Santa Fe Steeze: No Wonder Dorothy ran Away

I know that Halloween is over, but I still have a couple more related posts—one about a great Halloween party and the other about the horrific, tragic, and often overlooked aftermath of the Halloween holiday (but don't you worry, there will be snacks!)

But, in order to provide a little intermission from the macabre, I have decided to tell you about a recent road trip:

I went to visit my brother and his family in Kansas a couple of weeks ago. I decided that it should be a road trip. Although it is an eight hour drive for me, the closest airport to where they live is about a four hour drive one way—I know it is INSANE!!

So, being the extremely polite and overly accommodating person that I am, I decided that it would be better for me to drive eight hours than to make my family drive eight hours to pick me up at the airport and subsequently eight hours to take me back. Besides, I have not had a road trip in a long time and I thought that it would be fun.

The drive up I-25 from Santa Fe to Springer, New Mexico is really beautiful. I rarely go north of Santa Fe on I-25. If I am headed north, it is usually on the low road to Taos. It was nice to see Pecos, Las Vegas (we have one in New Mexico), etc.

It was all going great until I had to turn off onto I-Whatever to head right to Kansas (because in New Mexico, Kansas is on our right).

It seemed like in a matter of seconds the mountains had disappeared and were now just a faint outline on the horizon. As I proceeded, all of the trees began to disappear as well. A little further along, the highway narrowed to two lanes—then even the shoulder of the road went away and I was left on a two-lane road with a ditch on either side. I checked my cell and I got the "roaming" message. I didn't even know that cell phones "roamed" anymore.

I was scared.

Soon, not only had the mountains and the trees vanished, but so did towns, houses and eventually other cars.

There was one point that I was so excited to see another vehicle, after it had passed I began timing—waiting for my next encounter with another human. It seriously took one hour and twenty-six minutes before I saw a truck coming toward me. A few minutes later I passed a lone house on the prairie.

How do people live like this? One lonely house in an expanse of literally miles and miles of flat, treeless land.

In a way it is kind of beautiful. An unobstructed view from horizon to horizon—I could actually see the curvature of the Earth.

But what about daily life? You can't really have people over, there are none. Going out for drinks is problematic because the nearest city is like 100 miles away. Where do you shop for groceries? Where do you get gas? Where's the nearest Target? Does Amazon even deliver out here?

And ultimately, how do you keep from repeatedly stabbing yourself in the forehead with a spoon until your head finally gives up and dies???

Now don't get me wrong, when I eventually did come across a gas station, I would (of course) stop and the few people that were there were quite friendly—even though I stood out like Brittany Spears on "Mommy and Me" day at the preschool.

I finally arrived at my brother's house (he actually lives in a town), got settled in, and had a very nice visit with my family.

It is strange how people can choose such dramatically different lifestyles. But that is what I look for when cruising other peoples blogs. I truly like to see how other people live in other parts of the world—just the mundane daily life stuff—what can I say, it fascinates me.

Below is a video of part of my journey. It is actually close to civilization. It was shot just outside of Greensburg Kansas.

My brother and his family lived in Greensburg when, a few years ago, a tornado completely leveled the town. You should check out the photos here. Although they lost their house and nearly everything in it, no one was hurt.

Greensburg is in the process of a complete green rebuild, which I think is pretty remarkable.

The video is really long because I was kind of digging the tune and didn't want to cut it. I also wanted to really show the strange monotony of the landscape.

Southwestern Kansas—Somewhere Over the Rainbow
by santafesteeze

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