US-70 West – Earth, Aliens and End of the Road

/

Before US-70 received its numbered designation in 1926, it had lots of local names. It was the Lee Highway in North Carolina. Tennessee displays a northern mockingbird, its state bird, above the US-70 route sign and, for quite some distance, US-70 also shares its path with TN-1, Tennessee’s first state road from Memphis to Bristol. Some referred to the road as The Hospitality Route. Dickson, TN referred to it as the Broadway of America. In Texas, it was the Texas Plains Trail and in Arizona, it’s the Old West Highway.

From Hot Springs National Park, we continued on our route and stopped at an Aldi’s in the little town of DeQueen where we spotted the local newspaper, DeQueen Bee. Clever!

We crossed the state line into Oklahoma and as we passed through Soper, we noted a sign that regaled the town as the home of Freckles Brown. Hmmm… we were intrigued. Wiki provided the answer. “Freckles Brown, born Warren Granger Brown, was a rodeo performer known for riding the "unrideable" bull Tornado in 1967. He owned and lived on a ranch near Soper.” Who knew? Yup, every town has something to be proud of. We followed US-70 ~290 miles across Oklahoma through tiny towns like Antler and then Durant, ‘the magnolia capital of Oklahoma’ where we stopped at a Walmart to buy more socks and underwear to avoid having to go to a laundromat.

Crossing into Texas, we came across the tiny town of Earth which was quite a surprise since we thought we’d been traveling on Earth for the entire trip.

One day we woke to gray and gloom. The sky was dark and ominous. A hard rain fell. We saw flashes of lightning and heard thunder in the distance. We kept scanning the sky for twisters, but luckily saw none. We seem to be just ahead or just behind bad weather. The temperature began to plummet. Snow began to fall midday and by late afternoon, the wind was howling, snow had thickened, and visibility was diminished. We stopped for the night and peeked out the window to watch the snow swirling and blowing.

Blanche was blanketed in snow in the morning and the windshield needed scraping, but the sky was blue. The land is flat in this area. The wind continued to blow and huge tumbleweeds rolled across the highway. Cotton fields line the road here and the remaining white cotton boles were swaying in the stiff breeze, apparently trying to shake off their new coverlet of snow. There was some accumulation of snow, but not much. Initially, the roads were slushy and icy, but it soon melted in the morning sun.

We’d traveled part of this route before, but stopped again in Muleshoe, Texas to check out the world’s largest mule shoe. Our GPS pronounced it ‘MEW-la-shew’, but we knew differently.

US-70 bears south here into New Mexico where the state question is ‘red or green?’ (chili that is!). Roswell is always an interesting stop. The alien theme pervades throughout the town from streetlights to the ubiquitous alien figures everywhere including our hotel and the local Dunkin Donuts. Having stopped at the UFO museum previously, we gave it a pass this time.

Alamagordo, self-proclaimed Heart of the Desert, is located in the Chihuahuan Desert, the largest desert in America. Pistachio trees line the highway along this stretch. We checked out the world’s largest pistachio.

Alamagordo is also home to White Sands National Park which we’d visited before. The white sands overflow onto the highway and we got a kick out of watching kids trying to slide down the dunes.

From time to time, US-70 is closed to accommodate maneuvers by the White Sands Missile Base. According to Wiki, “On 16 July 1945, the first atomic bomb (aka Trinity) was test detonated at Trinity Site near the northern boundary of the range, seven days after the White Sands Proving Ground was officially established.” Rocket and missile testing continues to this day, but fortunately not the day we were passing through.

No rocket testing today!

New Mexico is a geographically and culturally diverse state. It lives up to its state slogan… Land of Enchantment. Desert, high plains and mountains are key elements of the landscape and it is truly ‘enchanting’.

Check out the World’s Largest Chili Pepper at the Big Chile Inn in Las Cruces, NM.

In Las Cruces US-70 merges with I-10. We made good time, but this type of interstate travel is a boring ride. In Lordsburg, we separated from I-10 and crossed into Arizona. With no fanfare whatsoever, US-70 ends abruptly in Globe, Arizona.

End of the road - Globe, Arizona

The end of a ‘blue highway’ road trip. We’d driven 2,517 miles from Atlantic, North Carolina to Globe, Arizona. Just another 374 miles and we were back in our driveway in Las Vegas… planning our next road trip.