Mike is a driving machine. When he drives to Canada to go fishing, and he's done it twice, he drives mostly the whole way. So he did drive most of the way to Albuquerque, which was our first goal. It's about half way to San Antonio. Only it happened to be the Hot Air balloon festival that weekend, so there were NO [affordable] hotel rooms available on Friday night in the city or just outside the city. So I made a reservation for a little town after Albuquerque called Soccoro. It was quite a bit more affordable to us (we needed 2 rooms, remember), and never are the prices you pay the nice low ones advertised on the internet.
I had planned a route the night previous using Google Maps on our home computer and printed out all the directions to get there. There are MANY roads to take you to Texas. Google Maps generally picks the shortest. Mike figured out how to use his truck's GPS and he'd programmed in the address of Damian's house in San Antonio. Only there were so many conflicts between the two. AND our two atlases that we'd brought. Crazy. One smart phone (that I didn't use), two paper atlases, one GPS. And we still couldn't decide whether or not to turn left or right at Fredonia!! Plus, there was a huge oversized thing slowing traffic along US 89 for miles and miles, so we didn't want to follow it, where ever it was heading. We wanted a different route than it! So the decisions begin. I could not read my printed maps, unfortunately, the size was way too small. I could read it on the atlas (our bigger one; the smaller one Berenice gave us was newer), but I could not just believe the GPS because I'd never used it, it was programmed for something different than what I'd put into my Google Maps search. Sheesh. I've never been so conflicted in my navigating before. And, despite having "Directile Disfuntion," I'm a pretty good map navigator!! But do we want to drive through reservations, or do we want freeway? We hadn't made those decisions together before we got on the road. Mike wanted to just follow his GPS. I wanted the Google Map path.
Mike's big red pickup is comfy. It has a large gas tank. Like 30 gallons big! So Mike figured we could easily make it to Albuquerque. Only we weren't going to Albuquerque. We were going to Soccoro, NM to where our hotel was. And the freeway didn't go straight there. His truck also has the feature that tells you how many miles are left in the tank, according to present road driving conditions. The GPS was telling us "so many miles to" so I guess Mike re-programmed in the hotel address into it at one potty stop. We decided NOT to stop for Lunch anywhere along the way because we had plenty of snacks and drinks and had finally decided on a pleasant audio book to listen to that wouldn't put the driver to sleep. And on we drove, toward Albuquerque, but not quite.
So on we drove. And Drove. And DROVE. The freeway told us (or maybe it was a map...I don't remember) to turn off on a certain highway to head down to Soccoro...and the same highway we would need the next day for our trip. And the gas was getting kind of iffy. We wandered around very barren hillsides and plains on this cut-off highway. It was paved. It was VERY barren and deserted. No towns, no gas stations, no people. It was getting darker. The tank was emptier. And we were praying harder. Would we make it to a gas station before we ran out? Would the intersection that we would end up at actually have a gas station? Or would it just be an on ramp? We were sweating. I was driving. I slowed to 60 mph [because that's what the speed limit was] and we kept praying silently to ourselves. For a tailwind, good mileage. For there to be a gas station where we needed it. For the gas to last... It was getting so close. Was the dashboard right? Would we really make it????
Well, we did. We filled up at the first station we came to in Los Lunas, NM. The truck took 31.9 gallons. It was thirsty, and prayers were answered. We all breathed easier, and we had a nice fast food dinner at Carl's Jr. Less than an hour down the road was our Motel. We got checked in and had a decent night's sleep.
On the road again on Saturday morning! We left Soccoro and headed toward Roswell, NM. It was supposed to be an easy turn from Roswell to highway 285 that would take us to Carlsbad. We had decided that Carlsbad Caverns would be our one "fun" stop of the long drive. It would be something to break it up a little bit and Mike nor Pam had been there before. I may as well have not, since I was about 6 years old when I did go. I'm pretty sure the visitor's center, the trails, the brochure, gift shop and trails have changed a bit since then. Maybe not the formations. Once we got to Roswell, we decided to get a little more gas and use the potty.
I forgot to mention that when we stopped for Mike to use a bathroom in Fredonia, AZ, (Pam and I just stretched), a huge spider dropped down from the door way right in front of him as he entered! Yikes. Better him than me. I would have really screamed. He did not. He just smashed it and went, "Wow. That was a huge spider." Well, in Roswell at the gas station, we had a similar experience. The women's was closed, so Pam and I guarded the door for each other in this gas station bathroom:
In Roswell, it's always the season for Aliens. So here are a few:
The alien is the green one.
