Something about not having a finite destination makes the time on the road feel almost zen-like. At least that what I thought before I hit West Texas. Kidding, but Texas is like a country all it’s own. Denise and I are trying to keep this trip as grassroots as possible. (The irony of that last statement is that I typed it in a Days Inn laundry room, chuckle chuckle.) So we’re trying to catch all the scenic highways and byways we can possible fit into this trip without going TOO far out of our way.
So from Austin we hit this highway nicknamed Canyon Sweep (The actual name leaves me). For anyone HAVING to make the trek across Texas, I would recommend it. Since I generally pull the early and late shifts driving, I was the only one in the car enjoying this vista. Denise nicknamed it Canyon Sleep, which was a little more accurate considering she saw the whole thing through the back of her eyelids. I’m being told that she DOES drive, damnit! She does, for all of you doubters out there.
After the Canyon Sweep/Sleep, we got back on I-10 all the way to 285 into New Mexico. The I-10 stretch is kind of beautiful in an odd way. The sky is so dominant it is impossible to ignore. All the vegetation is seven, maybe eight feet tall at most. The further you head west the shorter and more scrub-like everything becomes (including it’s inhabitants). With all this scenery and sky, the talk in the car got quite philosophical. Everything from Dark energy in the universe to the secret behind Starbucks success (branding) to trying to imagine this same trip in pioneer days (Lewis and Clark Style) to zombies and apocalypses. I know right, borderline delirium.
After taking a few back country wrong turns, we finally arrived at the Carlsbad Caverns. The six-mile drive past the entrance gates in to the park is like nothing I’d ever seen. Desert Mountains littered with scrub and gravel, winding in and out of these paved mountain passes.My amazement probably stems from the fact that I’ve been a Floridian for the better part of my whole life (I’m not hating mom and dad, it just is). I’m used to flat, hot, and humid with the beach never more than a couple hours away from anywhere. This landlocked feeling is quite foreign.
We pulled in to the caverns around sunset where we were falsely told we couldn’t camp there. We could we just needed a “back-country permit.” So we trekked our way into Carlsbad, the town. Picked the Days Inn as the least sketchy place to stay. Actually, after camping in the Louisiana swamps, the air-conditioned room with free HBO was like a vacation in itself. Even though it reeked of stale cigarette smoke and hooker spit, we both slept like champions.
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