A great first drive day. We got up this morning in Brownfield, TX and hit the road! … For the O’Reilly Auto Parts across the street… George picked up some automotive tape and I got bunch of glass cleaner and shop towels because “low washer fluid” was not, in fact, the problem I have… so I’ll be removing bug guts from my windshield with elbow grease because the fluid lines are underneath a fascia that is tricky to remove.
Wait. Guys. So the bug guts on the front of my car smell so bad that they have attracted their own swarm of flies, which has somehow started to attract bees.
Taylor. Mortified.
After that, we departed for Roswell. Once we hit the state line, we learned that New Mexico loves its speed limits. And there was an epic speed trap outside Roswell, so we had to behave ourselves. If I’m honest, that was a pleasant change from trying to keep up with Evan in the speedy Volvo, but 65mph does get tedious on straight, flat roads through nowhere…
Obviously, the first stop of the trip was the International UFO Museum in Roswell. We learned all about the “Roswell Incident” in 1947 and the elaborate cover-up that followed that reached involved multiple military and law enforcement branches, the FCC, and elected officials from Senators to President Truman.
Such elaborate academics brought on a great hunger, so we found some “New Mexican food” down the street. Hint: it’s just Mexican food with more chilis.
After that, we continued our drive west through a the Capitan Mountains Wilderness and slow-rolled trough the town of Lincoln, the historical home of Billy the Kid. Our next stop was outside Carrizozo at the Valley of Fires Recreation Area:
Approximately 5,000 years ago, Little Black Peak erupted and flowed 44 miles into the Tularosa Basin, filling the basin with molten rock. The resulting lava flow is four to six miles wide, 160 feet thick and covers 125 square miles. The lava flow is considered to be one of the youngest lava flows in the continental United States.
Bureau of Land Management
Less a hiking destination than a place to take a leisurely stroll on a paved walkway with handrails, but it was really really cool. The satellite view makes it look like thoroughly scorched ground, but it was covered in colorful desert plants poking out of the ground.
After we’d wandered around a while, we got back in the cars and headed on to San Antonio, near Socorro, for our AirBnB for the weekend. It is incredible. It’s off a dirt path past a few mobile homes, up on a mountain of its very own. I think we can see Florida and Oregon from up here.
And it is sparsely yet tastefully decorated…
And by “sparse” I mean “packed to the gills with trinkets.” They are everywhere. Open any drawer or cupboard and trinkets just fall out. There’s hardly enough room to even put anything down. But the patio makes up for it with one of the most beautiful night skies I have ever seen. We made dinner here and had a nightcap on the porch to watch the show.
