At the top of our Saturday agenda was driving back across the Mississippi River into Louisiana to plant the letterbox we didn't find a spot for on Friday.  We tried the Louisiana Welcome Center, but it was much too well manicured with no bushy shrubs or other friendly letterbox homes, so we continued west a few miles to a general aviation airport near the town of Tallulah.  Close by the airport we found a sweet little hiding spot for this almost homeless letterbox.  (Mississippi River bridges pictured above:  I-20 on left, former road, now rail on right)
   

Returning to Mississippi, our intention was to drive through Vicksburg and on to Alabama, but in our quest to find a couple of letterboxes before we left that historic city, we again stumbled across the Old Courthouse Museum and this time decided to visit.  Built with slave labor in 1858 on one of the highest hills in the city, the landmark building now houses a local history museum, with emphasis on the Civil War period and the siege of Vicksburg.
   

Crammed with thousands of artifacts, most of which were donated by local citizens, the museum is a treasure trove of historic objects.  After a new courthouse was completed in 1939, the old building stood idle until a local woman, 'Miss Eva' Whitaker Davis (1892-1974) conceived the notion of repurposing the hall of justice as a local history museum.  In 1947, she enlisted volunteer help to begin cleaning the neglected structure and beat the bushes for donations of relics.
     

Thanks to Miss Eva's tireless efforts, the museum opened its doors in June, 1948.  Many of the exhibits look as if they have been around almost from the beginning.  Though dated, the displays are fascinating for the light they shed on post-Civil War Vicksburg attitudes.  Of particular interest is the fawning second-floor shrine to Jefferson Davis and his wife Varina.  
     

Obviously created by an unregenerate devotee of the Confederacy the Davis room housed a collection of exhibits headlined by hand-lettered signs extolling Davis as allegedly one of the greatest heroes and statesmen America has produced.  Most of these headlines were out-of-context quotes from various individuals.  In the 'Elder Statesman' exhibit, the quote was from Davis himself:  "I have not repented," read the statement from the Confederacy's only president, after he had served a federal prison term for treason.  Posted under this statement was an unspeakably bizarre sign claiming about Davis:  "Every colored man he ever owned loved him."  It was attributed to a "former Davis slave."

Yes, you read that correctly.  In their efforts to canonize Jefferson Davis, museum curators posted a prominent sign alleging that the man's slaves appreciated being owned by him?!?!  We were a bit surprised to find this kind of revisionism still on exhibit.  Apparently someone missed the fact that it's 2012, the siege of Vicksburg ended 150 years ago, and we now have an African American president in the White House.

But wait, there's more.  This was not the end of the preposterous exhibits we encountered at the Old Courthouse Museum.  The next one was actually amusing, however.

   

One of the museum's most celebrated exhibits is devoted to a battlefield legend involving 'a Yankee soldier, a Confederate hero, and a fair Southern maiden.'  (Not surprisingly, the term 'Yankee' is used consistently throughout the museum's exhibits rather than 'Union' or 'Federal,' the more common descriptions of U.S. soldiers during the Civil War.)  

A Minié ball was a cylindrical bullet invented in the 1840s whose design greatly improved the accuracy of muzzle-loading rifles.  This ammunition was used widely during the Civil War by both Confederate and Union troops.
     

Even Ripley wouldn't have made this one up.

Southern field physician Legrand G. Capers reported in a medical journal that during the battle of Raymond, Mississippi, residents of a nearby house stood on their front porch observing the combat 150 yards away.  When a Confederate soldier was struck in the lower leg by a Minié ball, the bullet ricocheted up to his reproductive organs, where it picked up some of his Southern manhood before speeding over to the porch of the house and entering a young lady's abdomen.  Not only did she survive the wound, nine months later the virginal maiden gave birth to a strapping baby boy who bore an uncanny resemblance to the gallant Confederate.

Needless to say, the tale of the emasculate conception was later exposed as a hoax, but not before the Confederate soldier married the young lady.  The couple later bore additional children conceived in the more conventional manner, as the first one no doubt originated as well.
     

