November 13, 2013

Morning:
           Gallup to Carlsbad. This is definitely the earliest onset of winter in my lifetime anyway. I drove into the blinding New Mexico sunrise, and the road goes straight into the big ball of fire. How could anyone build a road that costed a million dollars a mile not know that? Then I get stung at Bluewater Mountain, $2.02 for a Dairy Queen cup of coffee-like product. The small size was 16 oz. Why don’t these restaurants just admit they want to sell you a five-gallon pail of coffee and take the rest of the week off. And the motels want everyone to rent one big room.

           I drove on to Laguna, along a heavily advertised route for the “Laguna Burger”. I pulled in at 7:30 AM and they told me the burger isn’t available until after 11:00 AM. Gee, I told them, I must have missed the sign that said about that. They were not amused. So what, I’m on the right side of the counter. Bwaaa-ha-ha-ha!
           Here is a special treat for you. I found the only tree in eastern New Mexico. It is about a hundred miles north of Roswell. Roswell? Isn’t that where the aliens crashed in 1947? Yep, same place. I expected it to be full of hillbillies and retired air force personnel who lacked credibility, but it is a booming little city. Um, don’t expect anyone there to actually know where the UFO crash site is. They are downwind from Arizona, if you know what I mean.
           To get here, I drove through Albuquerque, which is really spread out but is basically another barren moonscape. Or as Evil Roy Slade would put it, “a punctured pustule on the face of the western slopes”. The best view is the freeway heading up the hill toward Texas. Once more, I hit areas where I was the only vehicle on the road. But then I’d hit a truck convoy, which is a good descriptor of I-40. I measured one busy section of 32 miles where there were no cars on the road, only semi-trucks.
           I disobeyed my own “Frank Rule”, where by you do not get off a freeway for services unless you can see the off-ramp, the on-ramp, and the actual gas station. I followed a sign to McD’s and wound up stuck on a secondary road with all the pickup gang driving hungover to work at the fertilizer plant. Is my guess.

Daytime:
           Something sad to see is the number of ghost towns within a thirty mile corridor around the Interstates. All non-freeway services have been gradually wiped out by the major routes. Here is an abandoned motel in Encino. I call this photo the Encino Ghost Motel. I see houses much nicer than anything I grew up in boarded up and left to the elements.

           East New Mexico is no trees, high winds, and no services. Look at the map, I took Highway 285 through a completely unpopulated area. Mercifully, no big trucks have discovered this beautiful four-lane highway, so it was a pleasant one-hand drive for most of the day.
           Back to Roswell. I looked for the famous UFO burger place, but it isn’t there any more. None of the locals can point to the places seen on countless newsreels. Here is a UFO “research center” disguised as a painted over movie theater. Other than that, there are only a few head shops. You know, selling Martian bongs or whatever. My rig got more looks than the few obvious places trying to cash in on the outer space ticket. I’m saying there is nothing about the UFO matter in Roswell except this theater and a few small souvenir shops.

           So I walked into one of them and asked if I could buy parts for my time machine. They, having heard it all, said they were sold out. But I knew they could get them because they told me check back in again last month. Get it? Last month. Har-dee-har-har, I made a funny.

Evening:
           I drove on to Carlsbad, arriving in the area after sunset. It is still cold enough to keep wearing my parka. I found the library, so don’t be surprised if you find some of these topics double-covered. This blog does not check for that kind of thing.
           You know, I’m getting used to these towns where even the people who live there have no idea what is going on. Nobody could tell me where the famous Carlsbad Caverns were, though they all said it was “six to eight” miles south of town. More on this tomorrow when I set out to find these caves. But I can tell you the caverns are one hell of a lot further away than that. There is a reason they say “six to eight” instead of saying “seven”. Every one of them did it.
           South of Carlsbad, Highway 285 narrows to a two-lane sort of wagon trail all the way to the Texas border. Rutted asphalt and lumpy bridges. But it will get you to Texas and that is good enough. Band practice called from Florida and band practice is cancelled this Sunday. The guitarist has a gig with his “other band”. So I’ll slow down and take it easy the rest of the way back. I pass the half-way mark some time tomorrow.
           The camper? It works so well I don’t even think about it. As Homer says, worry works because most of the things you worry about never happen. Now proven in both the hot and the cold, I can count on the camper for a good, deep night’s sleep like last night. And it was friggen’ cold out there. My new and improved model will add features like some kind of privacy curtain for getting in and out of the hatch. So people can’t stop and stare. Like they do.