DAY 05: Truth or Consequences to Carlsbad

Friday, April 4th

Woke up after a truly delicious sleep in the incredibly comfortable bed at the Fire Water Lodge. So nice to be able to actually stretch out, when you're tall. Took another quick soak before packing up our things (nicely decadent :), then wandered around the beautiful courtyard in the bright sunlight. The owner advised us to have breakfast next door at the Happy Belly Deli, which was tiny and friendly. The breakfast was extremely tasty--I had a green chili and chorizo omelet (yay for the south west!).

We rode out of town, curious to see what the landscape was like considering we hadn't seen anything on the way in. Mostly low mountains, and a long, gray lake (I think it was Elephant Butte Lake, and I tried to see the elephant in the butte, but am not sure I did). Blue skies, and lots and lots of cactus.

Near Los Cruces we drove through a dramatically dark pass, and even got rained on for a few minutes. A faux missile at the side of the road heralded White Sands, which has, in fact, extremely white sand. Also an immigration check, which is a bit weird because it is nowhere near a border, but they let us right through (I really, really didn't want to have to unpack the car). We then entered Alamogordo, a rather grim little town (well, the main strip was, but then main strips *are*). We got some really bad drive-thru food (no choice, really), and headed up into the Sacramento Mountains, which is sometimes a ski area.

The mountains were lovely, with many picturesque little towns, clearly mostly closed for the season. Lots of horses, lots of cotton willows along little brooks. As we left the mountains we came into a very bleak landscape. Scrub, I believe is what one would call it. Flat flat flat and dry. No houses, a few gates only. I started feeling a little freaked out, as I do when there is not much water around and it would be hard to find another person if the car broke down. I kept checking the map to see how far we were from a town but there really weren't any. Not with intact buildings, anyway. We eventually passed through Hope, and then turned south to Carlsbad, to meet up with the White family at the local Motel 6. We got there by 5 or so, noting the lack of any good-looking restaurants on the way in, and unloaded the car. The rickety motel and warm weather reminded me of moving into apartments back around my college years. The alarming slant of the deck outside in particular made me remember a sleeping porch on the house I lived in after college that surely crashed to the ground within a year of our leaving. In any case, we had just enough time to make a complete mess of our room when the Whites showed up.

This is all rather a big deal for us, because Skye White and I, who have been friends since college, have not lived in near proximity to each other for more than twenty years (and for the first 15 of those, I think we saw each other only a few weeks, total). The last time she was within hailing distance of me on a regular basis we were living in dorms. There was much hugging, admiring of Skye's amazing hair (I will post photos, it is at least 5 different colors and so cool!), saying hello to Scott, Kaki and Egan and grinning a lot. Then we drove around and around and around Carlsbad trying to find anywhere to eat that was not a chain, was open, and didn't look absolutely terrible. We eventually settled on a Mexican restaurant that sounded okay, but when we drove by had a $15 cover. We then verified (also through google) that there must be an actual family-friendly restaurant inside, and so there was. It wasn't great (the chile rellenos were almost frozen in parts), but it had a big enough table. Sometimes that's enough. We talked and talked and went, at last, to bed.