New Mexico and Arizona (just added new photos!)

2 July 2006
Carlsbad, NM


Kelly:
We rolled out of Roswell under this amazing purple sky and cruised south toward Carlsbad, aiming to hit the caverns first thing in the morning and then make for Albuquerque, where we would meet our first familiar face since home, our old college buddy Nate. We scored some more free camping because the chick who was running the campsite just wanted to leave for the day, so sweet! We encountered a lot of wildlife even as we drove through the campground– dead snake in the road, some raccoons and deer, and, as we later learned, small scorpions near the bathroom. Hum. But still the night was amazing – there was a perfect crescent moon and a gazillion stars in the sky.

The morning was not so peaceful, as we awoke to three nearby families each fighting amongst themselves and screaming at their screaming children at 6.45 am. Depressing. We did chat with the couple the next tent over, Gary and Anna. Now, Gary was pretty much your stereotypical Vietnam Vet hippy type – rides a Harley (“Only vehicle I own”), longish gray hair held back by a bandana (I can dig it), naturey-wolf t-shirt, purple John Lennon sunglasses, and frequent references to his time in ‘Nam. His 19-year-old wife-girlfriend, Anna, was pretty cool, too. Gary and Anna had all kinds of good advice on places to see in New Mexico (they’re both attending in Las Cruces) as well as Wyoming, where Gary was from. Too much good stuff for one trip, but we did find that one of their recommendations, White Sands National Park, was more or less on our route to ABQ, so we stopped by later on.


Beautiful Day for a Drive...

He also told us about the Minutemen near the Mexican border – a righteous group of ‘Mericans so concerned with the swarming hordes of Mexicans scampering across the border that they sit in their patriotic lawn chairs each night with their guns across their laps and their megaphones in hand, eyeing the border and muttering “bring ‘em on” (is there barbed wire? Or a masking tape line like Peter and Bobby Brady used to divide their bedroom?). We may have said this earlier on, but the one thing that we have been struck by on this journey is just how much SPACE there is here in the U.S. It’s hard to feel or conceptualize this spending so much time in the Delaware to Boston corridor, which must be the most densely populated area in the nation. But we’ve got a LOT of room people. Perhaps this is why suburban sprawl persists just about everywhere, and maybe this is why people feel nothing about giving up an acre or two in front of their homes to rusting junk – there’s just so much empty land to spare! All this to say, welcome to our neighbors to the south – please come and bring some crispy tacos.

Underwhelming cuisine at Carlsbad's Underground Cafe

But first we visited Carlsbad Caverns, where I had heard about this groovy underground café (“Dine 750 feet underground!”) on This American Life once. The café was underwhelming as I was expecting a kind of kitchy 50’s coffeeshop vibe and instead got a lunch cart. But the Caverns were not (underwhelming, that is) they were really immense and beautiful. I can only imagine what the people first discovering it thought. We decided this would be a really good place to be a bat – so many hiding spots and places to explore! And dark. Beth, the little hussy, got “cave kiss”. Kelly, the good Catholic girl, did not.

The Road from Carlsbad

Leaving Carlsbad, we headed for White Sands. This took a lot longer than we thought – this state is large! And sparse… Beth was driving and my directions were pretty much “Drive 63 miles. Make a left. Drive another 59 miles then another left”. There were not many turnoffs en route to cause any confusion. These were the endless roads to nowhere that I’d dreamed of. And this was only the beginning of stunningly beautiful landscape that we were to be overwhelmed with in the next two days.

Happy Ferrets on the road

White Sands did not disappoint. We still can’t believe that this is in the U.S. – the park (and the whole southwest, actually) feels like a different country. The park feels more like a different planet. Pristine white sand dunes in the middle of the desert – like the purest beach you can imagine, but without an ocean. This has been created by some sort of gypsum and these dunes are constantly growing and shifting. It’s immense. The park is also a U.S. missile testing range, and is thus frequently closed when testing is underway. The range is apparently the size of both Delaware and Rhode Island combined. It was really magical, though, and well worth the diversion.

Beware of Missiles on the Highway...

White Sands National Park

Beth Runs up the Sandy Dunes

In the middle of New Mexcio?!

Kelly tries to steal Beth's cowgirl hat... again

New Mexican surfers.

We hustled toward ABQ in order to meet up with Nate before he went to work on the night shift. Again, it’s a huge state and we had vastly underestimated time needed to get from point A to point B. So although we were making good time on the long, empty stretches of highway, it was only when driving through a one-horse town at a modest clip of 38 mph that we were pulled over.

Now, I would not mention being pulled over, as it’s not a particularly flattering aspect of the trip, nor something we’re particularly proud of. But this was remarkable in that it was the third consecutive day that we had been pulled over – nothing life threatening: Texas (okay, legitimate – Kelly, very accidentally, cut off a cop near the Big Texan), New Mexico (some B.S. about driving with a turn signal on when some idiot with his brights on was blinding the driver), and now, again, NM? For ‘speeding’ through a ‘congested town’ consisting of a (closed) post office, one gas station, and several abandoned businesses? This is not an exaggeration.

