Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon more 66 and Las Vegas.

Flagstaff, seems to be a cool little hip town up there in Arizona, a little historic downtown with an Amtrak station, and some roadside attractions, such as the giant Muffler Man Lumberjack.It seems like a cool place to spend a weekend, a week, or a few years. But for us, on our westward journey, it’s only a one night stop over. It also is our access point to the Grandcanyon. Because we were again pressed for time after another late start, a decision was made to only do the south rim, and approach it from the east and head west along the park road.
The canyon itself can only be described in hyperbole, and has been done a million times better by someone else. It is an unbelievable natural feature, as Dawn kept saying, you can take as many pictures as you want, try and describe it to everyone you meet, compare it to your local ditches. (You listening Tallulah?) The only way to really experience it is to actually go there. See it yourself.
The rest of the trip was punctuated with stretches of 66 nostalgia and includes one of the longest continuous stretches of the road from just outside Flagstaff to Kingman.
We saw old steel bridges, Burma Shave signs, (although these replicas were fun to see, apparently the real Burma Shave signs were never placed along 66.)

We also saw a lot of burnt out towns that have seem better days. Dawn also took one of my favorite pictures of the trip. At least of the road trip style pictures.

We did intended to see some other roadside sights in Arizona, but we were in the Dark by Kingman, and had yet to get to Vegas.

Holy Cow how did I forget this?

Welcome to HolBrook!  I don't know what it is either.

We went to Holbrook and Winslow, AZ.  Two more stops, along Route 66 famous for different things.

First, was Holbrook.  Now, what Holbrook, is famous for is the famous Wigwam Motel with it's Tee-pee motor court rooms.

We got there at 5:30pm, and all the rooms were booked up for the night.  Well, if you do want to stay there, I'd make recommend you book your room in advance.  There are many classic cars parked in the parking lot, not that they take up too much room, but your stuff in the room might take up all the free space in the room.  One nice couple was nice enough to let us peak inside their room.  Tiny!  I mean really small.  There is a bathroom attached, but again, tiny!  So, it may be fun for the novelty of it, but it does not seem like it has all the comforts of a modern hotel.  The owner seemed like a nice guy too.  We overheard him talking to a couple checking in, and he had some stories to tell.

Also:  Dinosaurs:

Finally, there's this song by The Eagles, "Take it Easy."  One of the lines is "Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona...."  Well, Winslow has taken advantage of this and created a "Standing on the corner" park.  There's even a statue of skinny guy and an acoustic guitar, (the song was written by Jackson Browne) and a flat bed Ford.  Though, for picture taking purposes, there's a girl (My Lord!) in a flat bed ford painted in reflection in the mural.  Otherwise, Winslow as well looks as if it's seen better days.  A few souvenir shops, a few gas stations, and Historic 66.  Not much to it.

Then we went to Flagstaff.

Albuquerque to Flagstaff

This was a day where the pictures tell a lot of the story.  I mean, how much can words add to a day when you see a Chevy on Stilts:

Paul Bunyan outside of a Vietnamese restaurant:

Cool roadside signage:

The continental divide:

(Honestly, not that impressive.  If not for the sign, we might not have known.  But it is a milepost in the journey.  I leave the river the basin I've spent most of my life for the west coast.)

Some new to me geology:

A giant Indian, and arrows:

Since Route 66 was decommissioned, there have been various efforts to preserve it in sections.  And since the route itself was altered a number of times in it's history, efforts to drive much of 66 can be met with much frustration.  Sometimes I-40 is where 66 used to be.  Sometimes 66 is a frontage road for I-40, even being marked with Historical 66 signs.  Follow that frontage road to long though, and you might get into a road closed/dead end, but see a decaying pavent reeling out in front of you.  Other times, a look at a map shows a road branching off from the interstate, and winding away from it, only to intersect it again later, leaving one to wonder, was that 66?  The myth of 66, what it means to some in this country, is longer and wider then the road ever was itself.  Part of the mystery of the road is compounded in the Historic 66 designation.  Historic by who?  The last years of 66?  66 itself was re-routed in small and big ways throughout it's history.  Trying to drive it today would be impossible, even with the aid of a library of maps and reference points.  There is some "americana" sights to see on it, including the "Tee-pee" on the border of NM and AZ.