Old Douglas, a faithful Confederate to the end

Searching for a letterbox in Vicksburg's Confederate Cemetery, we were led to the grave of another unusual rebel soldier.  Buried among the troops from the regular army are the remains of Old Douglas, a dromedary camel donated to a Mississippi unit of the Confederate army and assigned to the band.  Though his initial appearance frightened the regiment's horses, Douglas soon became a favorite among both the beasts and the soldiers, according to the back side of his headstone.  The camel served in several campaigns in Mississippi before being assassinated by 'Yankee sharpshooters' near the end of the Vicksburg siege.  His death was widely mourned—after some of the starving Confederates gave in to their desperation and grudgingly made a meal of him.

Finally departing Vicksburg and its peculiar oddities, we headed toward Ivy Hill, my sister's home in northeast Alabama, stopping along the way to plant a letterbox just off a forest service road near Louisville, Mississippi.  That was #47.  Just one more box to plant to complete the great 48—Alabama.

We arrived at Ivy Hill on Saturday in time for dinner with Jeanne and her progeny, who had all gathered for a post-Christmas celebration—four children, their spouses, and 11 grandchildren.  Even without Nanamama, who was also visiting, Ivy Hill was a full house—full of love, full of food, full of fun.  I was treated to a wonderful surprise when dinner ended with a birthday cake dessert complete with a colorful custom birthday banner made for me by Alex, Carson and Lizzie.  Later, the grandchildren re-enacted a favorite tradition in their family—a living nativity.  Everyone agreed that Lizzie's little lamb impersonation was baaa-rilliant.

Grant, Avery, Lizzie, Carson, and Alex

After a couple more days in Alabama enjoying time with family, we finally returned home and wound up our western adventures, but not before hiding the last of our Great 48 letterboxes at Natural Bridge Park, near the tiny town of Natural Bridge, AL (pop. 37).   Done, done, and done—our three-fold goal for the year accomplished.  We visited each of the lower 48 states, found at least one letterbox in each, and planted a letterbox in each.  Whew!

SATURDAY, 29 DECEMBER—MONIDAY, 31 DECEMBER 2012

States where we traveled and letterboxed in 2012

     

And then there are those days where most of what you see is what's in front of the windshield.  We woke up in Fort Smith Thursday with the intention of driving to Little Rock to visit the Arkansas Capitol building and a national historic site devoted to the 1957 desegregation crisis at Little Rock's Central High School.  We had hotel reservations in Little Rock for Thursday and Friday nights.

However, with the foot of snowfall that hit central Arkansas on Christmas day and all the reports we had heard about power outages, we decided to check with the Little Rock hotel before starting that way.  Sure enough, we connected with a recording indicating that their phone system was out.  A lengthy call with Marriott later, we learned that the hotel had power but no phone, internet, or cable, and we weren't sure what else might be lost in the storm.

Meanwhile, we were trying to hook up with cousins Ann and Eddie, who live in the Oklahoma City area, but were vacationing in Hot Springs.  We learned from them that the same foot that had stomped Little Rock had also kicked Hot Springs.  The condo where they had been staying was without power, and they had moved to temporary quarters to wait out the repair.

Now what?  We decided to cancel our Little Rock accommodations and found a place in Conway, just north of Little Rock, still hoping to hook up with Ann and Eddie in or near Hot Springs.  As we drove east, however, the weather forecast changed, introducing a new little twist.  From Hot Springs and Little Rock north (including Conway), more wintry precipitation was forecast, primarily freezing rain, which would lay a nice coat of ice on the roads.
   

Cancelling our reservations in Conway, we decided to continue further southwest on I-30 and made new reservations to spend the night in a tiny town called Caddo Valley.  Driving east on I-40 from Fort Smith, we saw deeper snow as we neared Little Rock and more trees brought down by the weight of the snow.

   

Southern trees just couldn't handle the weight of the snow.

When we reached the hotel in Caddo Valley, we were reminded of a lesson we thought we had learned before:  Listen to the reviews.  In spite of the Trip Advisor reviews on hotels in the town, we had booked the newer hotel rather than the one with the better reviews.  It should have come as no surprise to us—and really didn't—that the reviews were correct.  The desk clerks were extremely rude and totally uninterested in any concerns we may have had, including a family staying in the room above us who were apparently staging their own gymnastics meet, and an overpowering deodorizing spray that housekeeping used in the room that made both of us sneeze uncontrollably. 

