Another good story by our friend Wylie.......
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Yesterday we made a journey from Alamogordo to Roswell, through a most beautiful valley. We jumped on US 70 here in Alamo, turned east in Tularosa and went through the following, Mescalero, Ruidoso, Tinnie, San Patricio, Bent, Hondo, Picacho coming up on the Llano Estacado to Roswell and Dexter.
While getting there was important due to the funeral services of the Father of our Son-in-law, the trip was a bonus. The Hondo Valley is lush due to the rains and apple and cherry orchards that are very ripe, if you want apples, apple-juice, cherries or juice, this is the place.
As we reached the end of the Hondo Valley, just before the Llano, the trees began to have lighter colored leaves, getting ready for the end of the fall harvest times. The starkness of the vegetation from rich valley to treeless Grassy Plains was something to behold.
As we passed San Patricio we saw the Peter Hurd Loop, Hurd and his friends were gentlemen horsemen, when the weren't playing cowboy polo. Robert O. Anderson, a neighbor of Hurd and Chairman of Atlantic Richfield Oil, was a regular player of their polo matches. The highway through the HondoValley is the Joe Skeen Memorial Road. Joe was a rancher and neighbor of the guys above, as well a State Senate Leader for many years.
A Peter Hurd side note: in 1966 when our Credit Union League held an educational conference near Santa Fe, there was a display of Peter Hurd paintings at the National Museum of Art, we were able to attend with many of our conferees. Hurd gave an excellent presentation of his paintings as well as his wife's (Henrietta Wyeth). He told about the portrait he did of LBJ, which was rejected by Johnson with the comment "it's the ugliest thing I ever saw". Hurd's response: ( looks just like him).
Hurd's water colors of his Daughter and the Hondo Valley were hits with everyone. I owned a set of the water color prints, but allowed them to disappear over the past eons.
On our way home to Alamogordo, we were blessed with three rainstorms, with light shows and thunder, at three different locations in the Hondo Valley. The green of the Valley is prettier than I have ever seen it. A delightful trip, even considering the circumstances.
A trip worth repeating.
Wylie Daugherty
For MIL'S, 10/2/16
Peter Hurd Gallery:
Peter Hurd Gallery:
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