Everything's bigger in Texas

Tuesday June 25. Everything's bigger in Texas, including the expanses of road without service stops or exits to gas stations within a feasible driving distance when you're running out of gas. Colin and I found this out the hard way.

To alleviate your worries, we are presently safe and sound at Sarah and Mike's house in El Paso, Texas. (That's my sister and brother-in-law, for those of you who don't know.) It is SO NICE to be in a home, even if we're not staying long, and to be with family. It's hard to really get homesick when you're doing so much traveling and sightseeing in such a short period of time because  the constant stimulation and excitement doesn't allow you to dwell on sad feelings, but it's hard to be away from home and family. I hadn't seen my sister since the wedding last September, and that's a long time to go without seeing your first and longest-lasting best friend. Plus, she has dogs, and since I've been missing my Lucy so much, what better way to soothe my heart's ache for her than with a substitute furry companion or two? Also, Sarah and Mike have a washer and dryer.

Last night, Colin drove and drove and drove till we were almost in Carlsbad, New Mexico. I, being the excellent copilot I am, slept most of the way. After concluding that there weren't any easily accessible free camping spots along our route that we could stop at to break up the six-hour drive to the caverns, and after listening to Colin insist that he'd rather drive all the way to Carlsbad anyway so we could wake up and be the first patrons there, I must have fallen asleep. And it must have been a deep sleep, because I didn't wake up until Colin shook me when we were stopped somewhere in BLM desert lands and declared that we were sleeping in the car because he saw two rattlesnakes while attempting to find a place to set up the tent. (Arizona and New Mexico are full of BLM forest and deserts, which are federally owned by the Bureau of Land Management and mostly open to the public for primitive camping. We stayed on BLM lands near the Grand Canyon and in southern Utah near Arches and Canyonlands.)

We woke up with the sun the next morning, as has become the custom, and drove fifteen minutes (most of it bumping through the desert to get back to the highway) to Carlsbad Caverns. We were definitely the first to arrive. The gate was open, but the Visitor's Center and entrance to the caverns was not, so we napped a while longer in the car.

I woke up an hour and a half later feeling like I hadn't slept at all. Colin suggested I try one of the energy drinks we'd picked up in Denver, which he also indicated were to thank for getting us safely to our resting spot last night. I'm not a fan of energy drinks, much preferring my standard cup of coffee to get me going in the morning, but we had stopped at a 7-11 back in Denver and while Colin ran inside to get ice for our cooler, I chatted with the friendly girl sitting outside at a booth promoting these energy drinks. When I told her where we were from and where we intended to go, she loaded my arms up with the cans for sustenance, insisting I take at least one of each flavor. I hadn't been able to bring myself to try them until now, and although the taste was less than savory, they sure did the trick. Lack of breakfast (the most important meal of the day and my hands-down favorite) notwithstanding, I was pumped for these caves!

They did not disappoint. Carlsbad Caverns is, in a phrase, the cave to end all caves. (I guess I'm not being technically correct in saying that, though, since a cavern is, by definition, a large cave or a cluster of caves, and Carlsbad is certainly a series of very large caves.) In retrospect, the caves we visited in Missouri are dwarfed in comparison, so I'm glad we went to those first (especially since we got our own private and informative tour). 

The pictures we took inside the caverns don't do them justice, as pictures often fail to do, but especially because the lighting in the caverns is so poor for photography. But we savored each ocular delicacy we set our eyes upon--corals, helictites, stalactites upon stalactites, stalactites running into stalagmites so you can't tell which is which or where one ends and the other begins. Then, since we are young and able-bodied and the wait for the elevator to take us back up to the real world had grown significantly by that time, we decided to walk the 79 stories out of the caverns.

We finally emerged after 1 1/4 miles of grueling ascent with every muscle in our legs and bums burning. Our next stop was my sister's in El Paso. I was so excited to see her that I offered to drive the two and a half hours there, even though I was hungry and sleep-deprived. (Colin was more sleep-deprived, although probably less hungry because of the double dinner he ate the night before, but he gratefully acquiesced and handed over the keys.)

Now, a lot of people thought we were crazy when we told them we were stopping in Texas after New Mexico and before our destination in San Diego. But for the less geographically inclined of my readers, I'm including a screen shot of this part of our route so you can see just how much sense it did make to stop there for a few days to rest our bones, visit with family, and (of course) do some laundry. 

So I started driving down the windy desert roads away from the caverns. When we were about to be on the highway, I realized we only had a quarter tank of gas. No problem, I thought, I'll just stop at the first gas station off the highway.

