Day 6 - 7/20/99

Eager, AZ

Carlsbad, NM

     The first factor was the distance.  Eager was about 405 miles (6 hours)away from Carlsbad, and about 271 miles from the grand canyon.  We had more time to travel yesterday after the Grand Canyon, but we couldn't find a point closer to Carlsbad yet still reasonably close to the Grand Canyon.  Eager was the only place for 100 miles that had a hotel we had the number to. *A note about that* - We are using Streets 2000, the best map program money can buy.  It allows us to not only see where we are and where we're going but also what hotels and stuff are near there AND has telephone numbers!.  Unfortunately it only has National Chains of Hotels.   *end note* 

     The second factor was that of sleep.  Every night we update the page, and depening on how co-operative the computer and modem is, it usually only takes a short while.  This presupposes that we have had time to write the page as we drive (which is usually the case (although not tonight)).  Last night we couldn't get the modem to work on a Landline and had to use the Cellular modem (which went very well) - nonetheless finding out the landline didn't work took time. We got to bed by midnight (a first) and set the alarm for 8:30 (extra 1/2 hour of sleep!!) - 'course 8:30 rolled around and Ugh -too many late nights.  We slept for another hour.  By the time we got out of there it was 10:15 - Simple math: 10:15 am + 6 hours = 4:15 - Carlsbad Caverns stops letting people in at 5pm - we thought "Hey, we can make that."   We were wrong because of:

     Our Final reason ->  We got lost.  OK.  Maybe not lost.  Misplaced?   No, we knew where we were at all time (Thank you Microsoft).  The problem was we went about 150 miles in the "Wrong" direction.  At some point we missed a turn that the map program told us to take and figured we were on the right road.   We then went the distance that we were supposed to go, only south rather than east.   Poop.  No problem - pop it into the map program and Bamn: instant reroute.   No back tracking.  We took a 108 extra mile detour through Texas (yuck.)   Anyway, with traffic in Texas, by the time we got to Carlsbad it was 7 pm.   Kinda missed the whole deadline thing.

     The drive, however, was very nice.  It seemed like every time we went over a hill there was another amazing vista.  The picture above is representative of what we saw in New Mexico.  If I had a higher resolution picture or you could see between the pixels you would see that the road goes through a notch in the hills.  That notch is 19 miles away.  It seemed like every section of road was like this.  It was VERY cool.