Hey hey USA - 16th October - up the Rio Grande to Hatch

 We decided that today would be a bit of a road trip. The Rio Grande flows through Las Cruces and we thought we would follow it north on a minor road until we reached the town of Hatch, famous for its chiles.

As we drove away from the house in Las Cruces we got a good view of the Organ Mountains. The sky showed us that the hot weather we had been experiencing might well be coming to an end.


At points along the way we could see the river that was meandering slowly and shrunkenly. We were starting to see large fields of chillies growing at the side of the road.




An old road, the Camino Real had followed the course of the Rio Grande until it left the side of the river to travel north east to Santa Fe on the Jornado del Muerto. A camp had been set up at this junction, near the present town of Radium Springs, centuries before at Paraje de Robledo, which in the mid 19th century helped defend the local white population against attacks by the Apache. In 1861 the Confederate Army established a post here to attack Fort Craig and other Union bases in New Mexico. In 1865, at the end of the Civil War, Fort Seldon was built to try and impose order on the various desperado groups operating in the area and again to protect the white  inhabitants from the Apache.
However in 1886 Geronimo's surrender ended the Indian Wars, and by 1890 the criminal gangs were no longer thought to be a threat so in 1891 the fort was abandoned. Built of adobe it has not suffered the years well.
Being tourists we made a slight detour to look at the remains. The site was enclosed and locked but I managed to get a couple of pictures over the top of the fence.



Now, approaching Hatch the chile fields grew more numerous until we entered the town.  Actually town is a bit of an exaggeration, Hatch is a tiny place and entirely subsumed by chillies. The Hatch chile is a speciality of the area. Some of them are not too hot so can be eaten like a salad vegetable if you don't mind a certain sting in the mouth. The chillies are roasted and skinned after they are picked in the autumn and packed in plastic bags as well as being dried or ground for spice. We bought a bag of fresh ones and used in our lunchtime sandwiches, sparingly.
The town was a bit like a funfair, and the burger joint Sparky's was rocking. We had intended to get a take out but did not want to join the queue so we had a walk around instead and then drove out of the town. The map at the end of the pictures will show you our route for the day.































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