It wasn't dark and yet it was kind of like the Twilight Zone. A random gas station along old Route 66, now I-40. We had seen nothing but scrub and tumbleweeds, and dust devils (who knew that stuff was real? Yeah! Maybe cowboys still roam the land as well!) for miles, so we stopped to get gas. My joy is always in trying out the restrooms... These "restrooms" were outhouses, uhm, shack thingamabobbies. I took a deep breath and went in. Electricity! Great. And a laminated sign (see photo) about the 25 cent fee for the non-existent customers (hehe). After the bathroom experience, I went into the store hoping that it would be a real old time kinda place. Well, it was real kind of not gentrified the way that most of NM is.
My fellow voyager and I had a date with Korean BBQ, so we didn't linger. Instead, we fought our way outside into the dustbowl-Dorothy-hol-onto-Toto kind of wind... We got into the tiny German car ONE AT A TIME for fear of the car levitating from the wind tunnel that was sucking it's invisible way through this non-existent town.
Maybe it was all a dream. A dusty one. But I have the photo as proof... read more