Keep going westard, and you come to another national landmark.  A pair of them really.  The Painted Desert:

And the Petrified Forest:

There used to be a lot more petrified wood in the petrified forest.  People use to take it away by the cart load full.  Train car load full.  Can you imagine how much was lost?

These are two places, that like other grand national monuments, do not translate well into photos.  I would say though, like Carlsbad this is something worth seeing in a life time.  I know it may be hard, the era of family car vacations may be over.  Honestly, if we had not moved to California, I would not have taken the time so see these things either.  But honestly, they are worth seeing.

One more comment about 66 here:

This photo depicts where 66 used to run through the Petrified Forest national monument.  Notice what's missing?  All the road.  It might seem weird to some that I'll decry the lack of a man made structure in a natural monument, but I think it's weird that the decommissioning of 66 in this area meant completely obliterating any trace of the trail rather than saving what some consider a historical landmark.

Carlsbad to Albuquerque

In the morning after pushing through the west Texas dessert in the middle of the night, we awoke in Calrsbad, NM.  (It smells like a fart.  Who farted?  Carlsbad, NM.)  And made our way to Carlsbad Caverns.  and it was another trip where we spent way longer in the caverns then we expected to but it's very nice.  And easy to do with pets, they have a kennel service, and we kenneled Vicki while we were there.

Carlsbad is definitely a place to see how nature tourism has changed in the last 50 years in America.  You can walk down into the caves through the "natural" entrance, or you can do it the "modern" way and take one of the longest singe shaft elevators in the world to get to the bottom.  When you exit, you're in the main "lobby" of the caves, with a small souvenir stand, the bathrooms, (they have rock formations inside of them,) and the now defunct cafeteria in the cave.

The cave itself is amazing.  Bigger then you can describe.  I took a number of pictures, all useing low-light settings to capture some of the scale, but even when you're in side the cave, the size of various rock formations, or spaces between them is difficult to describe, because of the lack of normal things to compare to in your vision.

We were told by a ranger in the 60's and 70's the lighting the cave was much brighter and included many more colored lights.  We imagine it must've looked like a SPECTRE headquarters (probably on purpose.)  The ranger was also nice enough to use her flash light to point out some unlit formations.  The path around the cave was paved, though there were some parts that were not wheelchair accessible, due to steepness of the path angles.  Also, if you want to go, I'd say mid-week, off-season in the morning is the time to go.  We didn't see more than 20 people in the three hours we were there, so we had plenty of time to photograph the formations on our 2 mile walk.

Leaving Carlsbad, we got stuck in construction traffic, so we decided it was time for the self portrait.

We then drove north toward Albuquerque, and though we stopped in Roswell, the UFO stuff there is was overblown.  First, the UFO tourist attractions only take up one side of the street on one block, second, and I thought this was odd, the UFO museum posted, and described various photos and stated that they were fakes and how they were done.  Only the most unknown stuff was presented with an air of mystery.  Even evidence of the "Roswell Incident" was shown with things to demonstrate the case that it was a weather ballon.   Overall, not really worth the stop.

There's not a lot between Roswell and Albuquerque.  I knew we'd have to stop for gas, but the map showed three small towns between here and there.  Two of them apparently don't exist except on the map and the third's only gas station closed.  So, we were white-knuckling it trying to get to I-40 for gas.  It was the closest we came to running out of gas on the trip, and though it was evening, and not particularly hot outside, there was no-one else on the road.  We turned off all the electronics we could, slowed down some, and watched the odometer turn, and the Garmin tell us how far we were from gas.  Thankfully, we made it into Clines Corners.  Apparently pushing it it was people do around there, we met three travelers at the stop who did the same thing.  After filling up, we made it into Albuquerque without incident.  Having had enough adventure for the day, we ordered a pizza, and went to be.

Starting to look like a home

John and I kicked ourselves in gear and finished almost with setting up the apartment. Mainly the kick in the pants came from wanting some people (Elle and Anna) to come over and have some Wii time and that meant boxes in front of the TV was out of the question. But now it's worth it. Waking up this morning to only 2 boxes in the house (books to sale to local used book store and frames to hang up) was amazing. There is still lots to organize but things are really starting to look up. I've become a huge fan of Ikea. We bought their Billy bookcases to organize all our books and cds. Neither one of us had any idea how many cds we had but after having to go back to buy more shelves to put them on we are now thinking it is a little excessive. We still need to get another shelf to finish out the look but all of the cds, records, and books are displayed. I think this is the first time we've ever been able to do that!

