Day 8 - ...until I sleep

This was the part of the trip I was dreading. The seemingly endless miles between Austin and New Mexico. I picked up first thing this morning and hopped on the road. I didn't even look for anything to eat until close to lunch time when I stopped at a no-name convenience store and grill that boldly told passers by that they did NOT sell gas. It was one of towns and one of those places where everyone knew everyone. I came in and placed my order and 6 or 7 people came and went. When I asked if they had called in orders, a round about way of figuring out where the hell my food was, they just laughed and said they got the same thing every day. They started cooking the food before they ever came in or called. I had the bad timing of coming in at the end of a relatively long line. It didn't matter, I was happy for the short break from the road, and it was a good road burger when all was said and done.

It was hours on the road and it was hotter than ever, the thermometer breaking 100F every so often. I would go half an hour or more without seeing anything resembling a small town and every other time I passed a gas station I stopped to top off just in case. I had been on a particularly long, nearly 100 mile stretch of rural Texas highway, with Texas being the only point on the trip so far where I spent more than 30 miles on the same road, when I came down off a big hill or small mountain and an endless stretch road was ahead of me. I could see an endless shimmering distance and a brief look at the GPS showed me I was 70 or more miles in any direction from anything resembling civilization. For the briefest of moments I felt a twinge of panic shoot up. What if the car broke down, what if I ran out of gas, what if my arm fell off and I was bleeding out. The moment passed quickly when I realized that I would do exactly the same thing I would have 5 minutes ago when I didn't KNOW I was in the middle of no-fucking-where.

After 6 plus hours of the onslaught of scrubby trees, farms, and nodding donkeys (the little oil derricks that dot the West)I was getting close to Carlsbad Caverns. Even though I had gone at least an hour out of the way to get to Carlsbad, the road funk was getting to me and I momentarily considered just skipping it and driving on to Roswell. It was a short lived moment of road fatigue, and I'm unbelievably glad I didn't let it get the best of me. Although I've seen a lot of cool things on my trip, Carlsbad is the first thing that was actually awe inspiring. Even the trip up the box canyon that leads to the cavern site, which is currently under construction and traffic can only go up and down in shifts, was breathtakingly beautiful. Then I stepped into the elevator to take my down to the "Big Room" (I arrived too late in the day to do the full walk-in trek of the public portion of the cave) and that first rush of cave air, heavy with earth, moisture, and age hit me and I felt calmed. The short tour lasted about an hour and a half of self-paced cave exploring. By the end I had forgotten about the last 2 days of Texas touring and coming down the mountainside it looked brighter and I felt happier.

Now I'm sitting in another one of my beloved $40 hotels in Roswell, NM. Roswell was a late addition to the trip after talking a a friend a few days before leaving. Like they had said, it seemed stupid to be just down the road from UFO capital of the nation and not at least pass through it. From my first drive through it seems rather light on the oddities, but I'm willing to dig a littler deeper come tomorrow. Maybe someone will take me to their leader...