New Mexico Road Trip
June 30, 2018
Sometime talk is cheap. Sometimes it takes you places.
Just a few short weeks after relocating to my hometown, I sat in a small town diner and drew a map. It started with small talk. Day dreaming really, when the word showed up: Road trip. I sat with my 14 year old niece and my folks, home from the city, heart broken and licking my wounds. The lure of a long endless road sounded like the curative remedy my heart longed for.
Left: Noemi and the Grand Canyon, Arizona. Right: Monument Valley, Utah
We all threw our destinations on the table, perhaps half jokingly, but at some point began negotiating in earnest: Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Four Corners, Navajo and Apache lands, Monument Valley, Chimayo, Santa Fe... Sedona. How long could we be on the road?
Perhaps it was my inner gypsy that simply longed for the melodic movement of driving down endless stretches of road in God’s country. Since I was old enough to drive, hitting the road has always been my remedy for something (anything) ailing my young adult life. Chasing the spotted orange dividers along the asphalt delivered solace, clarity of mind, and an outlet when I was looking for one. On good days it provided a small sense of wonder and adventure as I’d try to purposefully get lost in the back country roads beyond my town.
Long story short. I was in.
One week later, a yellow highlighter outlined our path on a paper map. Our pit stops and over night spots were dotted in black ink, and the duration of time it would take us to get there and back was agreed upon. Sedona was off the list. 4 weeks later, we set out.
Our play list on repeat, the inside jokes and perpetual laughs rolled along. It was exhausting and exhilarating to just keep journeying through what felt like foreign terrain to my Californian world.
We crossed our third state line into dust storms and beneath lightening and rain that mingled with earth to somehow drop mud from the sky onto our moving vehicle. A phenomenon that seemed to only happen in my driving rotation. Yet we journeyed on, past the sparsely scattered mobiles homes and box houses often accompanied by stacked tires, swing sets and the occasional shipwrecked car. How beautiful this land was.
There was one apparent things to me: How disparate our local worlds may be from one another, yet how they fit together, like pieces of a landscaped puzzle that covered thousands of miles of paved and unpaved roads. One world, one human race, many realities and unfolding stories coexisting concurrently — but it was also evident that we belong to this earth and to each other.
We arrived in Santa Fe six days later. The air was fresh and it was different. Life was a different shade with a distinctly different history that somehow evaded the present. The church bells called and the sense of belonging conveyed, that really, it was home. All of it.
Follow our 7 day road trip route, or allow it to inspire your own.
Day 1 ~ Sacramento, California through Reno, Nevada, to Lone Pine, California. Stopping at Manzanar and Mono Lake. Staying the night in Lone Pine, California.
Day 2 ~ Lone Pine, California through Death Valley National Park. Staying the night in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Day 3 ~ Las Vegas, Nevada to the Grand Canyon, Arizona. Stopping at Hoover damn. Staying the night at the Grand Canyon, Arizona.
Day 4 ~ Grand Canyon, Arizona to Farmington New Mexico. Stopping at Navajo National Monument, 4 Corners, and Monument Valley, Utah. Staying the night in Farmington, New Mexico.
Day 5 ~ Farmington, New Mexico to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Stopping in Dulce, Chimayo and Taos, New Mexico. Staying the night in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Day 6 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico to Las Vegas, Nevada.
Day 7 ~ Las Vegas, Nevada to Sacramento, California.
Listen to our New Mexico road trip playlist here.
Thank you for taking this journey with me!
From my heart center to yours,
NOEMI