Downgrading to a one bedroom has made us much more aware of what we actually use and what we need. There are some things we won't get rid of but other stuff especially my huge closet of clothes is now significantly less considering John and I now share a space. I won't say I've been the most pleasant about having to get rid of so much but I'm now definitely down to a more livable amount of crap. They always say on all those organization shows on HGTV how if you really love stuff (like collectibles) that you need to pick the ones you really love and display them and not just store them in the attic. So the Piglet collection is now hopefully being enjoyed by someone else out there. I kept a few but I have no room for it and I felt bad about them just sitting in a garbage bag. Maybe this will teach me to be less of a pack rat. I definitely have gone through the toss it, donate it, keep with a fine tooth comb.

The lab is coming along pretty well. Everything is pretty much unpacked and we get balances this coming week. Still need to get the hood hooked up to gas so we can actually get some work done but it's coming along.

So far we haven't gotten to the beach yet but this weekend will be our time. Also the car, driver's licenses and the such to become California residents will be next week. It still feels pretty surreal to be living out here but it should hopefully feel more like home soon.

San Antonio Part II, and Points West

As we left the Alamo (remember that?) I placed a call to Barney Smith, the proprietor of the toilet lid art museum.  Toilet Lids?  Yea, it's his folk art medium of choice.  Barney was a plumber by trade who one day mounted two pair of deer antlers on a toilet seat, thought that looked pretty good, and his passion (obsession?) was born.  Originally, he told his wife he was going to stop at 500, when we were there he was in the 850's.  We became part of the collection when we signed the Georgia seat, and put the approximate location of Athens on the map.  Each seat has a theme, often dealing with Barney's work, travels, or family, others have sporting event or military themes.  Most mark something personally important to Barney,and he can give the story behind any seat you ask about.  If you are in San Antonio, and have some time to spend on some funky attractions, the toilet seat museum can't be beat.  If you want to see it though, it's open by appointment only, and you need to call Barney Smith at 210-824-7791, because the museum is in his garage.

On the way out of San Antonio we did stop at purportedly the Worlds Largest Boots.  We have nothing to compare it too, but we stopped to take some pictures anyway.

We also blew past another muffler man along the freeway.

To get to the next stop, Enchanted Rock, we passed through the town of Fredricksburg, TX, a quaint little town with some interesting architecture.

Enchanted Rock is the largest batholith in Texas.  That is, it's a big granite stone, out of place with the rest of the terrain.  It's like Stone Mountain in Georgia, only smaller, and without anything carved into it (yet.)  Dawn and I were enchanted.

Past enchanted Rock, Dawn had to dodge cows on the road.  We stopped to take a picture, but Dawn would not let me pet it.

We passed the afternoon in the plains of west Texas.  Arriving at Midland/Odessa for dinner.  We pushed on through the night with the guide of the Garmin GPS and the gas fires from the oil pumps crossing into New Mexico and onto Carlsbad.

One more for Barney:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP8wMhrC8WU

San Antonio Part I

So, with heavy hearts, we head out from Bryan, Texas.  Our route plan is to avoid  extra long days, with stops to see things across the country that we might not get to see otherwise.  So, with some help from some online guides, including roadsideamerica.com, we start our trip heading southwest to San Antonio.  We knew about the river walk, but didn't know how cute it would be.  Guys, take a tip, a walk along the San Antonio river walk can be very romantic.We very quickly dubbed it the Venice of Texas, though others have called it that as well.  We ate diner at one of the oldest river walk establishments, a mexican place, with a mariachi band, and ducks that begged for food.  Little motorized tour boats would come by, tour guides calling out various sights.  Some of the boats were dinner cruises, some were full, others contained a singular tourist.  A slow walk up and down the river walk seeing all the nooks and crannies, and a quick shopping trip for souvenirs, and observance of the variety of birds bedding down along the river bank.  Well, good except for the bird that pooped on my head.

A good night of rest and on to the Alamo.  The Alamo is a little bit of a let down.  The building you see in all the pictures is the Alamo mission.  Frankly, the the mission building is quite small, like a good sized house.  Not much had been done to preserve it though the years, it was used as a storehouse for a long time.  Though there is some effort to restore some of the original paintings on the wall, many of the artifacts are if not replicas, articles that were not items from the battle of the Alamo.  There's also a lot of rah rah Texas stuff, which is funny because the independent Republic of Texas only for 10 years.  But there is a very cool deco style monument to the "Heros of the Alamo" outside the Mission. And let's not forget across the street, the wax museum and Ripley's believe it or not attracts blasting eurodisco music at nine am.

