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This place. I have a strange fascination with it.
It used to be a fancy downtown hotel called (I think) the In Town Inn. It’s been mostly vacant since I can remember, but there are a few hints of its former grandeur. Ha! Ha! Of course there’s no such thing. It’s just another empty building. Its most recent reincarnation was a residential treatment center for people with substance abuse issues; that didn’t last, but the name it went by – the Jim Kimmel Center* – is still there.
But look at that wall of rooms. And lamps. Except for that one, lampless room.
Anyway, I really REALLY want to get in there and take a few (thousand) pictures. But I want to do it without breaking in or anything. I’m sort of legal, when it comes right down to it.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 2.5.2017
* I know, right?
Gilberto, el niño
If you go to El Paso, be sure to plan an hour (if it’s a really hot summer day) or longer (if the weather’s tolerable) to visit the Concordia Cemetery.
If you’re not going to El Paso, but would like to time-travel back to a 1990s website, you can visit the cemetery’s website.*
Of course, you could always choose to do both.
Concordia Cemetery
El Paso, Texas
photographed 5.2.2010
Toward the light. But also toward the storm.
A few years ago, my friend Martha and I decided to drive from El Paso, where we were spending the weekend, to White Sands National Monument. That’s about a hour-and-a-half of driving.
Normally.
We left right after breakfast. Instead of taking the Interstate, we went on New Mexico highway 28, a noted scenic route. That should have added about 30 minutes to our trip.
Normally.
But we stopped. We stopped to look at an adobe barn. A pecan orchard. A church. We stopped in a little town where the church was having a festival*. We stopped for lunch. And etc.
So by the time we eventually made it to White Sands, it was very late in the afternoon. Most of the day’s visitors had already left. But the storm clouds were still hanging around, and the sun obligingly lit a band of sand in the distance.
White Sands National Monument
near Alamogordo, New Mexico
photographed 5.1.2010
*At the town with the festival, we were turned away from a parking lot that was, we were told, for church members only. We weren’t sure what identified us so readily as non-members, although we did come up with several options.
The Corral
I guess there aren’t that many places across the country where the term “cart corral” makes sense. I would have anticipated that the middle of Nebraska would have been one of those places, but this one was left in a surplus yard. And there weren’t any carts around.
Hastings, Nebraska
photographed 8.30.2014
In the cradle of the valley’s hand
You have to be going there on purpose, to this tiny town on the banks of the Pecos River south of Santa Rosa. It’s so unknown that Google maps will either direct you to Luna, New Mexico, which isn’t it, or will send you to what looks like more-or-less a random location. The only way I even knew about it was from reading one of those cheerful “Welcome to Santa Rosa” booklets once at a restaurant. (If you want to go, just take South 3rd Street from downtown Santa Rosa. It’ll change names to State Highway 91, County Road 2P, and County Road 3C by the time you get there.
This is the view from a little cemetery on a hill east of town.
Puerta de Luna, New Mexico
photographed 9.21.2013
