900 Miles

I stopped for the night not far from Shiprock, leaving about monotonous 900 miles to drive on Sunday. The rest of the group stayed the night in Albuquerque, but I started about three hours on the far side of that town.

But when I stopped in Albuquerque for gas, I found a friend.

The drive was rough, and not particularly enjoyable, but the whole week prior made it worth it. I also made a discovery on the way.

US Highway 84 passes through Santa Rosa, NM on I-40 and continues through Goldthwaite, TX at US-183. Somehow I had never noticed that — partially because Google Maps has previously insisted on taking a bypass via TX-153 through Winters instead of staying on US-84 through Abilene. But 84 is the nicer drive. That officially makes US-84 my gateway to New Mexico and Colorado and that’s kinda fun to think about.

Though I prefer to lean on maps over nav systems, this is the first time I didn’t use a nav at all. Instead, I scribbled out my route on a notepad before I started driving and followed that. Maybe I should just get an atlas for Christmas. Do they make an atlas of “everywhere?”

So here is how to get from Austin to Brownfield to Show Low to Prescott to Beatty to Death Valley to Vegas to Red Rock Canyon to Page to Albuquerque to Austin.

Overall, a fantastic week. But I do long for the days of being able to travel like the before-times, without worry of exposure to or — even worse — unknowingly spreading COVID-19. Maybe sometime in 2021? For the first time all year, signs of hope have started to make the news.