But there was more the San Antonio then the Alamo...

Leaving Bryan

Yea, I know we have a new President Elect, and we've livid in San Diego for four days now, but still I feel the need to talk about Bryan and College Station some.

It truly is a special place.  Different and unique from many places.  First off, we found most people there to be friendly.  I think that's a by-product of the TAMU.  The students and faculty are encouraged to be friendly.  Encouraged to say Howdy to each other.  Be polite, and helpful.  Dawn and I were impressed by the amount of respect the students seemed to have for each other and the school traditions.  The 70 days we were there, on campus we saw less then 20 articles of clothing representing other schedules and schools.  Not that everyone wore something with TAMU on it, but there was a lot of school spirit.

Now, not everything about the place is wonderful.  There isn't a lot to do in terms of nightlife there.  But so many things are a drive away, see our posts about the ACL fest for example.  The gulf shore was accessible, Houston, and Dallas were close too.  Cost of living in town is very good, and we are going to miss the HEB food selection and torillaria.  On campus the buildings are not that pretty, but there are some great details on some of the buildings, this being one of my favorites.

In the larger photo, seen on my facebook page, you can see all sorts of animals in the details.

Is it conservative? Oh, yea.  But if you work at TAMU, you get a good dose of liberalism too.  It's also good to get a reality check every now and then, and remember that not everyone thinks like you.  They also had some cool signage around town, including this giant cow.

So, it's not as bad some people might say it is.  If you get a chance, you should give the town a shot.  It might just be what you're looking for.

In the end Dawn and I  are looking forward to our time in California, but will miss the town of B/CS, and the people we leave behind.

WienerFest!

So, yea, I know I'm already in California, and Dawn's talked about this some, but I want to take a few minutes and talk about the great time we had at Wienerfest in B/CS just before we left.  We did not get there in time for the parade, but we did get there in time to see some of the costume contest.  I'm going to point out my favorite costumes, though I've long since forgot who the actual winner were.

In no particular order, I got a big kick out of little Bo-Peep and her "Sheep" Dog.  I'm amazed the dog puts up with this.

My favorite wiener dog costume is a tie between the Hot Dog that Dawn talks about, and another dog dressed as a horse, with a tiny cowboy attached to his back.  I don't have a great shot of it, but when the dog would trot forward, the "cowboy" would rock back and forth like he was riding a bronco.  It made me chuckle every time I saw it.  
The next best thing at the festival were the wiener dog races.  It was so cute to see the little dogs come darting out of the chute, and perhaps even cuter to see the dogs who didn't quite know what was going on kind of tentatively emerge from the chute, and maybe trot to their owners.  Of course there were qualifications of dachshund, something about a ratio of leg length to body length, and a maximum hight requirement, I guess to stop people from entering greyhounds or something.  There were also different divisions, including seniors, puppies less than one year (perhaps the cutest race ever) and handicapped.  Three dogs, one blind, one deaf, and one with a little dog wheelchair, because it could not use it's back legs.   People came from all around southeastern Texas to participate, so I hope the shelter had a great fundraiser.  (I did put in a bid on an iPod in a silent auction, but lost.)

What's that you want me to make some double entendres of wienerfest?  Like it's a sausage party?  Well, you were out of luck, as the organizers took most of the best away from me, including tee-shirts saying , "I stroke my wiener every day," and "Ask me to show you my wiener."  What more could I do?

Holy cow we're in Cali

We made it to California!  This whole thing is still pretty surreal.  I can't seem to wrap my head around the fact that we are now living here.  It's just nuts.  We've already found Starbucks (there really is one of every corner it seems and one with walking distance from our place) and have spent an exorbent amount of money at Target twice.  Whenever I move form some reason I have to go for the Target/Walmart run to get things.  The POD doesn't arrive for another few days so we needed some stuff to keep us going until then.  We found two grocery stores, one being Ralph's which is essentially west coast Kroger so that is comforting.  Today we went to the building where we are going to be working and wondered around trying to find the loading dock.  We have to meet the building manager there tomorrow and then the movers to get stuff into the lab.  We think we sorta kinda know where it is but aren't super sure.  Crossing my fingers that things will work out tomorrow.

