Down by the southern end of Doniphan, there are several old industrial, mixed use lots. A few have buildings and equipment left that are worth checking out:

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I have been next door in the past and shot some pics of graffiti covering a large grey wall. (Flickr set here:Graffiti) For those shots I used my Holga and now that I have my Rebel T3i I wanted to go back and take them again.  They have since been painted over so I focused my attention on the empty terminal lot:

The BNSF train line that runs along Doniphan splits off and travels up to this site so there must have been some loading and unloading going on here in the past.  If a train happened to travel up the tracks now he would meet an old Olds:

The last resident looks to have been a construction company, and they liked Dr Pepper:

For 35¢ who wouldn’t? I wished it was full and running, the 100 degree heat was pretty unbearable, every surface radiated the high temps right back at you. The Pepper machine has been dragged out into the elements and cracked open but it looks to be intact. Other objects have been exposed for far longer as evident in this electrical panel:

There are other industrial artifacts scattered around the site in the same states of disrepair.  I was short on time to begin with so I exited and headed back to the cool confines of my office. Full Flicker set here: Abandoned Terminal

Well it does:

Fabens, Texas is the last stop east out of El Paso county.  The ginormous rooster guarding Fabens Street is not the only interesting item here.  Some of Steve McQueen’s “The Getaway” was filmed there, though off hand I couldn’t pick out where.

Before the rooster is a Pontiac Ventura permanently embedded in an empty lot.  It appears to be advertising the locations great potential for your future business opportunity:

Traveling down Fabens Street, left onto Alameda and in about a mile you will find what looks like a airplane graveyard:

The property has several fuselages scattered about it along with random airplane parts and crates of Steno cans.  The Steno and plane wrecks gave me a creepy “Alive” vibe, minus the cannibalism and bitter cold.

Fabens is also not immune to the effects of rampant file sharing and movie piracy:

Just down the street from Eddie’s is Hotel California:

Not really.  It sure does look similar to the Eagles album cover though.  The warm hands of God must have kept their palm trees alive during February’s unusual 4 day freeze, unlike 95% of El Paso.

I didn’t have much more time to keep driving around freaking out the locals so I headed back to EP.  The full Flickr set can be found here: Fabulous Fabens

Tuesday night the Plaza Theater hosted Chris Isaak and the Silvertones,  a first for El Paso.  We’ve seen him before elsewhere but this was the first time we’d been to the restored theater.  I’ll have to say, I was quite impressed.  The sound was incredible and the band played flawlessly.

There was an especially amusing instance where in typical El Paso fashion a couple was late and getting escorted to their seat in the front row 3 songs into the set.  Chris joked ” We’ve been waiting for you, until now we’ve just been messing around”  Classic!

If you are only familiar with his hits and not his full albums you are missing out.  He plays the gamut from slow ballads to rockin numbers.  It may have been small size of the venue, but the band was really engaged and there was a lot participation with the audience.

Chris played his hits, fan favorites and then broke out into a jam session where they covered Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and other Sun Records recording artists.  He mentioned that they had previously recorded at Sun Records for an upcoming album.

They finished up and for the encore out came the famous mirror suit!

It was about a two hour set making for a very enjoyable night.  I was able to record a couple of videos which are included in my flickr set here: Chris Issak @ the Plaza

On our way back from a trip to Durango Colorado, we stopped for some lunch at the Elephant Butte Dam in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.  The Dam water levels are at historic lows:

The Dam top

For comparison here is a pic from its peak, early 90’s:

The Dam from the other side when full

One of the most striking effects of this is how desolate and barren it feels now.  Now, I know its in the middle of a desert but when it was full it was a lot more inviting.  This just felt…hot, like being in a hot tub in summer.

All this exposure though has uncovered some interesting features though, most notably the site of an old hospital:

The hospital ruins

The restaurant at the Dam site has recently been remodeled and they had pretty good food at decent prices.  There is even a patio for chilling with a beer which with all this heat may be the biggest seller.

Dam Restaurant

There are paths that were built before the water was so high so it is easy to get down from the restaurant area but to get to Hospital Canyon we had to drive down some dirt roads, not 4×4 stuff but not your beaten path. A flickr walk through of the area can be found here: Dam!

I went back to the Southwestern Portland Cement Plant today and shot some more pics using a wide angle lens.  For reference here is what the plant looked like in the 1900’s:

Here it is from across the Rio Grande today:

I have shot a bunch of photos here, the place is really cool.  This section of the plant has been out of use for quite some time and the elements have really done a number on it.  Pigeons, bats and vagrants have been the only residents over the past 30 years and it shows.

There are a ton of places to explore and its fairly safe as long as you watch out for the holes in the floor and the huge killer wasps.  I’ve been here a few times and so far haven’t crossed paths with any wanderers or aliens. When it was easier to cross the river in this area, I’d be willing to wager this was a major stopping ground to stop and rest or change clothes.

I’m going to come back one more time and go into the main office area but for that one I think i’ll bring somebody with me.  It’s in an upstairs portion and there’s to many dark places for somebody to be hiding out.

The previous Flickr sets can be viewed here:

Set One 5/10/2011
Set Two  5/16/2011