Exhausted and Exhilarated

We’re out of the doldrums into the current, and I’m wanting to put all my photos and impressions here in a hurry before I gather more. Gah, remember when I posted every single day from Death Valley? I’ll try not to do that to you now.

West Texas

Tracy fixed the hitch, he replaced the toilet, and he got us out of Texas. None of it was easy. We drove a long day after Austin through central Texas, where the land is bereft of all life, it seems like.

We stayed the first night in the parking lot of a chamber of commerce in a town all about oil.

And then we drove through the rest of Texas into New Mexico, where it’s also all about oil. See those little squares? Small oil rigs showing via Google Satellite view.

They go on and on and on. New Mexico, it turns out, produces the second-most amount of oil per barrel, more than Louisiana, more than Oklahoma. It’s also a very poor state.

And when the wind blows, it’s a very very dusty state. At least where we were driving through, where agriculture had stripped the ground cover. We were trying to get to Roswell when the winds blew a dust storm up, and police blocked off the road, and we turned around with nowhere to go. We pulled over in a small town where abandoned buildings made of sheet metal were losing their roofs, and we walked to the police department for advice. Closed. Turns out the one administration lady had been picking her kid up from school early over in the next town; school closes when the wind picks up like this.

Good grief, the wind. Good grief the dirt blowing. Tracy kept going, I kept refreshing the New Mexico Roads website, watching roads close all around where we were meaning to go, but not the exact road we were on, so Tracy kept driving. At one point we pulled over to close the roof vents in the trailer; another time we pulled over to take the kayak cockpit cover off and stash the kayak contents in the truck until we could secure it all later. We went up the mountains at Cloudcroft, we went down the mountains at Cloudcroft.

Tracy pulled onto the dirt road here by an Air Force base near White Sands National Park, and we could barely see the path in front of the truck, much less where other RVers were boondocking beside the lake. He left the truck running and walked the path, then got in and we backed into a spot, almost forgot to put the wheel chocks in, took Banjo to pee, and sat down and drank a beer and listened to the wind. 60 mph winds across a lake hitting the trailer do not sound reassuring, I can tell you that.

Las Cruces, New Mexico

And yet, this is what Tracy did it all for, what we woke up to.

The mountains are obscured by the sand and the trailer there, but they look like this from the truck side.

Good grief are they beautiful, all around the city of Las Cruces, much more dramatic than this.

I just didn’t stop long enough to take many photos once we got into the town.

We walked in a park while Tracy looked for a rare bird, which gave me a chance to people watch

We toured an agricultural/chili pepper research center that’s part of University of New Mexico.

They have an agave that’s about to bloom!

We walked around an old town of beautiful adobe homes and businesses and an old plaza.

Plus the oldest brick building in New Mexico.

And because we’re us, we had a beer at a brewery while looking out at the mountains. I would tell you the names of the mountain ranges, the story behind the old plaza, the history of the New Mexican flag, anything at all about the lake we’re parked next to, my discovery of how much I admire the adobe homes, but we haven’t even hit the national park we’re here to see (that’s tomorrow). I forget what it’s like to have your senses in high gear all the time. It’s exhausting and exhilarating.