Day 2: Flagstaff to Roswell

Greetings from the Comfort Inn of Roswell!

We've had one heck of a day. There was snow. Lots and lots of snow, which caused my poor Jetta quite a bit of anxiety. We also narrowly avoided a scampering fox and a ballistic tumbleweed.

Also noted along the way was a billboard advertisement for the Horse Motel. Their tag line is "For Just One Night...Or Forever." We assume that the owner lives with his mother up on the hill out back.

The day started out fine. There was a tiny bit of snow during the night (see Jetta photo below), but it was sunny and it seemed like an innocent enough day.

We drove along I-40 toward Albuquerque. This split image shows all the fun snowy mountains behind us and the flat expanse up ahead.

I was sad that we were leaving the mountains because it was unlikely that we'd see much more snow...or at least that's what a completely wrong person would say. When we were about 200 miles from Albuquerque, we saw...

The Jetta was NOT happy. Luckily, the snow was not sticking to the road, and, apart from the occasional zero-visibility blast from a passing semi, we felt totally safe. Before you knew it, things were nice again. Yay!

We were making good time. There were lots of trains along the way. You never see trains so exposed as they are out in the desert. Since I've always lived in places with lots of trees, I usually can only see a long train four or five cars at a time. But out here they stretch out across ground and you can see them start to finish. The train above had only tank cars and looked like giant pipe.

Let's see...we ate lunch in Albuquerque at Subway because we couldn't figure out what we were in the mood for. It was getting a bit desperate, as happens when you are hungry and stuck in a car. LL and I both need regular feeding.

During lunch, the weather started to look menacing. Stuff was blowing everywhere. I think if we weren't completely clueless we might have stayed there and not risked...

I know that it doesn't look any worse than the other dumb snowy picture, but trust me, it was much worse. In this picture the snow is just starting to pile on the road. In another 5 miles everyone was single file going 20 MPH following the wheel tracks of the car in front. We would have taken a picture of that too, but we were sortof focused on not killing ourselves.

Actually, about this time, LL called Celeste (my sister) to see if she could check the weather for us (LL also reminded me that, if she only had an iPhone, then she could look up the weather herself). Celeste told us that there were winter storms all over New Mexico, and her husband, who grew up in the mountains in Oregon, acted like we were snow-wimps. I told Celeste that, if we didn't make it, she could have my Holeyboard set (my set was made by Darrel Perrin himself).

I was happy that we were at least on a busy road in bumper-to-bumper traffic. It seemed like that many people would be worth saving if we all ended up stranded when some speeding idiot (probably from Oregon) careened into our otherwise single-file caravan, caused a big wreck, and shut down I-40 for the night. Unfortunately, Roswell is off the beaten path a bit. So we had to make a decision to leave the interstate and drive down some highway where you could not see the road. Also, it got dark.

However, things improve a little when...

...I got out and broke all the ice off the windshield wipers. It turns out that rubber is much more effective than ice and swiping crud off the windshield. Of course, in just a few miles, the snow lessened and the road became clear and we drove into Roswell under a pretty moon.

We got some dinner and visited a touristy store that had all the kinds of things you expect in a place like that. And of course there is the obligatory pic of us posing with a real alien...

Actually, after looking at this photo, I am considering donating my extra chin to this poor guy. He does look like he could use it.