This is a continuation of the spring break that my friend and I went on in 2008. You can read the first part here.

We arrived later in the evening at my grandparent’s house in Phoenix. We talked with them for a while and stayed there for the night before waking up very early the following morning to go to San Diego. While driving, the highway takes you very close to the Mexico border, and we got stopped a few times by the US border patrol as they inspected all cars passing through certain checkpoints. We weren’t smuggling anyone or anything though, so we passed by without any serious delays.

We arrived in San Diego in the lat morning after about 5 hours of driving. We did the classic thing of walking around before we went to the USS Midway, a retired aircraft carrier turned museum. I unfortunately didn’t take any actual pictures of the entire aircraft carrier, but you can see some shots by looking it up in google.

Regardless, I did take a picture of a model of it.

As well as various other pictures from within.

 

 

 

After finishing with the museum, we simply played around on the beach for a while. We didn’t really go swimming, but we hiked our pants up and waded in the water and jogged up and down the beach for a few hours until it got darker.

As it was getting dark, we decided that we would drive through the night to get to Silver City, New Mexico, where the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is.

We decided that Josh would drive first while I slept in the passenger seat. I of course didn’t sleep too well and barely got any sleep. Josh kept driving through the night, and he stopped a bit after midnight to wake me up so I could drive while he slept.

I resumed driving towards New Mexico, and I was so tired from a lack of sleep that I started to have hallucinations. I definitely shouldn’t have been driving, and we likely should have just pulled over and rested, but I pressed on, although not without company.

As I was driving, I started seeing corpses to the side of the road. It started off as just a few, but I started seeing them more and more until the sides of the highway was littered with dead bodies, about one every three meters or so. Unnerved, I kept driving. After a few minutes of driving through a crowd of corpses, I noticed a small boy running alongside my car. I was driving about 75mph, and I was at first amazed that someone was running that fast. Regardless, I was freaked out, but I somehow managed to keep my head clear enough to realize that all these sights I was seeing was just due to me being exhausted. I managed to rationalize what I was seeing, and just kept driving for a while until the hallucinations ceased and I was allowed to drive without any interruptions, although still exhausted.

As we neared Silver City, I saw a pleasant sunrise which prompted me to pull over and take a photo.

We made our way to the Gila caves and parked the car, but before we went in, we needed something to eat. We didn’t have any easy snacks, but we did have a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese (for those of you who don’t know it, this is super cheap food. It entails noddles and a cheese-powder you mix in to get a really artificial mac & cheese). We luckily had a kettle, a camping stove and water, so we figured that we would quickly cook up breakfast. What could go wrong?

For one, the kettle was extremely rusted on this inside, so after we finally managed to get the stove burning and the water boiling, big chunks of rust made their way off the walls of the kettle, littering the water with red flakes. We were hungry, so we pressed on and added the noodles. After a few minutes, they were soft, but we didn’t have a ready way of straining the noodles. Instead of doing out best, we simply poured the cheese-powder into the kettle, turning it into a soup of noodles, rust, and very thin cheesy water.

Bon Appétit

It was so disgusting. We had the “brilliant” idea to add our packet of hot chocolate powder into the mix to hopefully improve the taste. That, unsurprisingly, only made it go from terrible to worse. Josh ate one or two bites of it and ran off into the bushes to spit it out. I personally was super hungry, so I powered through a few more bites, but that was too much for me and I spent the next ten minutes gagging next to the car, trying not to throw up. It was probably the most vile thing I have ever put in my mouth, and I wouldn’t repeat it for a million dollars.

After accepting the fact that we were just going to have to start the day off on an empty stomach, we proceeded walking towards the Gila Caves.

The Gila caves were really cool and were inhabited by the Mogollon People, a group that is guessed to have lived in the area around the 13th and 14th centuries.

A great (almost) end to the journey!

Edit: I forgot the part where we went to Boulder, Colorado, so I will add that in now (I kind of forgot about it since I unfortunately didn’t take any photos while there, which ended up not rekindling my memory). Anyways, after leaving New Mexico, we drove up to Boulder where we were to meet one of my dad’s friends. We rolled into Boulder pretty late at night, and without finding an easier alternative, we decided to simply sleep inside my Jeep. I believe Josh was driving at that time, so he fell asleep in the driver’s seat while I slept in the passenger seat while parked in the parking lot of a big-box store. I remember the cold gnawing at our skin, and despite our best efforts of putting our sleeping bags over us, the limitations of sleeping in the seat of a car kept us from being comfortable or from keeping the drafts out of our sleeping bags.

After a cold and restless night, we decided enough was enough and we finally arose from our fitful slumber as the sun peeked over the nearby mountains. We called my dad’s friend, who met us in the parking lot of an outdoors store before we went to the Eldorado Canyon State Park do so some climbing. My dad used to climb a lot with said friend, and my dad gave me his number, and luckily, he was willing to catch up with us. It was hard to go climbing after such little sleep, but we managed to do it. The routes were narrow, and there were a lot of people, so one of us went with my dad’s friend, and the other went with the friend that my dad’s friend brought along meaning that Josh and I didn’t climb together, but oh well. It was fun regardless, and we spend the majority of the day climbing around the park, pushing our muscles in our tired state.

After climbing, we parted with my dad’s friend and drove up to Laramie, WY, where we visited Josh’s brother for few days. I believe we left our bras in the antlers in the mounted elk that Josh’s brother had in their living room. After spending a few days in Laramie, we drove back to Jackson, where we resumed high school. In total, it was about 2 weeks that we spent on the road, and it was well worth it.

I have longed to do another road trip like that, but life has kept me pretty busy ever since then. One day though, I might just attempt at doing it again, maybe with Josh is we can ever get the time!