Fifty miles later, we hadn't passed a single exit advertising gas, let alone a roadside fuel station, and we were getting worried. Colin used the GasBuddy app on his phone to find the nearest gas station, and it told us to turn around and head back to Carlsbad. Knowing we probably didn't have enough in our tank to get us back there, I prayed the app was wrong. I had no choice but to forge ahead. I drove and drove, growing more anxious with each "bing" alerting us of our dangerously low fuel level. We debated whether we should just call AAA and let them know that we would certainly be running out of gas any minute now and to just send someone out, please, to find us broken down somewhere along Route 180 between Carlsbad and El Paso. Judging by the gaping expanses between highway exits and the lack of any visible civilization, we figured we'd be waiting several hours for roadside service.

Finally, we approached an exit for another highway running north to south. Hoping and praying that this highway would lead to some sign of civilized life within the next twenty miles, I got off the exit and headed north (south would likely have brought us into Mexico). There were no other cars on the road, but we did pass a lot of farmland and tractors in operation. After about fifteen miles of this, I spotted a gas station. As we drew nearer, I saw it was desolate, the sign reading a number so low that I hadn't seen in years. Just as I was gripping the wheel in a silent scream (Colin was somehow miraculously asleep at this point), I saw another gas station. I pulled in, shut down the engine, and thanked the heavens that we'd made it. Colin woke up just as the car was bouncing up the driveway so I didn't even have to pump the gas--a simple act that growing up in New Jersey has allowed me to develop a resentment for.

Driving back to the highway, I was too relieved that we hadn't broken down in Middle of Nowhere, Texas that I couldn't be annoyed at the extra thirty minutes of driving we'd tacked on to the trip to my sister's. Thankfully, the rest of the drive was uneventful, and now here we are, hanging out with Sarah, Mike, Cooper and Sadie. And as I said before, it is SO NICE to be here.

The waterfall ruse

Monday June 24. We are finally leaving Santa Fe.

I say "finally" because we just sat for twenty minutes outside of a restaurant waiting for Colin's to-go burger meal to be ready. Normally this wouldn't be of any significance, but Colin and I just ate a pound of pasta in a parking lot and I was itching to get back on the road to get us a little closer to our destination in the southeast corner of the state while there was still some daylight left. Instead, I watched the sun go down over the Santa Fe city buildings from inside our idle car that sat in front of a restaurant.

Let me backtrack a bit. We spent last night in a hotel in Albuquerque, which we had decided on because a) it was inexpensive and b) we desperately needed showers, especially since c) Colin's foot wound needed a proper soap-and-water washing. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take advantage of the hotel's wi-fi because we didn't get there till after 10pm and we were up early to ravage the continental breakfast (of course) and then get on our way to the hike we'd planned, which was about an hour drive from the hotel.

The breakfast was your standard jelly and toast and watered-down juice-impostor affair, with one big exception: at the end of the buffet, where one often encounters a DIY waffle maker, there was a pancake machine. A PANCAKE MACHINE. All you had to do was press the green button and two warm, almost fluffy pancakes popped right out the opening on the side. Amazing, I thought. What's next, a cooked-to-order egg machine?

We parked ourselves at a table right next to the pancake machine, the green button at arm's reach. After we'd each had a couple rounds and I was just thinking I could go for another, I looked over at the machine and saw it was still spitting out pancakes, but instead of a duo of perfectly round, 3-inch diameter golden hot cakes, they were now sliding off the belt in what looked like a giant puddle of cooked batter. Perfect, I thought. Now I don't even have to push the button! Colin and I engaged in an unspoken race to finish each mutant pancake before the next one popped out. 

After two or three of the monster cakes, a kitchen worker came to the overworked machine's aid to fix the dysfunction. To our horror, she also dumped the remaining monster cakes right in the garbage. (In retrospect, it was just as well because I was teetering dangerously close to stomachache territory after all those high fructose corn syrup packets.) We saw this as a sign that we should leave the buffet and start our day.

We headed north just past Santa Fe to Los Alamos. One of our guide books had recommended a particular hike that seemed like a great adventure: the trailhead was only accessible by shuttle and it took you down into a canyon, past two gorgeous waterfalls and farther down to the Rio Grande. It was hot and the sun was unforgiving, so any hike that involved water in the otherwise arid New Mexico heat sounded good. 

We arrived at White Rock Visitor's Center, where we planned to leave our car and catch the shuttle to the hiking trail, and I ran inside to check the shuttle schedule and grab a map of the area. When I asked the woman at the counter for a map, she told me that a lot of the hiking in the nearby mountains was off-limits on account of raging wildfires. I was slightly taken aback by this--I knew there were wildfires in Colorado while we were there, and as far as I knew they were still burning, so Colin and I had assumed when we were driving earlier that the cloud of smoke we saw billowing over the mountains in the distance was Southern Colorado. But I guess the fires were closer than we'd realized. The elderly woman went on to say that it would still be worth the shuttle ride for us to scope out the rest of the area because there were plenty of shorter hikes that weren't considered "backcountry." And even though she couldn't give me a definitive answer to my question of whether we'd be able to access the trail we wanted, she was so nice about it that when she asked me to sign the guestbook, I couldn't say no, even though Colin was waiting for me in the car and I didn't have anything particularly original to leave in the comments section.

