C'est etrange, non?

The night in the tent was perfectly alright. Bit cold at one point, but a sweatshirt and socks fixed that. My plan to wake up at 5 was thwarted by a 430 am wake up call from some guy hollering his lungs apart. So aside from slightly terrifying me, I was up half an hour ahead of time. I showered and packed up and it was just getting light as I left.

Heading down to New Mexico I stopped in a random small town to get some gas. It was apparently the oldest town in Colorado, swell. They also had a post office, so I finally mailed a few cards. Instead of taking the main highway down to Santa Fe, I took the advice of the guy I met on the train and went through Taos. It was a pretty cool place, lots of art galleries, something New Mexico is overflowing with, and nice shops and parks and such. I saw the fattest cat in a bookstore, and bought a caramel apple from a chocolate shop. I also met a man who was waiting for his wife by a store near my car. He noticed my plates and we struck up conversation as I was leaving. His wife was actually from Springfield, small world.

Santa Fe was really nice. For a city, and a capitol city is was like Madison, very quiet and calm and such. A lot more art galleries, but the Georgia O'Keeffe museum was closed, as was the Native American Art Institute. So I mostly walked around, looked at small places, took pictures, and bought a necklace from the line of Indian art in front of the Palace of the Governors. I spoke with one woman for a while, about her art, the market's authenticity versus the fake stuff across the street in the park, etc. She was really interesting, so I ended up buying one of her pieces. I was going to get tamales from a street vendor, but by the time I was hungry and went back they were all packed up. Which is fine and good for my wallet.

From Santa Fe to Albuquerque I took this side scenic route, instead of the main highway. It was called the Turquoise Trail, and took you past all these tiny tiny run down towns, who's only source of income is probably the tourism they try to attract. The first town, Cerrillos, was very non-existant. Their trade store was also closed, so there wasn't much to see, I took a few photos, wrote a post card and was on my way.

The next town was Madrid, but on my way there I saw this yard with signs saying "Come See!" and had to turn around a go back. This place ... I'm not sure I really have the words. The woman who owned the bit of land was parked in her car outside the gates, she was probably in her 50's, looked like she's had a biker's life, with the tatoos and the leather clothes and crooked teeth, oh and her scary dog. She had taken what used to be a putput mini golf place, and spent 10 years putting together this "Tiny Town." Creepy is the only way to describe it. Every inch was worth a photo, run down doll houses filled with dolls dressed as every kind of character. Sculptures built of of skulls and old manikins, chains of hundreds of keys, a swing set covered in old torn curtains. It basically looked like 25 five year olds had just run around and messed up all this junk. It was amazing. While I was there, this couple pulled in and started walking around. They were speaking French, and since I was lonely I ventured to talk to them. Surprise I can still speak French! They were from Belgium and were doing a North American tour by car. They had started in LA and were working their way up to Canada and the North East.

Madrid wasn't much, it weirded me out some more. Most everything was closed, and the things that were open were empty. I went into one store and the woman who was working talked to me for an hour about everything from how she wouldn't get married again if she had the choice to where she donated her anthropology books from when she got her masters. It was interesting, but I was getting a bit tired of these towns, so didn't stay all that long. Originally I had researched places to stay on this road, and the bed and breakfast in Madrid had sounded cool. It was a coffee place too, but closed when I was there, and I'm so glad I didn't decided ahead of time to stay there because I would have freaked out being there overnight.

Albuquerque finally showed up, and I met Alison, one of Aunt Sue's recently graduated TAs. She was really cool, and we just talked from the moment I got there, through a delicious Indian dinner, and back to her place. She's a photographer, and has a cat, which was nice, since I really miss Muffin.

The next morning I left around 9, and headed to Truth and Consequences. It was also very small and mostly closed, but I met a few interesting people, took a lot of pictures, and had lunch at the local Co-op which was great. I also got these organic lollipops that were quite good. From there I drove across more mountains at 15 miles per hour around hair pin curves to get to Silver City, which was much the same, if only a little bigger than T or C. I met a guy in a used bookstore who had just had open heart surgery 3 weeks before. The place smelled comfortably of used books, dust, and lingering marijuana. The next drive was the last for a few days, three hours into Arizona (another hour gained) to get to Tucson.

It was great to see my Grandpa, and be at home, and know where I am and such. We ate dinner and caught up. I had a visual encounter with a scorpion when I was checking my email, but he seems to have gone into hiding today. I've been pretty lazy, slept late, ate, showered. We're waiting for the bedroom set from IKEA to show up so we can put it together. I'm going to go through some books. And we're going out for Chinese tonight.

I think I'm skipping out of the Grand Canyon. I do really want to see it, but I'm a bit tired of being a singular tourist so I'm going to save it for another time when I can go with someone. Plus I really want to get to LA and move in and get a job and start DOING things. Haha. Not that I haven't been doing a lot the last few weeks. But limbo is only enjoyable for so much time.

" This could be the very minute I'm aware I'm alive.
All these places feel like home." ~ Snow Patrol