Travel Review
So! I'm back in Denver today after spending a whopping 18 days on the road. This was quite the adventure. Here's the itinerary:
1. Las Vegas - First stop actually involved flying to Las Vegas with some friends for my birthday. This was a spendy vacation that included staying in the Palazzo and overspending on Las Vegas restaurants. In the spirit of being a party animal, I spent $20 on slots and then quit as soon as I broke even.
Also got to go to Omega Mart (very cool and I recommend it) as well as the Atomic Testing Museum. The Atomic Testing Museum had a genuine enigma machine for some reason, and seeing that was the highlight of the month because I have a huge interest in cryptography.
My opinion of Las Vegas is that it's Disney World for adults. Everything is obviously totally fake and expensive, and you feel like they're trying to scam you out of your money in everything you do. I still had fun, though. It was worth going and being "spendy" to remind myself that I'm really not missing out on anything with that lifestyle. You're just paying companies to impress you, but you aren't actually that engaged in it. There are deeper experiences that require more skill without costing much that end up being more fulfilling because the skill requirement forces deeper participation.
2. Taos & Albuquerque - Flew home, then drove to Albuquerque and stopped in Taos for lunch. Unfortunately, I could not spent much time in Taos, but it was a cute town with a fun downtown and some good outdoor stuff. Taos is pretty close to Colorado and felt like smaller Santa Fe. I'll probably go back someday because it's fairly close.
In Albuquerque, I went to the Atomic Science Museum and Petroglyphs National Park. Both of these were pretty cool. The Atomic Science Museum had a 50s style bomb shelter exhibit that I like, and I got my National Parks Passport book stamped Petroglyphs plus a small, 2 mile hike to see the petroglyphs.
I was staying an extremely cheap hotel in Albuquerque to save money, and combined with trying to work from home, this sucked. Spending all day staring at your computer screen inside a roach motel starts to wear you down psychologically.
3. Las Cruces & White Sands National Park - Drove to Las Cruces next. Not the biggest fan of this town but I might have just been staying in the less fun part of town. That being said, the Albuquerque hotel sucked so much that I didn't care because the hotel I got here was cheaper and way better.
White Sands, however, was an awesome national park. If you've never seen it, I highly recommend it. It's the world's largest gypsum dune field, and the geology of the place was fascinating. I went on a guided ranger tour where he explained all of the geology. Apparently, the gypsum is a very light material but highly water absorbent, and there's an aquifer under the dunes that keeps them saturated and stops the gypsum from blowing away. As a result, the sand is very cool, even in the blazing sun.
He also mentioned that one of the towns nearby was going to start draining the aquifer, and this would eventually kill the dune field because the gypsum will all blow away without water. I found that upsetting because the dune field was such a remarkable place, and the idea of it being killed was horrifying.
I also laid in the sand for about an hour and watched the sunset. It's amazingly quiet there. I've never been anywhere so quiet in my entire life. Being there was honestly nearly a spiritual experience. You just lay in the sand for an hour at these geological structures that are so much larger and older than you are, and it makes all the problems in your life feel so small and distant. This experience really made me realize just how petty and small 99% of the shit I worry about is, and realizing just how insignificant you are compared to the entire planet is honestly liberating.
Tucson - Tucson next, where I met up with @grundomatic and went on the ERE-tour of the whole city. This was very cool, and meeting up with @grundomatic was a lot of fun. We looked at a lot of the permaculture stuff going on in the city, such as what all the native plants are and how they are used to manage water. Given how hot and dry the climate is there, seeing the plants in action gave me a new appreciation for the desert.
We also went to improv and met up with @grundomatic's ERE friend and had a great discussion about ERE topics. Then we participated in a cycling event. All around, very cool to see the city and meet up with some ERE-minded folks.
Tucson itself was a pretty cool city. It has that mid-sized college town vibe where it seems like there's a lot of quality cultural and community events going on that. Given the more moderate cost of living and community vibe there, it did seem like a pretty ERE-friendly place to be. And given it's still snowing in Colorado, getting some sun was nice!
I also went to the Pima Air and Space Museum here as well as the Titan Missile Museum. The Titan Missile Museum was very cool because it's an old nuclear silo and they run through a simulated launch using the real equipment. Pima Air and Space was also cool, but I've been to a lot of aircraft museums before, so nothing there was groundbreaking. Still, they had a lot of WWII aircraft that were cool.
