before the U.S. 13th Cavalry stationed there used machine guns and rifles to catch Villa's men in a crossfire and turn them back to the south. Death toll: 70-75 raiders, 10 American civilians, and 8 U.S. soldiers. President Wilson then ordered General Pershing with 1000 cavalry troops to the area. They set up camp at Columbus and pushed into Mexico in a hunt for Pancho Villa. Pershing at this time chose to use transport trucks instead of mules to carry supplies into Mexico. He himself rode in the backseat of a Dodge Brothers car. It was the beginning of the end of the U.S. Cavalry.( I couldn't help but think about my dad who was stationed with the Cavalry - the last of the Cavalry - in Arizona- before he was sent with the infantry to Europe at the beginning of the U.S. involvement in WWII.)