Hot Air Balloons and a long drive

We stayed the previous night at the  Hyatt in downtown Albuquerque, which when we made our reservations about 3 weeks ago, was the only place within about 30 miles that had rooms at all.  Originally we were going to wake up before 5 because starting at 5:30 AM they start launching hot air balloons in the dark and supposedly the balloons look really cool with the glow from the fire lighting up the balloons in the night sky.  However we also knew that we got in late the night before plus we had at least a 12 hour drive that day so we decided to sleep in a little bit and arrive at the balloon park around 7:30 for what they call Mass Ascension.  The mass ascension is when pretty much everyone with a hot air balloon launches at about the same time.  There are hundreds of balloons so this takes a couple of hours to get them all in the air.  On the balloon festival’s website we read that you should plan on arriving at the park no later than 6:45 because you would miss out on the launching of the balloons if you got there later.  We also read that since there were roughly 100,000 people arriving, you should plan on sitting in traffic to get into the park.  This meant we might as well get up for the 5 AM show.  However, Chris read online last night on some random site that if you wait and arrive at 7:30 you will still see about 75% of the balloons being launched, plus you will be able to drive right into the parking lot without sitting in traffic.  This was what we wanted.  So we woke up at about 6:30, showered, checked out of our hotel only 7 hours after checking in, and made our way to the balloon park.  Arriving a little later than everyone else might have had its advantages.  Besides not sitting in traffic at all we also did not have to pay the $10 to park!  We walked down towards where they were launching balloons and could not believe what we saw.  Now just about everyone has seen the occasional hot air balloon.  It is always a cool sight.  Some people may have even seen multiple hot air balloons at once, maybe 2 or 3, maybe a half dozen.  That is always a nice treat as well.  If you come to New Mexico in early October you will see hundreds of hot air balloons in the sky and being launched at the same time.  The skies are usually clear and the morning light really makes this scene even more impressive.  There were balloons of every shape, size, style, and color.  Some were regular hot air balloons with nice colors, some were cartoon characters; others were shapes of objects such as an ice cream cone.  What they all had in common was that they were just amazing.  Words cannot describe the scene.  The Balloon Festival is listed in the book “1000 places to see before you die” for a reason.  The really cool thing is that not only can you see these balloons filling up the sky but you can also walk up close and touch them and talk to the owners as they are launching their balloons.  We did notice that the non-traditional balloon shaped balloons seemed to have the most trouble getting launched.  They looked really cool but the wind must have been giving them trouble.  We probably took 200 pictures from every conceivable angle of these things.  We stayed for about two hours at which time about 90% of the balloons had been launched, and like just about everyone else, we started making our way back to the car.  We stopped for a quick breakfast burrito from one of the tents selling food (with green chiles of course) and we made our way to the car.  As we looked around the city (you can see for miles out here) we saw balloons landing in very random places just about everywhere throughout the city.  We drove past a balloon that had landed behind a fast food restaurant in an empty parking lot and we took some pictures.  By this time it was approaching 10 AM and we had to get moving.  The balloons were pretty much all launched so we were not missing out on anything else.  They launch the balloons first thing in the morning then again at dusk, to take advantage of the good lighting. 

We started driving east on I-40 and made our first stop about 40 miles east of Albuquerque at a place called Clines Corners.  We had seen billboards for many miles advertising all the stuff they had here.  We knew what to expect, this place would be similar to South of the Border or Wall Drug in South Dakota….an overpriced tourist trap.  That is exactly what it was.  In 1934 a man named Ray Cline set up a service station on what was then Rte. 66.  The highway has long since been replaced with I-40 but the service center, which has expanded over the years, remains with Cline’s original name. 

