Roswell, New Mexico to Magdalena, New Mexico (side stop in Albuquerque) - 303 miles

While the drive from Big Bend to Bottomless Lakes was grim in one way, the drive from Roswell to Albuquerque was challenging in a different way: Mind bending sameness. I’ve heard people complain about Kansas this way, and I am eager to make the comparison when I drive from Colorado, through Dodge City, to home. I am accustomed to the drive from Wichita to Lawrence and Kansas City, which features the serenely beautiful Flint Hills, but I’ve heard Western Kansas is a real drag. The only time I recall driving through it was when storms were blowing through, so the sky was bruised and churning, and that dark sky against bright wheat fields? Not boring, not by a longshot. We huddled in a rest stop where the canned radio broadcast warned of torrential rains and tornadoes. Pretty sure that Roswell to Albuquerque run will beat Western Kansas on the boreometer by a mile.

Before leaving Bottomless Lakes, I spent some time in Roswell. The first day I drove into town, I was fleeing the heat of the camp and just wished to cruise around in the air-conditioning and maybe do some recon at the one and only public library. It was so damn hot (mid 90s) and no matter how much I turned up the AC the heat was still getting to me. So, that put me in a mood and my stomach had turned—to be fair, this probably clouded my opinion of Roswell a bit.

There is a visible disparity, more jarring than usual because the town is so very small, between the wealth and the poverty. It is clearly a tourist town, with a museum dedicated to its crowning achievement in extraterrestrial contact(s), and an unbelievable number of hotels and restaurants, many with kitschy green aliens standing at the door to greet you. Not everywhere, mind you, and I got the distinct impression that there was a part of Roswell that thrived on the notoriety, and there was a larger part of Roswell that survived on it, but was unapologetically “sick of this shit.”

In all the touristy stuff I saw, none seemed terribly compelling, though I do admit I never went into the museum or any of the gift shops. It’s difficult to express my feelings about the place. Everyone has been to at least one tourist destination in their lives…for some reason, despite all the places I’ve been, the one I am thinking of now is Ocean City, Maryland. Tacky tacky tourist trappy. But it made sense—everything seemed to belong there, as though if you took away the boardwalk and all its garish delights, smells, and sounds, you’d rip the soul out of the place. It wasn’t really my scene, per se, but I still enjoyed the authenticity of it. It was real, even in its fakeness and money grubbiness, it felt like it was meant to be exactly this way.

The only other time I’ve felt this same kind of disconnect with a tourist destination is Orlando. Now, Roswell is not the same level of sad, dilapidated, terminally sticky “pit” as Orlando—never think that—but both places had that absence of soul. I will now be set on fire by the peoples of these fine cities, I know it, but that was the impression I got. There was nothing about Roswell that made me want to stay, not even the second day when the weather was much better and I wasn’t feeling so punkish. Great breakfast at the IHop, I will say that—lots of hustle from the whole team and the waffle was A-OK (and certainly better than the sad, limp Waffle House waffles).

[Insert long drive here where I stared to long into the abyss and it stared right back at me and said, you know what, I’m good.]

 I forgot that I loved Albuquerque. I visited this city back when I was 7 or 8 when my grandparents took me on a roadtrip through the Southwest (a much shorter version of this very trip, in fact). We went to visit my Aunt Elsie and her brood—Aunt Elsie was my grandmother’s sister-in-law and was what I considered a genuine lady. Very well mannered, always dressed impeccably, hair never messy. Her house was equally perfect and she had a feeder for hummingbirds which I found whimsical and magical. Her family was warm, welcoming, and impossibly attractive and our stay with them was the best part of the trip. I’d been having a hard time in that period of my life, and the first part of the trip had been a struggle for me, so Albuquerque is where I started feeling like myself again, laughing and enjoying life. It’s funny, I hadn’t really thought of it until now, but it was a turning point for me. It probably made a bigger difference in my life than I’d ever considered.

Sandia Foothills

Albuquerque is an adobe loving mecca of Southwestern aesthetic-worship and, God Love 'Em, even the damn Starbucks is adobe. It’s a beautiful city nestled in the cradle of the Sandia mountain range. I drove all over the place checking out as much as I could and seriously loved every last bit of it.

I had lunch at Casa Taco, where the taco shells are somehow both soft and crunchy—a new taste delight—and the whole taco experience was d-freakin-vine. 5 out of 5 star tacos. I also visited a local Wal Mart for Magdalena supplies and found it to be exactly like any other Wal Mart ever, the common linkage of American culture, I guess?

I hadn’t planned to stop in Albuquerque, but I had to pick up prescriptions and CVS, employing some sort of witchery, was able to transfer my prescriptions there. It was a perfect preamble to my time at Magdalena, which I will document, though it will be a brief post of mostly pictures and fawning. I am so glad I got to spend a little time in ABQ and remember some things I’d almost lost.