The rest of the trip went well.  I'll include pics some other time but we went from Albuquerque 

to Flagstaff passing through the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest Park.  The Painted Desert was just great.  The Petrified Forest was somewhat sad since there isn't a lot of "forest" left but it was still really cool to see rocks that look like trees :)  We then took some time driving on Route 66.  It is kind of sad the amount of towns that are just disappearing because Route 66 is not being used.  It is especially sad that parts of Route 66 aren't even there anymore because it is now fused with I-40.  There are even parts of the route that have been torn up which makes no sense to me whatsoever.  I mean if the road isn't good enough for cars/trucks/rvs/etc then have sections of it remain for bicyclists or hikers.  I can see interest in people being able to just go down the Mother Road in some way even if it isn't in car.  We stopped in Gallup for lunch which if you stop and you think "hey I want to eat on Route 66.  Well look there, its a Mexican restaurant named El Sombrero maybe that will be good" run away.  The place was recommended by the AAA book but it was highly overpriced and I started my how many national parks can Dawn throw up in list.  Not good by any level.  Anyway, we made it to Flagstaff being extremely weary and cranky (and somewhat queasy).  We went out and I had a fantastic black bean burger at the Flagstaff Brewery and then we crashed into uneasy rest.

Day 4 led us to the Grand Canyon.  There is no way to explain how big it is or awe-inspiring.  It is a really, really, really big ditch.  Go see it yourself to completely understand how massive it is.  BTW, if you are from the Georgia area and have only been to the Grand Canyon of the east coast ie Tallulah Gorge, it doesn't even come close to the one on the west coast :)

After seeing all of the beauty and wonder of the natural greatness on our trip, we slipped off to Sin City to see Sara.  This was John's first venture to Vegas and it was just as jaw dropping as it was for me.  We walked up and down the strip without gambling because there is just so much to look at.  Oh we were there on Halloween so there were quite a few more semi-naked people then on your normal Vegas night (or at least I would think).  It was great to hang out with Sara and see Vegas.  We thought we would be tired and end early but we ended up staying out until past 2 am.  We were on the Vegas high :)

Day 6 and final day of the road trip-we headed out of Vegas after stopping off at Einstein's Bagels to see Sara.  Then it was a straight, don't stop for the potty drive through the Mojave Desert, LA and finally ended up in San Diego.  It is still amazing to me that we made it here without one of us killing the other.  I think the whole adventure was fun and tiring and exciting all at the same time.  Our place in San Diego is smaller than I thought it would be (I know I had the measurements but when seeing for real makes it so much smaller).  I think we're going to have to downsize our stuff a little more but we'll make it work.  

So now I'm tired and tomorrow is going to be an early, busy and crazy day.  Pictures and more later.

PS  Vicky the chinchilla made it through the trip great.  We've even had her running around the apartment a few times.  She typed this on my keyboard as I was trying to blog "gt 3te623".  She might be smart but I won't get any shakespeare out of her yet :)

Oh the places you will go...

It seems pretty surreal that we are making this trip to San Diego from Bryan, TX.  When we left Bryan on the 27th, I was pretty
surprised how sad I was to leave.  In my 70 days there I grew to like the place pretty well.  Now it isn't the greatest place in the world and I'm sure that I would find things wrong with it the longer that I lived there but the twin cities of Bryan/College Station are pretty cool.  I mean it is a typical college town but the student's at least seem more respectful and it does have some interesting stuff to see.  For instance we went to the WeinerFest on the Saturday before we left which was AWESOME in a weird sort of way.  Imagine taking a bunch of dogs and dressing them up for a costume contest and then pitting them against each other in a race to end all races.  Craziness ensues.  

The campus itself has quite a few interesting things.  For instance how many places can you find a monument dedicated to roughnecking, a oil drilling rig and a monument to the past mascots where there is their own scoreboard so they can keep track of whether the Aggies are going to run out of time or not.  My favorite was the sign for the local Hillel group though.  This place IS amazingly friendly and I am sad that we have left.

