July 5, 2025
Tucson is heating up so Aimee and I thought we needed a little escape. With the Independence Day holiday now behind us we set out this morning on the highway east. We have the sun in our face and the A/C is having a hard time keeping us cool. After four hours we leave I-10 and take the shortcut to I-25 past Hatch, NM. It is almost noontime and Hatch is known as the Chile Pepper Capital so we find an interesting spot for lunch. It is a little kitschy, decorated with several dozen iconic fast food plastic statues. Surprisingly the food is pretty good. We have chicken smothered in Chile Pepper Cheese sauce.
We follow I-25 north along the Rio Grande valley. It reminds me of Egypt and the Nile; a thin strip of green fertile river inside an inhospitable desert. We are also following the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro or Royal Road of the Interior. Spanish traders and colonists would follow this arduous trail from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Eighty miles north we left the highway and travelled down a dirt road to the Rio Grande. On the banks we found the remnants of Fort Craig Historic Site. This BLM property is overseen by a lonely volunteer RV camper. He said we were only the fifth visitor today. The large fort was built by the US Army to protect trade from Indian attack. While there are a few stone walls, most of it was built of tamped earth and adobe brick which has mostly melted after two centuries of rain.
Surprisingly Fort Craig was also the location of an obscure Civil War battle. Humorously the Southern rebels avoided directly attacking the Union fort because it was heavily defended with fake “Quaker” cannons, logs painted black to look like the real thing. We finished the day in Albuquerque.