Phoenix - Drove to Phoenix next. Phoenix seems like Denver mixed with Utah but bigger and without the Mormons. It was an absolutely huge, sprawling suburb-city just like Denver. Phoenix was so huge in fact that I couldn't see very much of it. At first, I was going to go see Culdesac, the carfree neighborhood that MMM wrote about recently, but given Culdesac is still mostly under construction and I only had one afternoon, in Phoenix, I skipped out on that and went to Scottsdale and the Desert Botanical Garden instead. Scottsdale is pretty much just the rich part of town with some shops, but I did go to an old, 50s-style ice cream parlor, so that was cool. The Desert Botanical Garden was very cool, and I enjoyed seeing many of the plants there that I saw on the Tucson permaculture tour.
Flagstaff - Next, I went to Flagstaff and saw the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff was a cool town that reminded me of a lot of the mountain towns in Colorado. It had a fun, casual vibe with a lot of good outdoor stuff. Also, after being in the desert heat, the cold mountain atmosphere with the total lack of oxygen made me feel like home.
The Grand Canyon was very cool. The view is absolutely stunning, and the geology there is INCREDIBLY old. They had some really good hiking routes to go on if you had more time to go hiking, but again, I only had one afternoon, so I just walked the Rim trail then took the bus out to Hermit's Respite and back.
I will say, the Grand Canyon was INSANELY touristy. There were SO MANY TOURISTS, and so many international tourists in fact, that I literally felt like how I did when I went to touristy places in Europe (like Versailles).
I'd like to go again someday with some more time and planning and actually do the real hikes.
Then disaster strikes - My plan at this point was to drive from Flagstaff to Santa Fe before heading home to see the Manhattan Project in Santa Fe, but this was not meant to be. You see, I-40 between Flagstaff and Santa Fe is a dystopian hell road full of potholes and semitrucks going 80 MPH. There is also debris EVERYWHERE, ALL OVER the road. I saw literally about five people pulled over with flat tires while driving on this road.
Now you think such a sight would have been a warning to me, but no, I didn't think much of it. Until I end up hitting something on the road (either a pothole or debris, not sure which), which absolutely DESTROYS my driver's side rear tire. We're talking this tire is KILLED. And not just the tire, either. The fucking RIM HAS A HOLE IN IT.
So I'm like, fuck. There is no civilization between Flagstaff and Albuquerque. I guess I'm going to have to drive back to Flagstaff to get this fixed because there's nowhere along the way.
Then I pull out my spare tire, jack up my car, and start pulling the old tire off when the lug nuts just. Snap. Off. The bolts that hold the lug nuts to the tire just SNAP OFF so that there's NO WHERE TO PUT THE LUG NUT. I am down to 3/5 lug nuts on my tire and this sad spare tire that can only go 50mph and is half a normal tire. There is also NO OTHER ROAD back to Flagstaff except the hell road that is I-40.
So I limp back to Flagstaff going 50mph on I-40 and praying my fucking tire doesn't fall off the car. I finally make it back but have to go get a last minute hotel for $$$ because at this point, it's too late to call any repair shop. Luckily, I do get a hotel and my car makes it back to Flagstaff in one piece.
The next day, I have to call about 10 tire shops to find one that even has a rim that will fit my car because my old rim has gone full rest in pieces. Also, no tire shop wants to sell me just one tire. I understand that you don't normally replace just one tire of a car because of how tires wear out, their sizes, etc etc, but I really just want one tire so I can get back to Denver and fix the bigger tire problem later when I'm not paying a bazillion dollars for hotels.
Finally, I find a tire shop that has a steel rim and is willing to sell me one tire. They tell me they will sell me the tire but they won't install it because 3/5 lug nuts is too sketchy. Alright, that's fine. I can live with this. My plan is to get the tire then install it myself then go back to Denver with 3/5 lug nuts and deal with the lug nut problem later.
So they give me the tire, I go to put it on, and ANOTHER lug nut breaks off. I now have
2/5 lug nuts holding the spare tire to my car. At this point, I'm like, yeah the game is over. GG me. I need to take this to a real repair shop and get them to fix the lug nut posts and then put the tire on.
Luckily, I find a shop within a mile of the tire store that will do this, and I manage to make it there. They accidentally snap the remaining two lug nut posts off when trying to get the spare off (no surprise there) but they do install the new posts, put the tire on, and then I am free.
At this point, I just want to get home. I end up driving straight home by going through four corners/Durango, stay overnight in Durango (more $$$) then just immediately drive back to Denver.
Thankfully, I am home now. That whole tire thing was a nightmare but at least I didn't get hurt and my car is relatively okay. I do still have a tire problem because my new tire is slightly bigger than my old tires and has a steel rim instead of a normal rim, but this is a problem I can fix later.