I must be headed East with a huge storm front because it has not stopped raining since I left the North Rim of the Canyon on... whatever day that was. With all of the wonderful art galleries and what I could see through the rain must be a beautiful city. I never got out of the 30' thing I am trying to maneuver around through rather narrow streets. I can't see anything, which is not safe for the citizens of Santa Fe so I did what any thoughtful person would do. I decided to go up the mountain to scare the people of Los Alamos and take in the museum about the Manhattan Project.
Actually two very different and interesting museums. I can understand why the government choose this place; it is very much like a castle on a high plateau easily guarded by a few soldiers along a long narrow mountain road. The current residents seem so laid back and they nearly radiate (pun intended) intelligence. No crime, free public transportation nothing to do but hike.
One photo in the museum shows a woman wearing a pair of earrings made from the sand that was fused together at the first test site to form a new mineral, Trinitite named after the site at Trinity. It is radioactive!
After leaving Los Alamos I decided I needed to drive as far as I could toward home. I wound up about 9:00 pm in a Walmart parking lot with a couple of other poor lost souls with nowhere else to stay. Around 2:00 am I woke up to the sounds of someone playing the bass on his car stereo so loud that it shook the RV.
I gave up and left in the pouring rain at around 3:30 but not before securing some needed supplies, i.e. another coffee carafe since I just broke the one I purchased as a replacement for the one that was broken earlier, a flash light to replace my defective one and a magnifying glass since Scott took his. I can't read the map but it really doesn't matter since I never seem to know quite where I am or where I'm heading.
Along Route 66 the Cadillacs were still standing tall in the field but like most things Route 66, at least what is left of it, has become nothing like we remember or imagine as a sixties TV show.
The state of Texas did something very cool along I-40 around McLean. They built a road side rest area that looks like an art deco dinner including frosted glass doors and port hole windows. Inside they had really decorative tile work and numerous advertising signs from the Route 66 era. We have to give credit to Texas, they get it right occasionally, after all they gave us a fairly decent President (I'll leave it to you to choose which one). A friend from my Tampa wine tasting group said after she moved to Texas "These Texans sure are proud of their state". I always think that is a kind way to explain their state of mind.
Tonight, as I was traveling through Oklahoma City, I thought of the many times Scott told me to stay between the lines as we were speeding along the highway.
I got pulled over by a city cop who proceeded to ask me for my license and the rental agreement on the RV. Of course I could not produce the rental contract because Scott had it back in Georgia. This led to a long conversation about what I was doing, where I was headed and where had I been. He seemed very curious about why I had no passengers and why had the other merry travelers left me.
He asked if I knew why he had stopped me? Of course I had no idea since I had not been drinking and was to my knowledge not speeding. He proceeded to tell me that since he had been following I had failed to maintain my lane and had in fact run off the road on the right and stayed there until I moved over into the left lane and remained there until moving back over into the shoulder. I explained about the dog's driving and my trying to get some M&M peanuts. When he tried to leave Mitzi proceeded to bark and protest as she does whenever anyone leaves (separation anxiety). The patrolman scratched Mitzi's head and said he had a pug that looked just like Mitzi. My reply was, "well you know how bad pugs drive".
He let me go without a ticket.
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