West to New Mexico

Ted. If you are like us, you are getting a little bored and in search of content to read or watch. Judy and I will try to fill some of those empty minutes by putting a smile on your face with even more meaningless blog posts. It is in that spirit that I will document our recent road trip.

After five weeks in Texas, it was time for us to travel further west. Albuquerque, New Mexico is where we intended to spend the next four weeks. Our plan was to fly, but after Dr. Fauci from the NIH said that he wouldn’t fly, we decided to drive. Leaving our lovely ranch in the Hill Country at 8:00 am, we headed west. 40 minutes down the road, we made two "fuel" stops in Llano, Texas (home of the rock stackers). The Fuel Café was about the only place open at that hour and I saw the first of what would be many signs saying “To Go Only.” Americano in hand, it was on to Stripes gas for some more cheap Texas fuel for the car. 

Driving west on highway 71, it didn’t take us long to drop down out of the Hill Country onto the flat Texas plain around Brady.

From there, we turned onto US 87 and drove right through San Angelo. For hours, we only saw three things; cotton fields and oil and gas wells.

Lots of jobs...

...but plug ugly!

This area is known as the Permian Basin and is one of the world’s great reservoirs of fossil fuel. But let me tell you - that is one nasty looking part of the country. Dust from the freshly plowed fields combined with burn off from the wells made it look like the most boring part of hell. For all the wealth generated there, the local folks sure looked poor. Our lunch, in Brownfield, TX at the Cub Drive-In did nothing to dispel that image. The burritos were good and cheap so the place was a local favorite. Social distancing meant they would only allow 20 customers in at a time (we were numbers 19 and 20) so everyone else had to wait outside until a table emptied. Now, this is common on a Friday night in fashionable eateries in Atlanta but these folks were not used to that and there was a lot of grumbling.

Crossing the state line into New Mexico, the same views persisted but the towns were even poorer. The only thing uglier than west Texas, I concluded, is eastern New Mexico. 

No oil, no gas, no cotton, no water, no cattle, no sheep... no goats!

At last we crossed the Pecos River and decided to take a coffee break in the town of Roswell, NM. Yeah – that Roswell! Stellar coffee in hand, we strolled around downtown.  Talk about a one trick pony. Well, they don’t have oil or cotton in Roswell and a person has to make a living, so God bless ‘em.

Scary!

Where aliens come for their coffee

Chatting up a friendly local (and no need to social distance)

The last three hours were filled with increasingly majestic views. This is the Southwest we remembered from our years of living in Arizona. Red rocks and snowy peaks everywhere.

675 miles and 12 hours down the road, we checked into our Airbnb, a casita (cottage), situated on the property of our hosts in the Nob Hill neighborhood of Albuquerque. We found a chilled chardonnay in the fridge but I just dropped into bed.

Nuestra casita