Land of Enchantment

Grants, New Mexico

I really like New Mexico. It's a great deal prettier than the Texas panhandle, by a far sight. The colors here are more intense, the geography infinitely more interesting, and the whole feeling is less oppressive, less hot, and less dusty. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

We began the day in Oklahoma. After a relaxed morning of wrestling with a poor internet connection and a decent breakfast, we had to get Ginger in her kitty-carrier. This was a real adventure. The hotel was not set up well for cats; the mattress and box springs were on a standard support, which gives the cat a lot of places to hide. After unsuccessfully attempting to lure her out with treats and the laser, we then tried pushing her with a piece of one-by-four that inexplicably was left below the air conditioner in the hotel room. This worked to move the cat around underneath the bed, but not enough to get her out from under it.

So that meant resorting to more drastic measures, which usually means moving the bed a little bit. Typically, that scares the cat enough that she darts out from underneath the bed to find a new hiding place. Along the way, there is an opportunity to grab her. Alas, the bed was so big (two double beds placed side-by-side) that the cat was unconvinced that we would be able to move the bed to get at her, and called our bluff. She hunkered down in the exact center of the bed, next to the center support post, and laid flat on the ground like a discarded coonskin cap.

The next step was for me to lift up the foot of the bed so that The Wife could get underneath it and get the cat that way. A good idea in principle, but the cat thought as quickly as the humans and ran to the back of the bed, where the angle was the smallest and The Wife did not have enough space to get at her. So that meant we had to go nuclear.

Off came the covers from the bed. Off came the pillows, the fitted sheets, everything down to the bare mattress. (Fortunately it was revealed to be stain-free. You never know.) The windows were open and the dogs were watching the proceedings with great amusement, and the maid walked by and looked in the window to see two dogs wagging their tails like it was play-time and two people throwing bedclothes everywhere and upending mattresses. We did not have time to explain; there was a cat to catch. After the mattress went up against the wall, so did the two box springs. Ginger knew the gig was up then, and shot at light speed behind the chair. The Wife wriggled behind the chair to get at her, and again she evaded successfully, this time going behind the writing desk.

There, she was finally trapped. Too smart for her own good, she had positioned herself in a corner with a piece of furniture that could be angled to permit her no means of escape. Finally caught, she submitted to the indignity of being put in the cat carrier and sang her meow in lament while looking at The Wife and I with pleading, mournful eyes. Unmoved, we collected the other creatures and moved along with the day.

A stop along the way introduced the dogs to some cows. Karma barked and made a spectacle of herself; all the cows looked at her and stopped chewing. The Wife tried to say hello but the cow spooked and she backed off rather than risk it hurting itself. Poor old thing. All the cows looked like the one in the picture, white with broad faces. Later, we saw plenty of longhorns. But that was near Texas and in the Texas Panhandle.

Texas, at least along I-40, really sucks. It is flat, flat, flat. I've taken pictures of everything worthwhile to look at, and both of them are on this blog already.

In the Panhandle, it appears that there is no outdoor seating anywhere. It seems to have occurred to no one to build structures with porches or other devices to give shade. There are virtually no trees. About the most interesting thing to look at is an arroyo next to a (clean and modern) rest stop. The arroyo is distinguished by some interesting dead trees and its Texas-shaped barbeque pits. I doubt if anyone ever actually uses these facilities, but they are a nice touch.

Since we have two dogs and two cats with us, the lack of places in the shade to rest, and the lack of outdoor seating to eat, limits our options for places to get food. Obviously, we can't just leave the critters in the cars, especially when the weather is so hot. We thought briefly of stopping at the Big Texan in Amarillo, the home of the 72-ounce steak (free if you can eat it all along with a baked potato, salad, dinner roll, and shrimp cocktail) but there was nothing we could do with the animals. Ditto for everywhere else in Texas we tried to stop for food; we wound up getting some corn dogs and taquitos at a gas station to tide us over until we crossed into the Mountain Time Zone.

Then we entered one of my favorite states, which is how I started out. New Mexico has a speed limit of 75 miles an hour, and in the junker, it's functionally impossible for me to exceed that rate. So I can relax and not worry about getting a ticket here. And the scenery is spectacular. The elevation is high as we cross through the Sangre de Christo Mountains, and the weather is temperate and mild compared to what we experienced in Oklahoma and Texas. There was even a light rain tonight as we walked the dogs.

The scenery is as beautiful as it is interesting. There are red-rocked mesas everywhere. An entire series of them graces the highway west of Albuquerque. Albuquerque itself is in the Rio Grande Valley, which looked surprisingly lush for a day in the middle of June. The greens and golds of the plants are intense and vibrant, and the sky is a bright, pleasing blue and dotted with what The Wife has taken to calling "Simpsons Clouds." Some dumped rain on us today, and thanks to good visibility we could watch the rain fall for miles in advance.

Grants, where we decided to stop for the evening, turned out to be a great choice. We got a very good deal on our hotel room, and the hotel has laundry (so we don't have to wear dirty clothes again), a nice pool, a spa, and a good hardwire internet connection. Annoyingly, the ATM did not work and I had to go to Wal-Mart to get cash, but that worked out OK as The Wife and I enjoyed some Mike's Hard Lemonade with our pizzas tonight.

The spa and swim were a good way to relax after a long day of driving. I've been able to teach my class (I need to get grades out tomorrow but wanted to write tonight before going to bed) and get caught up on the news -- between the Gray Lady and CNN online and NPR in Albuquerque, I feel more in touch with what's happening, from a terrorist bust in Canada to the effects of capricious remarks by the Chariman of the Fed to what happens when you put Mentos in Diet Coke.

We're making such good time, and we both like western New Mexico so much, that we idly discussed staying here an extra day. We're not going to do it, because we need to keep the critters in a rhythm of moving. But if we had the time, we'd dawdle here and enjoy the scenery, the history, the Native American culture, the low costs, and the good Mexican food. I'd like to find some fresh fry bread before we leave, although there will be some of that available in eastern Arizona tomorrow, too. We're only about an hour and a half from the Arizona border and we think we'll make it to Needles tomorrow, marking our return to our home state.