Of course, at this point, the other few hotels in the town had been filled with locals who had lost power, so we were stuck with the choice of staying in Caddo Valley or trying to find something an hour or more away.  But should we go north or south?  And we were still hoping to meet Ann and Eddie and their kids the next day?  We decided to stick it out at the Dismal Inn.  When we scraped up dinner from the groceries and leftovers we had in the car (not too many restaurant choices locally), we found a very fitting message in a fortune cookie Ken had from P.F. Chang's:  It is sometimes better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
We both had a good laugh and closed out the day texting with Ann about the possibilities of meeting the next day.  Unfortunately, we forgot to include Mother Nature in the loop.  (Who even knew her number so we could text her?)  So she threw a monkey wrench into our plans on Friday.  Icy rain was falling, power had not been restored in Hot Springs, and, with good reason, the cousins were headed home to Oklahoma City.  Since we had just stumbled into them in Kansas a few weeks ago, we all decided it was best to go our separate ways today and see each other at a more propitious time.

As we continued south on Friday toward Louisiana, the amount of snow along the roadside dwindled, with light rain falling throughout the day.  When we entered Louisiana, we began searching for a place to plant our Louisiana letterbox.  Passing the D'Arbonne National Wildlife Refuge near Farmerville, we thought it might provide a shelter for our letterbox.  Driving into the area, however, we discovered that it doesn't even provide a refuge to wildlife.

Just a few hundred yards from the ranger station, we came across a couple of deer carcasses.  They certainly were not provided the safety or protection that the name "refuge" promises.  Any English language dictionary defines 'refuge' as a place of shelter or protection against danger.  So why are American taxpayers funding so-called wildlife 'refuges' to permit hunters to come in and kill the animals.  Wouldn't National Shooting Ranges be a more honest name for these deceptive areas? 

Disgusted, we left the so called 'protected' area immediately, hoping to never be subjected to such 'protection' and continued south to Monroe.  Though we found a nice lunch in the city at a local Greek and Lebanese restaurant, we did not find a place for our letterbox.  So we continued east toward Mississippi in the fog.
   

Thinking it might be a suitable spot for a letterbox, we headed north at Delhi, LA, to Poverty Point State Historic Park.  We found it to be a fascinating spot, with an amazing history dating back thousands of years, but as an active archaeological dig site, it seemed particularly unsuited for a letterbox.
   

Back to I-20, we continued east toward Mississippi, about to run out of Louisiana, and with the clock ticking.  Just three more days, and we need to plant boxes in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.  The jury is still out.  We drove across the Mississippi River into Vicksburg with the Louisiana letterbox still in our hands.  Backtracking west tops our agenda for tomorrow.  And boxes to plant in two more states in the year's three remaining days.

     

Our searches for letterboxes in the Amarillo area on Sunday led us on the trail of some Texas eccentrics.  Since big and bold seem to be the Texas manner in all things, it comes as no surprise that the state produces an abundance of folks who march to the beat of their own drummers.

The first 'Texcentric' whose handiwork we encountered was one Charles Marsh 3—yes, that's Marsh 3 because the oil fortune heir found Charles Marsh III to be a bit too pretentious.  Since the family fortune doles out all the income he needs, Charles has devoted his time and creativity to projects that he thought would enhance his native Texas panhandle.
     

Described as a public art installation, the Cadillac Ranch (pictured above) consists of ten old model Cadillacs half buried nose-first in the ground.  The angle of their tilt is said to mimic that of the Great Pyramid in Egypt.  Moved in 1997 to a field adjacent to I-40, the Caddy ranch attracts many visitors, all of whom are welcome to bring their own can of spray paint and become part of the art.

   

Part of Marsh's 'Dynamite Museum'

Another of Marsh 3's project that we visited to locate a nearby letterbox doesn't seem quite as successful.  Apparently, the idea behind the Floating Mesa was that if you paint some plywood boards a sky color and place them near the top of a mesa, it will create the optical illusion that the top of the mesa is floating.  Perhaps on those rare days when the sky is exactly the color of the boards, it works—the day we visited, not so much.  A wee bit of time on the computer, however, makes quick work of his objective.  On the right is Marsh's mess of a mesa with this day's sky color.  On the left is the effect he was trying to accomplish, executed with some very simple photo editing.
   

