21 Comments
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Tina Carlson's avatar

I am glad you made it!! Love the photos!

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X. P. Callahan's avatar

Me too!

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d.w.'s avatar

Like reading your prose.

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X. P. Callahan's avatar

As I do yours. Thanks, d. w.

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Laura Pilnick's avatar

I remember it well!

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Ronald Drimmel's avatar

Wow. Both worst and best day?

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X. P. Callahan's avatar

Sometimes it happens that way.

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Jim Sanders's avatar

I have traveled each of those roads. Las Cruces appeals to me with its small town atmosphere, protected by the guardian mountains on its northerly side.

Reminds me of my home before it grew into a city my inner child does not recognize.

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X. P. Callahan's avatar

Yes, Las Cruces does have something of an out-of-time quality, and I like that. What was your hometown?

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Jim Sanders's avatar

Was and is. Tucson. As a child, Tucson was more like Las Cruces today. However, I was born in California and have spent a lot of time there—San Francisco—as my son lives there and I spent a year there during the so-called Summer of Love.

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X. P. Callahan's avatar

Aha. I am new to Tucson and have visited several times in the 5+ years we've been in Las Cruces. There is a lot to like about Tucson. I'm also amused that, having lived in Chicago, San Francisco, Berkeley, Seattle, Oakland, and other large urban areas, Tucson now feels like the "big city" to me.

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pamm hanson's avatar

Excellent story telling.... and that journey certainly a story to tell (with photos!!)

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David Lyman's avatar

Great story. Loved reading it again.

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Mary Holscher's avatar

What a wonderful story! Especially with the photos. I’ve always wanted to take a long road trip, but the only long drive we ever take is between Seattle and the Bay Area. I’ve only been to Las Cruces once when my brother was a professor at New Mexico State University in the 70s. He loved it so much and I loved it too, as I experienced it through his eyes. I imagine it now as looking exactly the same now, in that out-of-time way.

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X. P. Callahan's avatar

I hope you can take that road trip one of these days. But take the back roads, the “blue highways.” We took I-5 and I-10 to keep the trip shorter for Lolo.

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Mary Holscher's avatar

Id love the back roads.

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LeeAnn Pickrell's avatar

I’ve spent a few nights in Needles on road trips and when I moved from Texas to California. I’ve been to Bullhead City but that is another story entirely.

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X. P. Callahan's avatar

A story you will perhaps share with us one day.

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LeeAnn Pickrell's avatar

I just might

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Margaret Ann Silver's avatar

“No signal, no gas pumps, not another vehicle on the special super-fast shortcut road. (Needless to say, the GPS lady has been let go.)”

This gave me a good laugh (though I would have been sobbing/boiling mad if it happened to me 😳).

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Thomas Rist's avatar

This is awesome. Perhaps because I’ve always loved movies (or films, as they call them over here) American road trips in my mind are things of myth. The desert and the timezones and the photos: I love the story you’re telling here. More, more, please!

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