San Antonio to Rio Grande Village Campsite (Big Bend) - 459 Miles SING ALONG CAR SONGS

As I write this from the Roswell Public Library, it is a bit of a strain to recall everything I wanted to relay, but I will do my best in the short time I have before I must leave for Albuquerque (a quick, unplanned stop to pick up supplies).

Traveling alone is not an alien concept to me. I've been dragging my luggage and different versions of myself home to visit family since I moved to New York in 2001. Before that, I spent countless hours in the car driving back and forth from Overland Park to Lawrence to complete my Master's degree.

Traveling with people can be a drag--sometimes it is fine if you and your traveling companion are simpatico (it has nothing to do with whether you're an asshole; two like minded assholes can travel far and accomplish many assholish things together in harmony), but if you like being alone (like me) and find it difficult to maintain long stretches of banter (like me), co-traveling can be exhausting (like me).

However, it seems even I--the self proclaimed hermit with misanthropic tendencies--do not like to be alone for too long. More on that later. But the first sign of loneliness strain? Probably talking to oneself, and singing to oneself. And talking to the Google maps lady who tells you where to go. Most the time I tell her she's doing a good job; sometimes I get mean when she disappoints me and leads me the wrong way (even if it is only temporary). And most the time I feel okay about it because every blue moon she asks "Did you just say something?" which makes me thinks she is listening, which is also very creepy because most the time she never says a word no matter how much I yell at her and call her names. Only when I am alone in the dark at a remote rest stop, then it's all "What was that you said, Erin?" And then I'm falling out of the car...though to what safe place I couldn't tell you.

On my drive through Texas, since I couldn't listen to the radio whenever I was near a destination (or driving around in town) for fear of missing one of her directions, I would sing to myself. Lots of Texas things. It started with "All My Exes Live in Texas," and expanded to the Dallas Theme, followed by "Deep in the Heart of Texas," leading of course to "Foolin' Around" by Patsy Cline since I couldn't remember how "San Antonio Rose" went so my brain short circuited and that's where it landed. Oh, and when I got to the Alamo, "Whomp, There It Is." This makes total sense, at least to me. Because whoomp, there it was.

"All My Exes" is by far the best one because you can get some real twang going on that one, then pert near soon you're wrastlin cows and spittin chaw (which I did finally see, several times in fact, and always in the vicinity of either a cow or a truck). Deep in the Heart of Texas!

Before Big Bend, there was one night sleeping at the rest stop. Now this was the rest stop your mother warned you about. The comparison between the brand new rest stops I stayed at previously and this rest stop was day and freakin' night. Very dark, just horizontal parking, trucks and cars together like some heathen, Mad Max mash up, and bathrooms from maybe the 50s or 60s, still serviceable, but broken down, badly lit, and creeptastic.

After my initial discomfort, I slept like a baby. It's wrong, I know, but as my mother will tell you, I would sleep through a category 5 tornado. I would be up in the tornado, snoring. Loudly. At the rest stop, I would awaken a bit when a particularly noisy semi would roll right past my nose, but barely long enough to register where I was before slipping back into my weird dreams of twisty rollercoaster highways looping all around, over, and through the earth. By the way, this "Erin Sleeps Through Tornadoes" lore will be funny later on when I tell you about my first night in Big Bend. Oh the fanciful lies we tell ourselves.

Next stop: Big Bend National Park!