Day one of the move was... eventful. And uneventful. Barely three hours out of Lincoln, we had to pull over at a truck stop as our moving truck blew a spark plug. Yes. Blew it right out of its housing. After an hour wait, the tow truck showed and hooked the U-Haul up. He then towed us to the shop, which was in Grand Island, Nebraska.
Grand Island: Neither grand, nor an island. Discuss.
The super cool guy who drove the wrecker managed to fix the truck and get us back on the road with only three hours of travel lost for the day. By the time we hit the Colorado border, I wondered dimly why I hadn't photo-documented some of the trip.
Silly me.
Northeastern Colorado is, in a word, desolate. Unless you're fond of cows. There were few stops, and it got dark before we even reached Denver. Here is where both of my camera equipped devices died, and this makes me sad. Downtown Denver-- even from the highway, is gorgeous. The city itself awed me... but the drivers on the road with us made it clear we were not going to get a warm welcome anywhere but NOT on the road.
Skip to Pueblo... because that's where we finally landed late that night. The whole trip there I had the nearly uncontrollable urge to tell Noah to pull the U-Haul over so I could climb one of the rocky, evergreen-covered slopes and shout from the top, "Fus Ro Da!"
Good indication of how late it was, really, that I was that delirious.
Anyway, Pueblo was nice. The people were cool, the weather was gorgeous, and the traffic wasn't quite so rabid as it had been in Denver at 10pm. Rush hour Pueblo was friendlier than any rush hour I have ever witnessed.
(South of Pueblo, close to New Mexico, was where I finally remembered that I wanted to take pictures)
Southern Colorado is, in a word, beautiful. Part of me wanted to stay there. Only a hint of green dotted the rolling landscape that hadn't yet seen Spring at its ripeness, but evergreens filled the valleys and climbed the sloped of the foothills of the mountains still capped in snow. They appear black due to the foliage that stubbornly clings to any bit of soil or any rock face that will give purchase. The rock, particularly in the morning light appears blood red, like an open wound.
Around every bend in the road and across every pass was yet another vista that seemed to exist solely to steal the breath, fom tumbling streams and dizzyingly deep gorges, to stark rock faces and talc-choked dry washes. And above it all, the sky wore a deep blue you can't find in the flatlands where I was born and raised.
I've seen it before, several times, but each time is but another first time.
We said goodbye to Colorado near midday, and stared off into the seeming eternity of the New Mexico desert.
Yay photodump! If they seem mountain-centric, that's because mountains are visible from almost everywhere, as far as I can tell.
New Mexico was not quite the experience I had expected. The arid land did not hold the same sense of desolation that the Black Hills of Nebraska or the Badlands of South Dakota and Wyoming seem to exude. There was a patient kind of expectance, like the land itself was waiting. The perfume of the desert is not something I can readily describe. There is a subtle spice to the air, a melange of sage and a dozen other scents I couldn't identify. It was heady, and intoxicating.
It rained on or way into Socorro, New Mexico that evening, and the land showed us what it was waiting so patiently for. Small yellow flowers blossomed, literally overnight and carpeted the land on each side of the road (Couldn't get a shot that wasn't just a yellow blur). We stayed in Socorro that night and hit the road early. We passed through several small towns on our way, each one quiet and lazy, but I got the sense that it was just that way in the desert; that's just how you live.
Each town is a snapshot in my mind, as we passed them in such a rush. Some were worth an actual snapshot that I didn't manage to get (still not stopping). One, however, I did. Just its name... But it's enough.
Heh.
On our way out of NM, we passed an adorable town full of statuary and roadside shops. We all, I found out later, wanted to get out and wander it a bit, but we were all done with the road by that time.
Southern Arizona was a weary blur; there were a couple of breathtaking views, but I had nothing left. I just wanted to crawl in a hole and sleep. We had come within a few miles of the Mexico border, and then slooped up highway 10 to Tucson. We stopped by the apartment office, then I unloaded the truck. Five hours of work after three days of driving. I was a hurting unit.
The view from the porch the next day, though... So worth it.
North...
...and South.
My god... Is this real life?
The sun seems to welcome us home every morning. And at night the moon shines off the frond of the palms and I know what love feels like.
Cheers!