This was the closest thing to a UFO we could find. Driving into town, from a distance, and standing above the rest of the buildings, the top of this grain elevator did look rather UFO-ish.
The fields surrounding Roswell are quite green. There are many MANY pecan orchards AND there are cotton fields! It reminded me a lot of Georgia.
Below: Cotton!
Leaving Roswell, it was supposed to be easy to find the next highway, but it was not so. We were abducted by Aliens and taken to some strange point out away from town, in the midst of the fields, where we had to ask directions and get ourselves through backroads in the fields (some un-paved) to find the main highway to Carlsbad town and then to the caverns. But eventually we found our way to Carlsbad.
Once IN Carlsbad, the town, you'd think, especially with all our navigational equipment and resources, that we'd just breeze on through and drive right there. Not so. We circled through town trying to find the correct way to the caverns. There was such UNCLEAR and ambiguous signage that we circled through a number of times, tried to get the GPS re-programed, consulted maps....so weird. I mean, we're talking a major National Park here! There should have been signs everywhere, "This way to Carlsbad Caverns." Nope. None. The highway number we wanted went EAST on the north end of town when we first saw the highway signs. But it didn't go WEST, and that's the way we needed to go (southwest, technically). We were so frustrated. The westbound one was eventually found, but it was WAY way on the other end of town. Sheesh. Lost twice in two hours. But we had gas! And snacks. And full tummies, had had a good breakfast...we were okay. It was an adventure.
But why such poor signage in Carlsbad, NM? For example, we were looking for hwy 62/180. It goes to "Whites City" and the caverns, south and west. Hwy 285 is the way we came into Carlsbad and it continues on through on to Loving, south and east. Loving, NM is NOT on the road to the caverns! Yet the only directional signage was saw was "Caverns, Loving" with an arrow pointing straight ahead. No numbers of highways to let us know that we had the right way. I didn't want to go to Loving. That made no sense to me. On my maps, the roads didn't really fork, we couldn't see on the GPS what we needed to. It was truly an exercise in frustration. Where was the road we needed and why in the dickens was it so difficult to find it??? Like I said, we have never had such navigational challenges. Ever. Well, maybe in Romania. ha.
Lost. Yes. Even with a map. Two Maps. Three maps. It didn't matter. Just give me good signage, please.
On to the caverns. We got there. It's a lovely National Park. We loaded our truck bed contents into the cab of the truck, went in for our potty stop, got our ticket to enter the cavern and we walked through the "shortcut" trail through the cavern. In the Cavern:
Heading out of Carlsbad, we ended up on another, um, conflicting...set of messages from my Google Maps map and instructions and Mike's truck's GPS instructions to get to Damian and Tandy's house. I mean, from Carlsbad Caverns National Park, there are LOTS of ways to get to San Antonio. My map said go south and to the highway. His said go north and to the highway. We went his way after Mike swerved off the road to re-consult maps and my protests, but went his way. It was a rutted dirt road through fields. Mine would have been three miles more, but on paved roads. Ugh. Next time we do this, we will fly to Texas. ha. And only bring one set of directions. Period.
The rest was smooth sailing for the most part. We drove through huge and very busy old fields in Pecos and Fort Stockton areas of Texas. Trucks everywhere. Lines of traffic full of oil tanker trucks on two lane highways. Pickup trucks were the ONLY vehicles we saw along the way. Lots of trucks. "Lets Go Trucks." One of Damian's favorite books as a little child. I tried to buy one once, just for kicks. Did you know that those Little Golden Books can get quite pricey?
We were enjoying listening to Dean Hughes "Children of the Promise" volume one and started on volume 2. We stopped at a rest area to rest, stretch and use the potty, switch drivers. We were on freeway now, it's not terribly crowded and the hills are increasing. This time we didn't wait too long to get gas, but I'm glad Mike was monitoring the gas as I was not. We stopped off the freeway at some place outside of San Antonio a ways and then...well, we got a bit turned around trying to find their home, too. But this time the GPS unit did work well. We only drove by their house twice before actually getting to the driveway. When you "Google" their house, there's no way of really seeing how much of a hill they are on! We knew it was on a corner. House numbers are hard to find in the dark, even though they left lights on.
Everyone was home and up and we were there by about 11 pm on Saturday night. Healthy, whole, stuffed with junk food, tired, tired butts. But there! YAY!
Really. I think we'll fly next time. That's a long drive. And we do it all again in a week or so.. .. ..
:-\
1 comment:
What an adventure!
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