By this time we had had enough of interstate driving even though we had only come about 50 miles.  We headed southeast on US 285 to US 60 which we would take east into the Texas panhandle.   The scenery along this highway was much different than we had grown accustomed to over the last week.  We’ve been in the desert for so long that it was strange to see something else.  We were now in grassy plains, the kind where you might expect to see buffalo.  There was still nothing in terms of civilization for miles.  Every 30 miles or so we would come across a small town which more often than not was just a clustering of old run down, broken houses, many of which seemed abandoned.  After about two hours of this we came over a hill and saw a pretty good sized town several miles in the distance.  This was the town of Fort Sumner, NM.  This certainly was not much of a town but it was much bigger than anything we had seen since leaving the interstate a few hours ago.  There wasn’t really anything to speak of in terms of services, at least not along highway 60 but they did have a Billy the Kid museum, which being Sunday in the “winter”, was closed.  We did see a sign for Billy the Kid’s grave, so we headed about 3 miles down a side road to check it out.  Sure enough, in a small cemetery, with the obligatory museum out front, was Billy the Kid’s grave.  Turns out this is where he was killed back in 1881.  After taking some pictures and using the bathroom we were on our way east again across the plains of eastern New Mexico.  We finally stopped for a quick lunch in Clovis, NM.  While it was past lunch time we hadn’t really been hungry since eating our breakfast burrito this morning.  We entered Texas and turned northeast.

Downtown Clovis, NM

You could tell we were now in cattle country.  The towns in the Texas panhandle that we passed through had names like Bovina and Herreford.  The trucks we passed going in the opposite direction mostly had either cattle in them or hay.  We passed a few huge stock yards where thousands of cows were awaiting their fate. 

While the scenery was still flat and very rural, what did stick out for miles away were the grain elevators that each farm had.  Some of the bigger towns had bigger grain elevators.  We also noticed that many people had boxcars on their properties.  We assume an old boxcar makes for a good shed.  If you have the land, why not?  We have always said that if we had the space we would get a caboose but a boxcar would be pretty cool too.  As we came into the town of Dimmit, TX we saw a geocache up ahead that seemed interesting.  The geocache itself was nothing special but the location it brought us to was quite interesting.  It brought us to the storefront of a hardware store called Kerr Hardware that was covered in grimy windows which looked as if they hadn’t been washed in years.  The place literally was falling apart.  If you looked inside of the windows past all of the dirt, it looked like something out of the 1950’s.  There are old wringer washing machines, new bicycles, tricycles, radios, fishing baskets, etc.  Legend has it that in 1961 when the Texas Limited Sales, Excise and Use tax act was enacted, Mr. Kerr, who was obviously a man of principle, got upset because Texas had the audacity to require him to charge a sales tax.  Mr. Kerr said that he would lock the doors before he charged sales tax.  Apparently Mr. Kerr walked out and never came back.  And so today, 50 years later, the hardware store sits, locked up, a snapshot in time.  This was pretty cool.  As for the rest of the town, it too looked like it came right out of the 50’s.  We always wonder why many of these towns do not modernize and why so many people choose to never leave.

Downtown Dimmitt, TX

After a little while longer the grassy plains gave way to some interesting canyons and much more rugged terrain, but only for a little while.  It ultimately returned to flat grass lands again.  We headed northward now and we picked up I-40 again, this time in the eastern part of the Texas panhandle.  We stopped almost immediately at a rest area which was called the Route 66 rest area, probably because it was built on what used to be Route 66 prior to the interstate being built.  We continued driving through the evening.  We had wanted to get as far as Fort Smith, AR that night but we were getting very tired.  Chris figured if we could make it to at least Oklahoma City we would be ok.  We made it through Oklahoma City and we were not too tired yet so we pressed on.  About an hour later it started to hit us.  We were exhausted.  We started looking for a place to stay off of the exits but there was really nothing other than cheap looking places that we did not want to stay at.  Finally we could not take it anymore and we pulled off at the first chain motel we saw, which turned out to be a Super 8.  We took a room and made our way upstairs.  We hit the bed right after midnight and fell immediately asleep.  In the end this was probably our longest driving day ever.  We logged 785 miles!