New Mexico

So as I said, driving through New Mexico was fantastic. Honestly, I saw a difference only a few miles after I crossed the border from Arizona. Not that Arizona isn't beautiful in its own way, but New Mexico has something special...I don't know. You'll have to drive through it one day and see for yourself (or check out my pictures).

The whole Albuquerque/Roswell thing turned out to be kind of a bust. First of all, I don't know what I was thinking when I was planning it out, but it would have made much more sense to drive directly to Roswell from Tucson and then to Albuquerque or Santa Fe the next day. As it worked out, I drove all the way to Albuquerque, didn't have time or energy to do anything so I just went to the hotel. Then the next day I drove back down south to hit Roswell.

Roswell itself was not what I was expecting and I kind of wished I had skipped it altogether. First of all, they are so not into the alien thing as much as they should be, I think. Maybe one city block was dedicated to alien stuff and the rest was just an uberconservative rural town. I was so bummed by the half-heartedness of the alien museum I didn't even bother to pay money to see the inside. Instead, I went and had a pretty excellent Mexican dinner at the Capitol Cafe (recommended by a friend of a friend) and then just went back to my hotel room.

The one saving grace of the trip to Roswell was that on the way I missed my turn and ended up backtracking on a deserted country road with some of the most beautiful scenery I have seen in my life. It was one of those perfect moments where you know you're in exactly the right place at the right time. Fantastic.

So the next stop after Roswell was the Santa Fe National Forest. Driving into the forest was another incredible experience. Beautiful mountains, incredibly tall trees, a rushing stream...just fabulous. When I got to the campground it was a little crowded but I managed to find a decent site. I had chosen Holy Ghost campground because it was rumored to be haunted. I didn't so much expect to see any ghosts but I thought it might be fun to be a little scared.

Turns out the scariest thing about the campground wasn't the ghosts...it was the latrines. I had dealt with vault toilets (basically an elevated hole in the ground with a seat on it) in Joshua Tree and, while they weren't all that pleasant, I could certainly deal with them. It helped that the bathrooms there were big and bright and the climate was such that there wasn't a ton of flying insect activity. Not so in the SF Natl Forest. Oh dear. Okay, first there's the smell. Naturally, a big hole in the ground filled with excrement isn't going to act like a giant air freshener, but this was just overpoweringly gross. Then, there are the bugs. I warily moved the door aside to check everything out and I swear, it was like Amityville all of a sudden with the swarms of flies. Effing creepy. I did my best to shake them off of the door and kicked the side of the latrine to encourage any stragglers to depart. Then I closed the door behind me (sigh, it didn't close all the way, I had to hold it) and it was way too dark in there so I ran back to the car and grabbed my lantern. On my second approach, the majority of the bugs seemed to be gone, but I was still loath to expose my privatest business over a hole that might contain any number of horrifying crawly things. I was genuinely afraid. I had to stand there for a minute and talk myself down before I finally sucked it up and got the job done. Ugh...still makes me shudder to think about it.

The rest of the evening passed without incident. I got my tent set up, made some dinner, went for a lovely walk by Holy Ghost Creek while listening to the end of Sense and Sensibility (I love audiobooks), then hit the hay. The next day I got up early (of course) and packed everything up. No bugs on my tent this time, which was nice, but every little surface was covered with condensation which made it difficult to do all the rolling up and packing away without getting everything wet. But, you know, I managed. After a quick stop at a convenience store to change my clothes and brush my teeth, I headed north to Denver.