It would take us 13 hours to get to Austin, and we knew that we didn't have that in us today. So we decided not to decide. We would just get in the car and drive as far as we felt like and then we would stop where ever we wanted and that would be that. It was kind of invigorating not to have a destination, we could go anywhere, do anything, and we wouldn't be veering off course because we didn't have one.
So, with that spirit in mind, we started the day with a detour to Galisteo, a small (and when I say small, I mean 13 mailbox
s total small) town about 20 minutes of the highway from Santa Fe. The 'town' lay on the same plateau as Santa Fe, but far removed from the tree lines of the mountains. Here, it was just rolling open plains of sage brush and red earth.The center was nothing more than a crossroads of the highway and a church with a few houses clustered around. Scattered residential plots with single homes and large barns where visible along the open horizon. But other than that, there was really nothing else. No stores, no restaurants, that was it. Why did we bother to stop here you ask? It was here, some 27 years ago, in a Tepee on one of these desert plains that Naomi Windblossom Coffman was born. What on earth her mother was doing here at that time I haven't a clue, and when I asked her she responded with "Well, Galisteo was really hip back then!" I don't know if that is the term I would use to describe it, but it was beautiful. Both stoic and timeless, and if you stood at those crossroads for 100 years I doubt much would change in the end of that time except the cars passing through.
After a few snapshots, we were back on the road, settling in to our familiar routine of drive, gas/coffee/switch seats, drive. Although I haven't wanted to say anything about it until now in the fear that I might somehow jinx it, Zoe, our feisty lab who usually whines if she has to be in the car for more than 20 minutes, has been absolutely amazing. When we
head out the car in the morning, she jumps right up in the back seat and lies down in between the two front seats so she can get her share of the A/C. When we stop for gas or food, she hops out, relieves herself on any nearby grass and then hopes back up in the car and lies back down for the next leg. We couldn't believe it. And here we thought we were going to have to sedate her 3-4 times a day to get this desired effect. It made the drive that much more enjoyable.Even with our little detours, we crossed over into Texas by mid-afternoon and were able to slingshot around Carlsbad Caverns by nightfall. The West Texas landscape was a dry deluge of broken limestone gullies and aired brush. It looked a bit like the Arizona desert, only with more vegetation and color. The air felt different too, where Arizona had been a dry heat, here the air was heavy and thick with moisture. We soon found out why.
As the last of the daylight reseeded back into the western sky, a huge pocket of black thunderheads loomed before us. As we drove straight into the storm, the wind began to push the car from one side of the road to the other. Lightening bolts crashed down at almost the exact same time as the ear-ringing
thunder cracked through the darkening night sky. Then the rain came.It was as if we were driving up a river. We slowed to 25 mph and had the windshield wipers going full blast but we still couldn't see past the constant stream of water coating the windshield. Sensing the tension, Zoe was standing, almost on the front dashboard, to figure out what was wrong.
Finally, we passed through the heart of it, and the rain subsided, but the thunder and lighting remained with us as we pulled into the highway outcrop of Sonora to find a hotel for the night, reminding us that nobody messes with Texas.
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