Day 8 Wed July 7th: Carlsbad Caverns, NM to Albuquerque, NM

Due to our lack of any finite destination, we tend to drag ass leaving the campground; this was the case leaving Carlsbad. We decided to skip out on Roswell, NM due to more than one report that it’s just a wide collection of little plastic green men and flashing LED’s. In it’s stead, we headed west thru Lincoln National Forest towards the White Sands National Monument. This might ring a bell because back in the forties, this is where the first atomic bomb tests were done (Trinity tests).

Duality

We drove in to the park and felt like we were going to turn the next corner and see the beach. Dunes and dunes of white sand as far as you can squint. The park rangers tell us there is life here, but I’m still quite skeptical. Life or not, we had a blast riding these dunes in our plastic snow sled- easily the best ten dollars ever spent. After almost getting lost in our search for the steepest dune to slide down, we decide to kick rocks and head towards Cibola/Albuquerque.

A waterless beach

The size of this dune is done no justice here.

Pure Bliss

A complete mouth-full of sand

Dr. Seuss inspired.

All that time spent conquering dunes would be the reason why we found ourselves in Albuquerque after dark. Not what we intended, but we had an awesome meal at this place called Ben Michael’s. The owner was the host, server, and chef all at the same time. I had to pass off some props and as soon as I did this, an explosion of chit-chat started flowing from his jaws. Leaving out a barrage of details, the guy is a retired pharmacist that wanted something real in his life so he built this restaurant out of adobe bricks he made himself and cut down all the timber from a forest close to his house. “A little bit of a creeper” says Denise, but nice nonetheless.

Giant Pistachio at a mid-desert Pistachio farm. weird.

We try and make it as far as we can after the restaurant, but the desert at night is like a carnie trying to relieve you of your wallet, you lulled to sleep. A little bit west of Albuquerque in a little town (I use this term lightly) called Grants, we stopped in for the night.