A fifteen-minute shuttle ride up a windy mountain road brought us to the Bandelier National Monument. We went into the visitor's center for a more localized map of the area and I asked one of the park employees about the trail our guidebook had mentioned. He informed me that the area was not closed due to wildfires, but the lower half of the trail was nonexistent since a flash flood washed it away in 2011. So while we wouldn't be able to hike down to the Rio Grande, we could still hike down to the first waterfall and back, a total of three miles, which he assured us would be worth our while. 

So we set out on the hike, thinking that maybe the reduction in mileage and strenuous ness wasn't so bad since Colin's foot injury was still smarting. But it was hot and, as we soon found out, the trail offered little shade. One older couple walking in the opposite direction stopped to fan themselves on the side of the trail and could barely wheeze out a responsive "hello" as we passed. I wished we'd brought more water, but it was too late to turn around, and we forged ahead. 

I suspected something wasn't right when I noticed we were walking alongside a slightly damp would-be creek with no water in sight, but I figured we were in the desert, so it must dry up often, right? We walked over the first footbridge that was supposed to carry us over a stream, laughing at how we just as easily could have stepped on the dried-out bed of clay. At the next crossing, Colin stopped to doodle in the waterbed.

We passed another group of people on their way back from the falls, this time a whole family looking considerably less exhausted than the first unfortunate couple. Again, we greeted them. I thought it was strange that we still couldn't hear running water because it felt like we'd been walking forever so I knew we must be close to the falls, but I also knew that the park employee had given the hike and its star waterfall such a glowing endorsement, and those people couldn't possibly walk right past us without warning us that we were slouching our worn-out, parched bodies toward a total fallacy?

But I was wrong. We rounded the corner and came face-to-face with a sign that informed us that the trail ended here and we must turn around. Sure enough, the trail ahead was littered with fallen rocks and tree branches and all sorts of unstable footholds. And when we turned around to look behind us and across the canyon, we saw an opening in the rocks and a v-shaped slope that must have been carved out of water, and not a drop of it in sight. 

Colin took a picture of the would-be waterfall, but I was too annoyed to find any beauty in our surroundings. How could those people not have said anything to us, not even a little heads up? I'm from New Jersey, and even I expect more from strangers. We began the long haul back, vowing to warn any passerby about that crock of a waterfall at their trek's apex, but we didn't encounter another soul until we were back at the visitor's center. Colin's foot was pretty sore by that point, but we were determined to redeem our disappointing hike by giving ourselves a self-guided tour of the ancient Puebloan cave dwellings the area is better known for. So we grabbed the informative guide booklets from the visitor's center and walked another mile up, in, and around the ruins.

By the time we were finished, all that energy expenditure in the merciless heat had pretty much sucked the life out of us. The shuttle brought us back to our car and we could think of one thing only: food. Ours was the only remaining car in the parking lot, so Colin had the bright idea to fire up the propane stove and boil some pasta.

Since we were so hungry when we started cooking, we boiled the whole one-pound box of pasta, and we both ate until we were bursting at the seams, somehow managing to swallow every last bite. With my belly full and my muscles aching, all I wanted to do was crawl into a ball and sleep, but we had a six hour drive ahead of us to our next destination: Carlsbad Caverns.

Colin was driving, which left me in my usual role of researching free campsites not too far from our route. I was on my phone doing just that when Colin asked me if I wanted any food from this restaurant because he was about to call in an order. I laughed. My stomach was still uncomfortably full, so I didn't even know why he was joking about eating more. Then I heard his end of the phone conversation: "Hi, I'd like to place an order for pickup..."

And then we were getting off the highway and driving into Santa Fe. My incredulity turned to appall as we pulled up to the restaurant. Colin turned the engine off and explained that we would have to wait there because the food wouldn't be ready for another 10 or 15 minutes. I was so annoyed at what I thought was a huge waste of time and an unnecessary monetary expense that I got out of the car and walked around the block, taking in the sights and sounds of that small locality. It was Monday and the sun was just going down, but everything was closed up like it was Sunday, save for the bars and restaurants with music spilling onto the streets. I was able to snap a few pictures of street art on my short walk that all seemed, in their own way, to be stylistically influenced by this unique region of the country.

By the time I got back to the car, Colin was just coming back with his food, and I was significantly less annoyed by his gluttony. We sat in the car with the engine off while he ate. I still don't understand why we had to make that stop or how he even had room in his belly for all that food--I think he said something about wanting to be able to say he "had a Santa Fe burger in Santa Fe"--but I'm at least happy I can now say that I've been to Santa Fe.

Quote of the Day:

"I think I'm going to buy you a Camelback and make you carry my water until the $70 is paid off." -Colin to me while hiking