The Drive Home

  

So the drive home from Colorado last week was interesting to say the least.  The Mister thought, "Why go the way we came?  We'll take a different way!"  (I'm paraphrasing here.)  So, instead of taking a nice 4-lane divided highway to Albuquerque (to hop on I-40), we drove over to Pagaso Springs, and then south to Santa Fe.  That leg of the trip was OK.  We kept saying we would stop in the next town to grab lunch, but the next town never had a fast food joint.  So we finally made it to Santa Fe, stopped at a big truck stop, and took a break.  We bought the sisters lunch from the Subway in the truck stop.  Nice.

From Santa Fe, we took I-25 for a ways until we needed to take another state highway south to I-40.  The Mister took it upon himself to use the navigation system in the suburban.  We now know that when given the choice between "fastest" and "shortest"  a) they are not the same... think wisely; and b) consult the map in your hands to determine the size/quality of the road; and c) go the way you've been before!  I don't remember exactly what he chose, but we ended up on state highway 3 (otherwise known as "A Trip Through the Backwoods of HippieLand New Mexixo").  I took some pictures of signs we encountered on this scenic drive...

 This should have sent off warning signs in our heads when we first saw it, but no...

This one made me laugh...
I guess the people in backwoods NM can't read, so instead of the normal sign "Watch for Falling Rocks", they just have a picture of rocks falling from the cliff onto your car.

Throughout the week, we had seen signs for Elk.  On this road we even saw signs for cows.  But this takes the cake.  It reminds me of that part in Cars where they go "cow-tipping" except that it's "tractor-tipping."  Right?

This one isn't as funny, except that we kept waiting and waiting and waiting, yet the road never went down to one lane.   I guess  their road was upgraded sometime along the way, yet noone fixed the sign.
Oh, and most of the time we were going slow, because of all the tight curves, and so 25 was not unheard of.

Really?

Congested?  By whom?  None of the "towns" had more than 8 houses... so how was it going to get congested?  Really.

And last but not least, this is the sign we encountered when we (finally) made it to the interstate.  I'm glad we are educated people and knew which way to go and what highway to get on, because this sign is not really useful.  Especially to someone from out of state and has never heard of Santa Rosa or Encino.
Nice.





We finally made it to Amarillo, where we stopped for the night.  All along we had heard about this storm system that was coming through that might drop some snow flurries.  But we're from Texas, and so we never know if we can trust the weatherman.  They get so excited about impending storms and a lot of times, they exaggerate.  So we checked into our hotel and then went out for dinner.  Yes, it was a little windy (or a lot).  Yes, there were snow flurries.  Yes, the temp had dropped 20 degrees.  No, we didn't process it all and consider driving home that night.  We should have.  We woke up to several inches of snow on the ground and a nice icy coating on the streets.  By the way, did you know that most of Amarillo is one loooooong overpass?  It is.
Here are some pics of our drive home.  Some parts were really scary, as they were near white-out conditions.

Thankfully, The Mister drove all day.  I volunteered, but I warned him it would take a lot longer if I were driving.

I think there were a few times that angels were plastered all around our truck and kept us safe.  Not everyone knows how to drive in this stuff.

By the time we got through Wichita Falls, the roads cleared up and we were able to go a normal speed.

Here's a cute pic of Little Man... sleeping in the car with his mouth open.  I just had to put that one in!