The most amazing thing? Three encounters, three days, three different cops: no tickets.
Keep your fingers crossed, folks…

We proceeded at a cautious pace the rest of the way to ABQ, only pulling a slightly illegal U-Turn to double back over the Rio Grande. We got into ABQ a bit later than expected, but still had time for a quick dinner with our old chum Nate. Reentering social interaction was a bit jarring – when Nate first got a look at us, he said “Wow – looks like you girls sure have been on the road a while!” It occurred to us that perhaps we had let ourselves go a bit too long. Maybe the do-rags are not as flattering and becoming as we’d thought.

Rio... Grande

We enjoyed catching up with Nate and hearing about his wild life (we were sorry to have narrowly missed his gig the day before as lead singer in a heavy metal band). As we were at Bennigan’s, I made sure to order the broccoli bites appetizer, always a favorite. They removed them from the menu briefly some years ago. Upon discovering this, I fervently filled out a comment card and was surprised to receive a letter from them more than a year later informing me that they had been reinstated to the menu. Thank you, Bennigan’s!

3 July 2006
Leaving Albuquerque

We’d have loved to spend more time in ABQ and even more so to make it up to Santa Fe and Taos, etc. But we invoked the principle that since there was too much to cover in a limited time, this warranted an eventual return trip, and thus, we should make tracks. Plus, we had to be in Flagstaff, AZ that night and at the Vegas airport by noon the next day. We did take a quick spin through the center of town, picking up our buddy Route 66 again. Downtown ABQ looks fantastic – so stylish! Lots of great cafes and bars and restaurants and shops, with a Art Deco-kind of theme to the fonts and such. I definitely want to go back.

Roadside Wildlife in New Mexico

We picked up a tumbleweed for Beth's friend Joan,
but it was too big and prickly too keep on board for long!
This appears to be the one thing in 'Merica that doesn't come in "mini"

We cruised west on 66 and soon found ourselves back in the desert. There were more mountains and mesas and canyons and the rock and sand were an even deeper orange-red. It looked like it was supposed to and it was amazing. About two hours out of town, we saw a rainstorm off in the distance, and knew we were driving right for it. I could actually see the rain line moving toward us about 100 yards down the road, so quickly pulled over and put the top up just as the first splashes fell on the windshield. This brings us to one of our favorite sensations of the trip: the smell of desert rain. There’s no way to capture it, so we just kept the windows down and occasionally got out of the car to just inhale as deeply as possible, to the point of near hyperventilation. It was amazing.


We wish you could smell the desert rain


The drive to Flagstaff was one of the best parts of Route 66. It was truly a treat for all five senses. At one point the road took us through the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. We were not sure what to do at this point because we felt like we had filled our brains with too much beauty. Kelly kept saying, “What am I supposed to do? Look harder?”

pftfpfpfptpffptttt in the Painted Desert
T. Snaab contemplates the Painted Desert...

Beth felt the need to put her head under a pillow for about a week to let it all soak in before she could look at anything else. To combat the beauty, we stopped at a few tacky roadside attractions...

Ghetto dinosaur roadside attraction... pay $0.98 to take a picture with your own camera.

Hare it is! Jackrabbit, AZ
Jackrabbit, AZ
Standin' on a corner...

Beth:
We pretty much just kept driving and looking…and sighing. We seemed to be approaching Flagstaff just as the sun was setting; that combined with Mt. Humphries in the distance was providing us with yet another painting to drive into. We reached an oasis in the desert when we arrived at Matt’s house. He had only moved in a few days ago, but was already unpacked and settled. We love Matt! He had coffee brewing and dinner cooking when we walked through the door. It was lovely. We had been craving home cooked food and his spaghetti dinner with asparagus really hit the spot! We soon went to bed because we had to get an early start the next morning in order to pick Kurt and Joe up from the airport in Vegas.

Yes, ladies, he cooks too!

4 July 2006
Viva Las Vegas...

Beth:
The drive to Vegas required two cars as Matt would need to drive himself back to Flagstaff in a couple of days as Beth and Kelly would be heading west to the Pacific Ocean. Having been sitting literally 6 inches apart for the past week and a half, Beth decided to ride with Matt. Driving over Hoover Dam inspired her to jump out and take a “quick peek”. This turned into Matt and Kelly driving back and fourth a couple of times as Beth frantically tried to find them while the security guards were yelling at her to leave. It was sweltering at 110 degrees F (that whole “It’s not that hot- it’s a dry heat” is a steaming load of hooey) and Kurt and Joe called to say they were at the airport. (Luckily, Kurt’s flight was delayed an hour and Joe’s came in an hour early! Sweet!).