The Vacation of the Year 2014 was ticketed for the Land of Enchantment in early fall, and did not disappoint. Freund and I left Hamburg on what I vaguely remember being a beautiful day. For the first time, we were flying direct from HAM to Newark without an inconvenient little hop to some other European metropole before crossing the Big Blue. This turned out to be GREAT, and if it weren't usually the most expensive route I would want to do it ALL THE TIME. But I digress -- the daytime back-in-time flight involved some gorgeous views of the silverlaked Canadian wilderness, as well as some familiar landscapes of northern Maine that made my Mainer heart go pitter-pat.
The arrival in Newark got very American very quickly, as exemplified here:
Aaaaand here:
We had some time to wander around and gape at things before the next schlepp to Denver, and the culture shock set in quickly, sometimes resulting in a chuckle and shake of the head, sometimes in confusion and a great echoing "whyyy?". Causes for this included various patriotic kitsch available for purchase at exorbitant prices, giant-sized food portions and persons, headache-inducing daytime TV/news coverage, and to top it all off, advertising in the skies, such as this one for a mutual fund fading into the blue.
Once back at x-thousand feet, the hours and hours of America-crossing began. I missed out on the majority of it due to awkward, doubled-over half-sleeping, but the German I'd brought along kept tabs on the landscapes below with great excitement. This included both the rapid change of landscape as well as the lack of change of landscape over hours at a time, thus demonstrating just how big this country is.
I half-woke up in time to see cloud shadows playing on plains and droughts cutting into the land going west. Nearing Denver, I liked spotting trees growing along dry riverbeds -- the only green in sight.
Flew out of Denver at moonrise and landed in Albuquerque shortly thereafter, the Sandias hidden in the night.
After one recoup day of Gma-visiting, chips and salsa, and lots of squinting at the bright thing in the sky, we headed south on our first adventure. Bureaucracy required a trip to the passport agency in El Paso so that Germany would let me back in (long and boring story), so off we went to the Land of Texas. My appointment wasn't until the next morning and we had plenty of time to spare, so we decided trade part of the interstate for a more creative route. This ended up taking us along miles and miles of unpaved roads through wild countryside dotted with ranches and bovine companions. A beautiful ride to inaugurate our time in the desert, though perhaps a little wilder and lengthier than intended.
Several hours, several friendly exchanges with passing pickups, one picnic and one failed mountain passage later, we made it back to the interstate just in time to drive into a hefty summer storm. It was Freund's turn behind the wheel, which gave me the opportunity to sit back and watch the massive sky do its thing.
Entering El Paso was quite a shock following the civilization-free adventure from before, and we only stuck around long enough to find where I needed to go for my appointment before heading back out of town to find a hotel. It wasn't until that evening that one of the car tires decided to start deflating, which resulted in an exciting time putting on the spare as the sun rose orange on the mountains the next morning. Thankfully that came to a successful end with time enough to get me back downtown before my appointment. The passport renewal part itself only took about 10 minutes, which was almost a disappointment after having to drive all the way to Texas to do so. They could have at least had me wait a few minutes to make it more worthwhile or something, though I am by no means complaining about that part going so smoothly.
Next up: hanging out at a car repair place while the tire was fixed. Wahoo, then east across uninhabited, endless Texan roads towards Guadalupe Mountains Nat'l Park and Carlsbad Caverns. One surprise along the way was having to stop at a border control inspection point where we were watched by a katrillion cameras and the German in the vehicle had to have his passport inspected. Another surprise was this white sand (gypsum?) beach nearing El Capitan. Srsly, where did that come from? And, no surprise, I learned just how awesome and comforting it is to tackle hundreds of miles of gorgeous wilderness with freshly fixed and checked tires.
The main reason for driving way the heck out of the way instead of zipping the few hours back north to ABQ was to visit Carlsbad Caverns National Park. I'd been there a few years prior and had had jaw-dropping problems whenever it came to mind ever since, so I definitely wanted to get back there whenever opportunity arose. I won't copy/paste any fascinating facts here that you couldn't find on Wikipedia, though I will say that it remains one of the most incredible natural wonders I have ever experienced -- the photos here are lousy witnesses to the massive proportions in reality. Go there. It's worth it. Then get a cheese quesadilla in the café and call it a day.
In an ideal world with distance-defying capabilities, we would have been able to skip over the few hundred miles and mountain range between Carlsbad and Alamogordo and spent the evening walking barefoot in the dunes of White Sands National Monument, but alas, this was not the case. (Though we could pretend otherwise by reliving the photos of my last visit.) Considering plans of the next few days, it was decided that we should tackle the 300 miles back to ABQ that night in order to have more time to prepare for the next adventure. This involved going through Roswell of UFO prestige, where no expense was spared in the name of their touristic claim to fame. And after Roswell, hundreds of miles of nothing. That is, nothing but 180° sunsets, static on the radio, and a whole universe available for your viewing pleasure at the side of the road.
In other news, sleet is still scratching at the windows and I just shoveled a driveway for the first time in years. I can't say I missed it, but I also can't say I didn't enjoy it. Now back to tea and sweatpants; another realm of enchantment.
