the turquoise trail...a cactus...and a tavern- sunday, 6/18/06

on her way back to alburquerque last year, pam and her mother stopped at the MINE SHAFT TAVERN in a tiny town called madrid along the "turquoise trail" between albuquerque and santa fe. they had lunch and apparently a nice experience. one of the few things pam wanted to do on this trip was to go back there and have a beer. we did. more later...

we left albuquerque and the plaza and headed for the turquoise trail, which is a 50 mile stretch of old mining towns gone dry. that little excursion off the interstate turned out to be one of the best parts of the trip, both coming and going. it was my first glimpse of new mexico out of the city, and i was sort of on sensory overload...couldn't get it all in!

the first thing we did was put the little rental car to work climbing 14 miles up to SANDIA PEAK. this is where i learned about the D3 and D2 gears in a car...and not always with a lot of success. it took both of us to drive...me driving and pam telling me when i should shift. the car made it to the top and we climbed out, huffing and puffing, to the top. pam's feet had been trapped in a pair of her snazzy sandals all day, and were not cooperating...can you say "swelling" in spanish? we took some gorgeous shots from the mountain top, which was close to 11,000 in elevation. we also engaged in our first acts of subterfuge, for it was here that we began the quest for ROCKS. it is amazing how silly two middle aged women can act about picking up rocks, which is one of the free (hahahahaha) souvenirs i search for on every trip. on our west coast excursion in 1999, i infected pam with the "rock stealing" bug, so she too was picking them up on this trip. she, however, is smarter than i am. she picks up small rocks. i, however, must find ones that i can paint the locations on. the result? probably 50 pounds of rocks that i checked as luggage when we returned..(.and the feds actually went through the bag looking for...what?...) in any case, i was feeling quite smarmy when i returned to the car with the rock, which i was next joined by...a cactus.

a snapshot: driving along the trail, and ellen has seen REAL CACTUS growing on the side of the road...well, too many to just pass by. suddenly, pam finds herself on the side of the road going "huh?" and before she can react, i am on the side of the road to just grab a little prickly pear. it was intended to be a swift steal, but because i am a dumb ass, it took a little longer. i was not listening to pam, who was saying over and over again "YOU ARE GOING TO GET STUCK!" what i forgot was that i am blind. i couldn't see anything but the BIG POINTY THINGS and thought i would be clever and just grab between the big spikes. wrong. in about 4 seconds i was hopping around on the side of the road with about 6 million microscopic cactus needles stuck in my fingers and the cactus was still intact. not one to be deterred, i had to think quickly while screaming in pain and looking up and down the highway for the new mexico police who were looking for cactus thieves.

necessity is the mother of invention. i remembered that i had stuck a pair of my underpants into my pocketbook in case i got stranded somewhere or had an in-flight accident. before pam could yell HURRY UP one more time, i was back with the giant, parachute underwear, fighting the cactus, again. i still got stuck, but not as badly. pam was trying to take a picture of this, which didn't happen. too bad. for posterity's sake we would have had a picture of my posterior bent over wrestling with huge undies and a cactus.

in any case, i won. the big flat prickly pear is upstairs as i write this, still wrapped in it's brightly colored underwear package. i haven't decide yet how to extract it from the underwear. the two "ears" on top (which i named "thelma" and "louise") got snapped off and are now residing in a pot of soil on pam's porch in amelia.
ellen:1 cactus: 0