The Trip South and West

The Trip South and West

Emily –

So we’ve made it to Las Cruces, and the journey was definitely an experience. We were blessed to start out our trip with a wedding. My sister Mary was married to Bon on Saturday, August 11 in Ashville, NC. Upon leaving Baltimore we made our way to Raleigh where we helped prepare for the wedding with my family and then were able to spend an amazing weekend in Ashville celebrating their union. The wedding was on this beautiful ranch that is settled in the mountains outside of Ashville. The mountains not only provided gorgeous views but also a well welcomed change in temperature. We were able to run, play frisbee and enjoy family and friends without the threat of melting!

Sunday came quickly and we once again packed up the car to capacity to begin our camping road trip west. We left Ashville and explored the awesome Smokey Mountains with Baltimore friends, Lolo and Brian, who also happened to be traveling through NC on a road trip. We drove the craziest road, Deals Gap, which has 313 turns in a span of 11 miles and saw beautiful vistas. I think Tucker and I were both surprised that such a vast and remote area existed in the east. As we made our way west the terrain change was incredible. On our way through Northern Alabama we visited the Cathedral Caverns where Tom Sawyer was filmed. The caverns themselves were breath taking but the stoner tour guide left a lot to be desired.

Arkansas was much more mountainous than I ever expected and surprisingly beautiful – except for the strip mall style cities that plague it. We went to Hot Springs National Park, the country’s first national park, and definitely the weirdest. The national park is located in the middle of the town and the hot springs are only accessible via privately owned bath houses. Bill Clinton once lived in Hot Springs and the only other claim to fame is the town’s history and a history as a hub for gangsters, gambling and debauchery. The “glory” days are long past and it’s sort of sad to see the local merchants trying to hang-on. After leaving Hot Springs we entered Texas with excitement and anticipation. We camped outside of Dallas at Lake Tawakoni State Park, famous for being the site of the world’s largest recorded spider web. It wasn’t the most pleasant camping experience (e.g., horse flies on PEDs) but we survived.

Tucker –

After visiting a friend on the outskirts of Dallas we headed toward West Texas. The landscape gradually browned and opened up. The sky was vast and blue and wide mesas lined the interstate.The further west we travelled, leaving the sprawl of Fort Worth and Dallas behind, the towns and settlements diminished in size and the desert spaces between them lengthened. The arid land was a great expanse of nothingness in all directions—except for the snaking highway cutting a line in the vastness—and it was beautiful. Until we approached the oil fields and refineries that seemed like some kind of metastasized mechanical cancer choking the earth.

We drove late and looked to find a cheap motel. Unfortunately, this segment of our trip coincided with what oil folks call the fill. We never quite figured out what the fill entails, however, all lodgings were booked for a 120 mile stretch of road. After driving for what must have been three hours—along the way pulling off the interstate at every exit to check for vacancies—we found a room in Odessa at Motel One: 29.95 a night.There was a 10 minute no refund policy--and good for us that we didn’t inspect our room before we paid for it! TV remote controls required a $25 security deposit. The interior face of the room’s front door looked like it'd been kicked-in multiple times. The walls had more spackle and patch than paint. The ceiling above the shower was collapsing and the tap water smelled and tasted—not faintly, mind you—like it had been mixed with gasoline. But we got a good night’s rest, got some coffee in the morning and a filling breakfast at Denny’s—where our lovely waitress confided in us that she, too, wanted to get the hell out of Odessa—and we started out for Las Cruces.

The last length of our trip was uneventful. We were pretty wiped out from two weeks on the road and looked forward to catching some rest—a bit too bleary eyed to really take in the surroundings of what is now our home in the southwest.