Highways on Fire: Of Cacti, Aliens, and Other Green Things

If I scared anybody by not posting last night, deal with it. The muses were travel weary.

After burning across the vast expanse of New Mexico and crossing into Arizona, we arrived safely in Tempe to the home of Miriam Turney. Our wonderful hostess is a friend of our parents from Millersville, and has been kind enough to put us up for these couple of nights as we recover from our travels and ready for the last leg of our journey. She has five chihuahuas and one bichon. Their names are Fernando (aka, Fat Baby), Vaccarro (Spanish for cowboy), Fluffy, Angelica, Tanner, and Chubbs. This is about 58 pounds of dog.

We had been planning on arriving around 8 or 9, but got held up in Roswell due to a severe bout of ADD.

I had mentioned yesterday that Pete, a biker I met in Texas, had suggested we go to Bottomless Lakes State Park just outside of Roswell. The detour was worth it.

Bottomless Lakes is a series of sinkholes in the New Mexico desert caused by underground springs eating through the salt and gypsum strata, first forming caverns, which eventually collapsed, forming "lakes" that are about 40-50 feet in diameter, but anywhere from 17 to 90 feet deep.

Nature is a weird thing.

We happened across two men fishing in one of the sinkholes, Carlos and Arthur. Apparently, the lake water is salt, not fresh, and you can find some pretty sizable rainbow trout in some of the lakes on a regular basis.

Carlos is a tattoo artist who runs a parlor in Clifton, AZ called Forever Tattoo. Arthur was sporting some of his work, which was good enough for me to feel obliged giving Carlos a plug here.

After checking out the largest sinkhole, Lea Lake (as deep as lake Chateguay and a fraction of its size) we went back into town to check out the International UFO Museum and Research Center. Erika said it left her thoroughly unconvinced, and that it was boring because there was "too much stuff to read". I felt it was interesting, and provided an unbiased overview of the Roswell incident back in 1947, and did a good job of documenting how many times the government changed their story on the event (a bunch). First it was a weather balloon, then it was some sort of radar device, and then they argued that the "bodies" seen by witnesses on the scene were, in fact, glorified crash test dummies. I don't know about you guys, but I believe. I even bought a bumper sticker saying so.

After going through these touristy motions, it was on the road again. Nothing of note, just more of The Big Empty.

I've never been in this region of the United States before. In fact, most of this journey has been through uncharted territory, and every minute of it has been a joy (save for the occasional obligatory tiff with my lovely sister). I find myself now in a region of the country that has wide open spaces and big horizons. As I travel through this strange and beautiful land of friendly people and cheap cigarettes, I find myself going through a bit of a location-identity crisis. After all, in this part of the country the speed limit is 75 MPH and its 70 degrees outside in the middle of January...

But enough musings on that. The writing is constipated today, so instead of continuing this rant I'm just going to tune in, sign off, and veg out.

A demain, mes amis.

- Rev.