One thing I love about road trips is the opportunity to think. Even with the mobile phones, a plethora of books on tape(now CD's or downloads) and my traveling companion who I am attempting to "Car-school" at 70 mph, there are plenty of times when all of that gets turned off, (Skye naps) or in the case of the books and music it triggers my thought process.
On thinking of the hows and whys of this trip, I nearly convinced myself to turn around. One of my rationals on the trips economic viability was based on our either camping or spending the night at friends houses along the way. And yet the last two nights have found us in hotels.
Another one of my reasons for driving as opposed to flying was to provide an educational experience for Skye and yet she is ending up mostly couped up in a car for endless hours. Granted this provides a lot of one on one "class time" together, we've just listened to "Little Women", we've discussed several of the topics from "The Intellectual Devotional" and had many other "academic" conversations. But given the time frame of our trip, we haven't been able to fully absorb anywhere we've been. The Ostrich farm and Biosphere are hardly landmarks or points of interest to the American Southwest, and by the time we did get to the Saguaro National Park, but for a brief 15 minutes it was too dark to see anything.
That both Skye and I are foodies who love to cook and yet we have found our selves snaking on whatever the mega-gas station/truck stops have to offer while missing out on some amazing regional cuisine is paramount to sin.
Add to all of this that I will be running 3 marathons and a 50 mile Ultramarathon within the next 6 months and I that I really haven't been running or training at all and that this is really when I should be getting in the most miles, on foot, that is, not behind the wheel 8-12 hours a day and you can begin to see why I am questioning my decision.
But Cindy, the voice of reason helped calm me and helped me reassess my goals and help re-align them with reality.
Back on the Road
Skye and I watched Anthony Bourdain the other day as he traveled through the Southwest and took note of his visit to Hatch, New Mexico, Chili pepper capital of the world. And that is exactly where we headed off to. We rolled into town before sunrise, and even though it was a Sunday, people were already setting up the chilli pepper souvenier stands. We were there exactly a week after their huge annual chili festival, and it showed. The flyers still litered the ground and banners that a week ago proudly fought one another for attention were beginning to fall down. We realized that unless you were there for the festival or you actually worked or dealt proffessionally with chili peppers, Hatch was little more than a wide patch in the road, a tourist trap for chili afficianados and that we simply couldn't wait for the place to wake up.
We realized some of the limits of the GPS when our journey to Hatch had our little arrow marker off into the whiteness of nowhere land. This was to happen over and over again during the course of the trip. Skye soon realized the value of being able to read an actual map and has since then become quite adept at that fading skill.
The fields of chili were kept hidden from us.
Just outside Hatch
With next to no itinerary, but with a few dates we were trying to hold to where we went became a daily sometimes hourly discussion. We figured we had enough time today to explore White Sands New Mexico on the way to visit our friends who had just recently moved to El Paso, as in like a week ago.
Unbeknownst to us, there was a hot airballon gathering the morning we hit the otherwise quiet National Monument.
What I am beginning to realize about American points of interest, is that if you have to walk for 5 minutes or endure any level of discomfort the crowds drop from the thousands to less than a handful. There were hundreds of people on lawn chairs with plastic snow saucers to sled down the sand slopes and yet when Skye and I took to the trail we had the place to ourselves.
Like Buzz Aldrin said of the moon, "Magnificent Desolation".
The trail was laid out by the markers, like the one in the foreground. Skye treks on....
Check out the camouflaging of this little guy.
One of the dilemas I have faced with home schooling is deciding what not to study, because there is an enourmous amount of amazing materials to study, with the internet there is no limit to what one can become an "expert" in. If one were to calmly and logically look at the realities and needs of society it could cause a revolution. I think that is what we need.
Anyway, we left White Sands with geology, botony, biology and history lessons. The fact that the region is an active missile test site left Skye more than a little unnerved and led to further socio-political discussions.
We met our El Paso hosts in a small historic town just outside of Las Cruces, Mesilla. We had decent Mexican food,(I can be a bit of a snob, both because Los Angeles has some great Mexican food and I spent the better part of a year in Mexico and I tend to snobery in a working man kind of way , anyhow.) but great to see friends and see their new pad. Unfortunately , one of them became deathly ill within hours of our visit and had to retire to his bed. But the energy we got from hanging with friends and getting back to one of the trips original tenets was beyond measure.
0 comments:
Post a Comment