So we are now on the second leg of our cross country tour.  This route is a little more wandering then the one to TX.  We actually started going south to San Antonio because I wanted to see the Alamo.  The Alamo is pretty small for the surrounding area.  It is kind of like seeing the Arch in Athens.  You are expecting something just a little smaller than St. Louis and what you get is something MUCH smaller than St. Louis.  Same here with the Alamo.  There is also not much of it left after all it was a fort and it was kind of beat up and abused.  We also visited the Riverwalk while there eating at the oldest restaurant there.  I started calling it the Venice of Texas and John said the canals reminded him of the Small World ride at Disney World.  

After we paid our respects to the Alamo, we stopped by Barney Smith's garage to look at his toilet seat cover artwork.  Now I know you are thinking we must be crazy but this guy is awesome.  We found his museum by going to www.roadsideamerica.com which has to be one of the coolest places to find random and interesting places to stop by on your next road trip.  Back to Mr. Smith.  He is 87 years old and has been making his folk art toilet seat covers for over 40 years.  He is up to 858 and is aiming to complete 1000.  Some are funny, odd, and amazingly creative.  John and I signed the Georgia toilet seat to mark our visit (we decided that one made the most sense right now) and then toured his collection.  He does not sell or loan his collection out but we did get a souvenir for our Christmas tree of one of his fired ceramic toilet seat ornaments.  He is an incredible man and so humble taking all his "fame" in stride.  If you are in the area, give him a call.  The museum is only open if you call him and he will meet you with so much enthusiasm so that you can see and share in his "little" hobby.  

After spending an extended time with Mr. Smith, we headed to Carlsbad, NM.  We stopped by Enchanted Rock which is a giant hunk of pinkish rock sticking out of the ground.  It is kind of like Stone Mountain in GA except nothing is covered on the side of it.  I took over driving and the Garmin decided we should take a more back roads route after visiting the Rock so we headed to middle of nowhere TX where there were a few loose livestock roaming the roads :)

The scenery in West TX was as we were told - nothing too remarkable.  The scenery changed subtly but it was not too dull; however, there is a problem with roadkill especially the amount of skunks that are apparently killed.  It seemed the whole drive was sprinkled with eau de skunk or the smell of gas/propane/yuck.  We made it to Midlands, TX for dinner (hometown of First Lady Laura Bush and childhood home of "W" Bush).  We decided to go ahead and make the push to get to Carlsbad.  It was a crappy drive in the middle of the dark.  The road was rough and it was super dark.  No moon or anything.  We kept our eyes open for alien encounters but we saw nothing (at least nothing we remember).  Finally we made it to Carlsbad at 11pm and were completely exhausted.  

This morning we woke up after a fitful night sleeping to head out to Carlsbad Caverns.  We realized we didn't miss much last night on the drive.  There is nothing on the roads except brush and the occasional tree.  Also we found that Carlsbad smells a lot like gas of the human variety but once we got out to the Caverns all was better.  Incredible vistas getting to the caves.  The national park has a boarding area so that Vicky didn't have to stay in the hot car and we were able to take our time in the Caverns.  We spent 2 whole hours to walk just the Big Room trail.  Crazy big and spooky all at the same time.  One of the rangers explained that there used to be more lighting (including red, green and blue-groovy man) in the 70s but is now reduced in lighting (and color).  It's pretty amazing and we wished we had more time to hike from the natural entrance, but next time :)  By the way I finally figured out what my superhero skill is - humidity girl.  You can't tell so much in this photo but as the cave got colder and wetter, my hair got bigger and bigger.  Ahhh...I love my hair :)

We headed up to Roswell after chowing down at the park and picking up Vicky (the now very cranky chinchilla).  Roswell was less than spectacular.  I was expecting Alien central and there is like a block of alien stuff.  The shop we went to had this deal that you could get your picture taken in front of a green screen which puts you in a number of alien themed scenes.  Unfortunately they closed just as we were getting through the museum of alien contradictions (are there UFOs, are aren't there, you decide).  I was seriously disappointed since that was all I really wanted was the stupid photo but we got an alien ornament and headed out for Starbucks (yea coffee).  Then came the long, boring, monotonous drive to Albuquerque.  Yep we were somewhere between nowhere and BFE.  We hit a little scare when the car decided to bring up the empty light somewhere around "holy cow nothing but grass" and we were easily 45 miles from the next gas station.  I've never done math so well to realize that we might be pushing to the gas station.  Luckily we made it and switched drivers (my heart had enough of the stress).  Then off to a sunset worthy of the picture on the NM license plate and our descent into homebase for the night.  It is overall been crazy and tomorrow should be even more interesting.  Stay tuned!