Another milestone we may or may not be
celebrating on this blog is Nessa's One Year California Anniversary!!!
Last year at almost this exact date, Nessa and I made landfall in
Cupertino, California, where she officially traded east coast for west
coast.
So, today I'm posting a retrospective of our whirlwind
cross-country road trip to California - my third time moving a friend
coast to coast via auto. You may remember the
Photo-an-Hour we shared of
the all day and through the night journey from Vermont to Tulsa,
Oklahoma; some may write it off as delirious ramblings and blurry
streaks of light, but other, like-minded midnight ramblers can probably
relate all too well.
And after pressing the limits of an all day driving
adventure, we finally crossed the Tulsa finish line as the expected
overwhelming exhaustion hit us, nearly 26 hours later. Even though we
were over the moon to have successfully surprised our friend,
Molly, who only knew to anticipate us from the last minute text we sent
her from Ohio, we had to immediately crash until further notice. Molly
surreptitiously went about her Saturday afternoon while we napped in her
bed until we were able to make the groggy leap from blanket-nest to BBQ
dinner with friends, a small yet acceptable amount less delirious than
before.
But we powered through, buoyed by the bonus that
consumables in Tulsa are refreshingly cheap, delicious, and seemingly
catered specifically to the local twenty- and early thirty-somethings that
dominated the downtown atmosphere; it looked like a freaking social
networking convention was in town. This is most likely because Tulsa is
experiencing a comeback among new businesses in the area famously
vacated during the mass exodus of oil industries in 1982, coupled with
the harsh detail that nary a school, church, or even grocery store
graced the business grid. Inconvenience, ahoy! All these young folk were fresh on the scene
in the vigorously renovated and youthful downtown island, including our
friend Molly who had moved there for a business opportunity
earlier that year.
We spent the night touring the little bars and nightclubs
and enjoying the local ephemera: shuffleboard, dirt cheap drinks, BBQ on
every corner, billiards, running into acquaintances everywhere,
and somewhat less enjoyable - the CRICKET. Ah, the dread cricket:
swarming shade on city sidewalks and fields near you, should you happen
to be in northeastern Oklahoma. I'll try to forget becoming hopelessly
aware that I might be having a "D.A.R.E." moment, slashing at my skin
thinking there were bugs crawling all over me until I finally found
the offending (and very real) cricket trapped between my tank top and naked
back, giving me an official Case of the Willies.
Tulsa was a refreshing, but short stop on our tour West,
because after an epic morning sleep-in + brunch, we were on our way to
Somewhere, New Mexico.
Somewhere? Hopefully. We had the panhandle of Texas to
cross, straight through Amarillo on the loathsome interstate until,
well, we grew tired and had to stop to make camp. We dipped out of
Oklahoma on tidy ranch town back roads, watching the sunset and playing
Dry or Wet County Roulette on the hunt for tasty local beers and whiskey
to whet our future esurient thirsts - wherever those thirsts may be.
So, beneath microbursts we sailed the geometric ribbon of
asphalt, dodging smears of lightning clouds with their dumpy wetness
obscuring the road polka dotted with the angry, yawning maws of tractor
trailers. After several hours of this, we unfortunately reached that part of late night driving with no
aim where we arrived at a destination with no discerning
services for bedding down.
Employing various cutting edge atlas-based
technologies, we surrendered to the fact that we had much further to go
until we were more likely to find a fitting sleeping scenario that
provided safety in concord with our independent natures and was still somewhat
on course.
And that's how we ended up setting up camp at 3:30 AM in Ute
Lake State Park, just nigh of Tucumcari in the eastern plains of New Mexico, trying
to convince ourselves that we were keeping sustainable road trip hours.
But the lake showed great strength in its ability to remain harmonious
with our desires and we were eventually on our way to coffee the next
morning, blissfully unmolested. In Santa Fe, we sampled
gourmet olive oil and vinegar and ate at the famously delicious street vendor,
Roque's Carnitas, which came and went highly recommended. 10/10 would flirt with Roque for free Jamaica iced tea again.
There is something about New Mexico that pulls me in like a
labyrinth, right to the centaur and never letting go.
From the
living rockscape of sunflowers and cholla to the sharp canyons in dry,
dusty green, I'm a goner. This nearly proved true as we trekked into
the extremely rugged and not for the faint of heart Jemez Mountains. We
had ourselves a bitty adventure in the woods there on a goose chase for
hot springs nestled in the secret nooks of steep ravines where we we
wound up swapping relaxing soaks for some accidentally stumbling upon vintage
meth labs and maybe almost dying.
And that is to be continued...
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