In a field adjacent to I-27 south of Amarillo is another 'art' installation commissioned by Marsh, as his attempt to illustrate Shelley's poem "Oxymandias."

“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command."

Two giant trunkless legs, 24 and 34 feet tall, stand on a platform.  Like Cadillac Ranch, the legs have stimulated the inner graffiti artist in visitors, this time in the form of spray-painted socks, whose style apparently changes from time to time and has included white tube socks with a red stripe near the top.
  

Rather than acknowledging that the idea came from the poem, the cheeky Mr. Marsh had an official-looking plaque installed, rewriting a little history to claim that the legs inspired Shelley when he supposedly made a trip to the Texas panhandle area.

Marsh's disdain for the city of Lubbock is also reflected on his plaque at the installation.  At the bottom, the engraving indicates that the face mentioned in the poem was damaged by Lubbock students after they lost a football game to Amarillo.  According to local lore, visitors regularly inquire in town about the nonexistent Amarillo Museum of Natural History, where the plaque indicates the nonexistent damaged statuary is now on exhibit.

   

Creating a black canvas for her message kept it from getting lost.

Marsh's most ubiquitous project has been his so-called 'Dynamite Museum' and it's here that many take issue with his self-described 'art' installations.  Prankster is a term often used for the eccentric Marsh and his phony road signs which are collectively known as the Dynamite Museum.  Made to look like traffic signs, the bogus markers can be found around Amarillo in the hundreds.  Google the term 'Dynamite Museum' for a look at some.  After the city understandably objected to these frivolous imitations, Marsh sent a team of people door to door offering to erect his signs on their private property near the street.  Apparently, there were lots of takers.

    

Lest we imply that Stanley Marsh 3 has cornered the market on quirkiness in the Texas panhandle, we must mention a few other roadside attractions we came across in this funky area.  With Cadillac Ranch garnering such a following, there were bound to be imitations.  South of Amarillo outside the town of Canyon, there's 'Combine City,' a collection of 14 retired harvesting machines planted at an angle in the corner of a field.  Unlike the original, there is no direct public access (and no unwritten invitation to spray paint) the farm equipment.
   

Not to be outdone, the town of Conway, a few miles east of Amarillo, plays host to the VW Slug Bug Ranch.  Planted nosedown (of course), these old Volkswagens have been treated to the same decorative treatment as Cadillac Ranch.

Continuing east, we arrived at the 'Leaning Water Tower of Texas' in the tiny town of Groom.  Originally a functional water tower, the structure was scheduled for demolition when a local entrepreneur decided to purchase it and station it near Route 66 (and later I-40) as an iconic sign for his truck stop, which has subsequently closed.  But the tower still attracts plenty of picture takers, like us, and hosts a nearby letterbox as well.
   

Feet on the left are actually above the ground, a creative gravitational challenge.

Further west, we came to the town of McLean (pop. 786).  The town, which once billed itself as "the heart of Route 66," once had 16 service stations, 6 motels, and numerous cafes.  Today it has been reduced to rows of unoccupied storefronts and nostalgic murals.
   
One local attraction which we unfortunately had to miss because it's open only in summer is the museum dedicated to barbed wire and, as an afterthought, Route 66.  Though we were unable to visit the collection, we were amazed that someone was able to create tight balls of barbed wire that were on display at the entrance.  Ouch!

So much Texcentricity, so little time.  Had we been able to devote more time to the exploration, we are quite confident that we could have chanced upon many more Texas eccentrics in the panhandle.  But our plans took us into Oklahoma City on Monday, where we'll spend a couple of nights, waiting out the snow event that the Weather Channel has forecast.  Thankfully, no Greek or Roman name has been attached to this possibility yet.  Time will tell.

     

Apparently the world did not end yesterday, as some thought the ancient Mayan calendar predicted, for we woke Friday morning to clear skies and 15° in Santa Fe.  Three things were on our agenda for today:  moving across New Mexico toward Texas, hiding a letterbox in New Mexico, and finding a few boxes.

