truth or consequences

texas behind us, we're now in santa fe. the western part of the state was much less painful to drive through, and it was more what i imagined it would be, with the desert and the mountains and all of that. we passed through some wicked lightening storms, which we could see from a hundred miles away. that was the most amazing part- the open sky, the vastness, the girth. how can one sky look bigger than another?

this part of the trek also made me understand just how stir crazy i had gone driving from new orleans to austin. since i knew it wasn't even a category one drive (our classification- meaning more than 600 miles in a day), i tried to convince myself that it wasn't that boring. i tried on all the beautiful feathered masks i had gotten in new orleans, and took pictures in each. i tried on various lipsticks, and took pictures of myself in each. i made chris suffer through questions from two books that had been given to us- one from my mom, with questions to ask each other before getting married, and one from hoodie, with questions about each other and our relationship. the first has questions like: "what do you imagine our bedroom looking like? whimsical? romantic? will we have a TV in our bedroom?"; "how will we raise our children regarding food? will we encourage them to be vegetarians? will we prohibit processed foods? how often will we eat out?"; "how often will we socialize with friends? what will be our preferred method of socializing?" these definitely spur conversation but as you can see after 100 miles of it, it gets old. the second book, which was given to us because it made hoodie and her boyfriend fight, asks questions such as: "what was the first thing that attracted you to your partner?" ; "name three things you hope your partner never says to you again"; "what is your favorite facial expression that your partner makes?" again, great, thought provoking questions, but one can only do this for so long.

for the record, my favorite chris facial expression is when he first starts to concentrate on something. his eyebrows do this little furrow and he sort of pouts, and its real cute. his favorite was my fake frightened face.

austin to el paso was just a much better experience. we stopped at the monahans sandhills for a picnic, which was absolutely stunning, and we also stopped at odessa, sight of the ratliff stadium, at chris's request (something having to do with "friday night lights"). reaching el paso was a huge milestone, but unfortunately we had to go to a wal-mart to get camping equipment and other supplies. it could have been worse, but it still wasn't fun, and then trying to find a non-chain, non-terrifyingly sketchy hotel in el paso proved impossible, so we broke down and stayed in a red roof inn.

if you can, skip el paso and go about 50 miles into new mexico to a town called truth or consequences. what a better story that would have been.