Day 8: Lubbock, TX to Santa Fe, NM 389 miles

I'm in Santa Fe, staying with my brother John and his partner Cathryn. The major mission of my journey is complete, with Lucinda's ashes safely delivered. There have been tears along the way, and surely more will follow, but I'm so happy I've made this journey on my motorcycle.

I took my time leaving this morning, rolling out around 8am. For a small city, Lubbock has a surprisingly extensive freeway system. Fortunately, the Zumo guided me through several sets of on and off ramps and set me headed due west on a farm road. Initially, I thought this might be a notorious GPS trick, leading me astray to dead end at a cattle watering tank. But in reality the road was pretty decent with a 70 mph speed limit and almost no traffic. I was able to stop on the road and take some photos without being in danger of impeding anyone else.

Fairly early on after leaving Lubbock, I started to smell oil. I was looking for a place to pull off to see if the moto was leaking when I noticed the oil rig. Pretty soon there were many oil rigs. Sometimes they are in undeveloped fields like the one above. Sometimes they are right in the middle of crops. The air was pretty pungent for a number of miles.

After a while I lost all signs of life, no cattle, no oil rigs, no agriculture. This is west Texas, just before crossing into New Mexico on US-380. New Mexico quickly turned less green, more desolate and hotter, up to 95 degrees.

I decided to stop in Roswell, sight in 1947 of a supposed UFO crash. There is a museum and "research" center which is kind of hokey and kind of interesting. They attempt to lay out all the known "facts", including eyewitness testimony. There is enough information to turn believers into skeptics and skeptics into believers. The "official" story is that debris found was simply a weather balloon. This picture shows my favorite humor. It's a little hard to read here, but identifies everything as a "weather balloon" except the weather balloon which is identified as "swamp gas".

I took the time in Roswell to get an early lunch, my first Mexican food of the trip. I also bought a few postcards and got them written and mailed off. From Roswell, I took US-285 almost all the way to Santa Fe. There is only one town, Vaughn, which comes at about half distance. From here north, the wind was crazily strong coming from the west, and temps were in the mid-90s.

Tomorrow is a rest day. The moto is going to the good folks at Santa Fe BMW for an oil change, and I will hopefully get some exercise in the form of a hike or bicycle ride with my brother.