When we planned our route, seeking a hospitable place to leave our NM treasure, the best option we saw on the map was north on I-25 to the town of Ribera, and then south on New Mexico Highway 3 to Villanueva State Park.  The park turned out to be an ideal home for our letterbox.  Along the banks of the Pecos River (pictured above), the park sits at the base of 400-ft sandstone cliffs.  Rocky trails climb the canyon walls, and now one of the trails hosts a letterbox from Georgia.

   

The park takes its name from the nearby community of Villanueva, first settled in the 1790s.  A church built in 1830 still stands, but the village appeared to be quite impoverished.  Hardscrabble houses in various states of disrepair sat beside the winding road, many looking as if a strong wind might threaten their fragile integrity.  In the center of the village, someone had created an attractive mural on the building housing the community well.
   

   

Route 66 provided the primary artery of travel for those who migrated west to escape the Dust Bowl of the prairies in the 1930s and easier access to and from the Pacific Coast for increasing vacation traffic in the following decades.  With all the travelers streaming through the small towns along the route, business owners along the highway prospered, no longer having to depend on just local patronage.  Even today, some of these establishments continue to sell their retro appearance to the nostalgia buffs who remain fans of the 'Main Street of America.'
     

Not surprisingly, when I-40 came along in the 1960s to replace the two-lane thoroughfare, local business owners objected strongly to the rerouting of all that traffic from their doorsteps, with some even filing lawsuits to try to halt construction or, at the least, influence the course the freeway took through their area.  In the end, the old '66' businesses that ended up near the interstate had a better chance at survival, and many abandoned, and sometimes repurposed, buildings were left behind along the old highway.

Fortunately for us, these old Route 66 landmarks also attract letterboxers wistful for a trip down memory lane, so we found numerous boxes near these vintage sites today.  At the end of the day, we changed our plans to stay in a little New Mexican town near the border and pushed on into Amarillo, happy that the setting sun was no longer in our windshield.

     

Tomorrow we'll spend another day in Amarillo, visiting Cadillac Ranch and some of the panhandle's other quirky oddities and searching for some Texas letterboxes.  Five more letterboxes to plant.

     

With the temperature at 7° this morning when we left Gallup, our car was understandably feeling a little sluggish.  After our tires were pumped up to 35 psi (from their normal 32) at the service in Reno, we didn't have the low tire pressure indicator complaining as it had in Bozeman, but the car seemed to want to warm up a bit before taking on the freeway.  That was just the excuse we needed to go search for a Gallup letterbox.  By then, everyone was ready and we headed east on I-40.

After yesterday's snowfall and dicey road conditions, we were happy to find that, as we anticipated (with a little help from the NM DOT web site), the sunshine and wind yesterday afternoon had left the highway dry and clear.  By the time we reached the Albuquerque area, there was little sign that it had snowed at all, and we headed north on I-25 toward Santa Fe, where our first stop was the New Mexico Capitol building (pictured above), known familiarly as the Roundhouse.
    

Completed in 1966, New Mexico's Capitol is one of the newest in the nation (older than only Hawaii's and Florida's).  Yet Santa Fe (pop. 75,764) is the nation's longest serving capital city, having been the seat of government for the area now known as the state of New Mexico since 1610—under Spanish, Mexican, and American rule.  At 7,260 ft., Santa Fe also has the highest elevation of any capital city, even including the "mile-high" Colorado capital.

Zia sun symbol from NM flag and aerial view of Capitol  (Aerial image from Google Maps)

Built in New Mexico Territorial style, the shape of the Capitol building was designed to form the Zia sun symbol, prominently featured on the New Mexico state flag and license plates.  When the building was renovated in the early 1990s, the legislature established the Capitol Art Foundation to acquire contemporary works by artists who live and work in New Mexico.
     

Housed throughout the public areas of the building and on the grounds, the Capitol Art Collection evokes the feeling of walking through a modern art museum.  A wide range of styles and media are represented including handcrafted furniture.  One work which caught our eyes was a stunning over-sized buffalo head in the third floor Rotunda balcony.
   

Buffalo by Holly Hughes (and eye detail)

Rotunda skylight

County flags on display in the rotunda

Senate chamber