Westbound Day 5: El Paso to Sante Fe

We woke up in graphic designer Alan's house early to get a head start on the day [which proved to be a good decision as we needed the extra time]. Another person couch surfing at the apartment in a different room was a gentleman from the south side of France named Jean. Jean had been travelling by motorcycle for almost 5 years straight through the Iraq, Syria, and other countries through Africa and Central America. We caught him on the very end of his journey, where he was leaving that morning for an interview to become settled in El Paso. As he left he stated, in his flowing french accent, that it was "time to try the mundane".

Our last stretch of the trip brought us through the mountains to the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. They were enormous, even in comparison to places like the Mammoth Caves. I don't have really much else to say on them, they were great.

Poor planning on our part of not filling up before leaving El Paso means that our gas tanks were eaten up by the mountains and ran on very literal fumes for a couple miles down the mountain. For comparison, Casey's truck has an 18 gallon tank. He pumped 17.812 gallons into his tank. We had an emergency tank just in case, but stopping in the high desert isn't desirable. 

After passing though Roswell, avoiding abduction, and scaling the foot of the Rocky mountains, we completed our 40 hour, 2,690 mile trip and are set up in the cabin we will call home for 3 months.

Now that it is complete I will blog once a week on Saturdays to cover the events through each camp session.

Here's to the end of one journey and the beginning of another one with less back sweat... I hope.
-Patrick