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 :)