Plain Of Jars

Corvette Road Trip - Desert Storming

The afternoon rain was apocalyptic. I don't mean a polite drizzle or even a steady downpour with a few isolated splats. I'm talking about a real, West Texas, gully-washin' frog- strangler here. I'd already slowed from the posted speed of 80 mph to 55, the wipers were on high, and I was peering through the windshield desperately trying to see what was ahead. All of a sudden, it felt like the engine had quit, and the car started to fishtail...

For the second time in the space of a few moments, the C6 seemed die, but this time I noticed that the traction-control light was illuminated. Even with fairly new Goodyear Eagles, the Corvette was hydroplaning. So I slowed down even more, and every few seconds the brakes would apply themselves, the engine would back off, and a-sliding we would go. Still, the Vette's computerized minder always kept us pointed in a straight line, providing real-world validation of this valuable safety system.

After successfully making it through the downpour and across the border into New Mexico, we decided to visit the town of Columbus. The stop was no coincidence. In 1956, my parents bought a farm in Hillsboro, Virginia, that had sat unoccupied since the early 1900s. The house, now on the National Historic Register, was built in the 1850s by a mining engineer named Purcell. Purcell was later killed in Columbus during the reign of terror conducted by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa.

Columbus is also the site of a famous Villa raid in which eight soldiers from the 13th U.S. Cavalry and 10 American civilians were killed. (The Mexicans suffered more than 70 KIA.) As a result, President Wilson ordered "Black Jack" Pershing into Mexico to kill or arrest Villa. Ol' Pancho managed to avoid Pershing and was never captured. Columbus today is just a sleepy New Mexico village. We did, however, find a couple of gems there, including a 1912 American LaFrance fire engine.

What made this pumper unique was that it could pump both water and foam—a helpful feature in the bone-dry desert. Our other discovery was a circa 1915 Jeffrey two-wheel-steer armored car—a veritable coffin on wheels. One can only imagine how hot it got inside this steel, Model T-framed, Vickers- machine-gun-toting behemoth. (Trivia: Jeffery later joined Nash, which was ultimately absorbed by Chrysler.) After this small side trip, we decided it was time to head for the mountains and, hopefully, cooler temps.

The Plain of Jars - Blogabond

Early-ish start for us this morning trying to haggle down a tour as much as possible, but as usual, we didn’t have much luck and the cheapest we could find was about £30 including everything. Too much for stingy backpackers on a budget! So we took a motorbike instead although the weather was not on our side and instead bucketing it down, so armed with a stolen umbrella from the guesthouse and a poncho kindly given to us from Gill our friend we hung out with a few days before, we headed on our way.

You cannot even walk everywhere in the site as some of the areas haven’t been cleared and checked for old bombs, but we stayed between the white markers (safe areas), so we were ok. We spent about an hour walking around but made a run for the shelter when the rain got too much where we waited for another hour for it to die down a bit before we went on our way to Hmong village (Bomb village) about 40km away.

My mum bought me three huge jars of nutella and plain anise cookies....i love her

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