Size Does Matter
In our travels we have found a great many roadside oddities that claim to be “The World’s Largest (fill in the blank).” I’ve said in the past that the Midwest has an abundance of these but we have also found the desert south has a lot of them also to fill up all the wide open spaces.
In Del Rio, TX they have a large pair of Cowboy Boots (of course) in front of City Hall. They also had a huge pair of Eclipse Glasses; since they had around 4 minutes of totality.
And The Maker of Peace is a large sculpture at Seminole Canyon, where we camped again this year.
In the Big Bend region of Texas there are a lot of pecan groves, reminded me of growing up in FL and seeing all the rows of orange trees. In lower New Mexico they change to pistachios. So, of course, I wanted to stop at the ‘tourist trap’ Pistachioland to see the world’s largest pistachio. It did not disappoint. We also bought a few bags of pistachios and pistachio fudge.
I also heard of an art sculpture that is at a rest stop just west of Las Cruses on I-10 overlooking the valley that Las Cruses sits in. It’s called Recycled Roadrunner and is made of, as you may guess, recycled items. The white color on the body is made of old shoe soles and the pointed edges of the wings are old crutches. I didn’t walk down to it to get a view up close but was impressed by its size.
Also, in Las Cruses we found the Big Chili Inn (hotel) that had a giant chili pepper out front. One of our plans for being in this area of NM was to go to Hatch for chilies which I would have expected to find this chili there but you take them where you find them. We are still out here looking for the odd things man does, I’m sure there are more to find.
We also went to White Sands National Park. The sand of these dunes is so beautifully white and soft, fine grain. Being as white as they are it reflects the heat so even in full sunlight, in the middle of the day, the sand is not hot. These dunes are so large that you can see a white wave of sand on the brown, rocky desert floor from a long distance away.
