Our Dumb Blog

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM

Today we visited Carlsbad Caverns. Wow! They are very cool. If you want a bigger cavern, you have to go to Borneo.

We spent the morning in the city of Carlsbad. We stopped at a RV campground and paid to take showers (ahhhh!) and do laundry. The proprietor even gave us two showers for the price of one. While our clothes were drying, we went to the grocery store and bought some “cold” food. We’re camping at Guadalupe National Park, and no fires are permitted, so we can’t heat up cans of soup as we’d like. Then we had some more time to kill before our dryer time ran out, so we stopped at a Mexican restaurant. Unfortunately, it was closed (it being Sunday and all, but it’s hard keeping track of the days of the week). So we went down the road a ways to another Mexican restaurant. Its parking lot was full! Unfortunately, it was also full of white people, including wait staff. Our usual policy is if a Mexican restaurant has any white people in it at all, it’s got to be expensive and bland. But we ordered anyway. Sure enough, both rules of thumb were true. At least we had refillable fountain drinks (a Coke for me and a Dr Pepper for Berck) and complementary sopapillas.

The waitress was a little later than we would have liked delivering our ticket, but we were soon back at the RV stop. Only to find out that the office was closed from noon to one. ARGH! How were we going to get our laundry? What were we going to do for an hour? We pondered this for a few minutes. I was worried that we wouldn’t have enough time to explore Carlsbad Caverns (and indeed we wouldn’t…the last entry into the cave is at 2 o’clock, and the Caverns are a bit of a drive away).

I was so frustrated. This was our day to see the Caverns! “Everything happens for a reason,” I reminded myself. I truly believe this. Call it superstition, call it faith in providence, call it predestination. So I calmed down. Then I wondered if there were a back door to the office and laundry room. I walked around past the showers, and an ajar door led to a game room. I walked through the game room and and looked for another door. There was the laundry room! Unlocked and open! Berck and I agreed that we would have looked pretty silly sitting there waiting for the office to reopen when we didn’t even need to walk through it.

We were folding the clothes when suddenly my bowels insisted on emptying themselves NOW. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I told Berck. I stuffed my bag shut and ran for the bathroom. Yikes! Five minutes later I felt a lot better. Berck finished up folding his clothes and was on his way back to the car when suddenly he realized why I had had to go. After he spent five minutes in the bathroom, we were ready to go. We decided that the “Mexican” restaurant was to blame. We’ve been just fine for the rest of the day.

As I think back, if the waitress hadn’t been slow delivering our check, and if we hadn’t dawdled bemoaning the loss of our laundry, we would have been down the road too far to be in sight of a bathroom. There’s NOTHING for the 20 miles between the city of Carlsbad and the Caverns.

I’d like to write about our wonderful hike in Guadalupe National Park yesterday, but we’re back at the campsite, and the computer can’t run off the car’s power anymore.

Del Rio, TX–Big Bend National Park TX

Well, we might have made it to our Lake Amistad campsite before sunset if there hadn’t been a big wreck in Del Rio that every city police officer seemed to necessary to direct traffic around. And if we’d been able to find a grocery store easily, instead of trying to find our way around a stopped train using Street Atlas’s “radar” function. The campground was quite nice, once we finally got there. We started up a fire and heated up some canned chili for supper.

We spent the last two nights in Big Bend National Park, down where the Rio Grand makes a sharp bend into Mexico. Who knew there were mountains in Texas? Big Bend is beautiful, but should definitely be visited in the winter rather than summer. During the day, it was too hot sitting in direct sunlight to be wearing more than a T-shirt.

During the night, though, the desert gets cold. On the second night, our drinking water froze halfway. Fortunately, we have a four season tent. Berck has a -5 degree rated down sleeping bag, and I have a -15. So we were actually quite cozy.

Here’s a picture of a canyon we hiked into. Through it flows the Rio Grande. We stayed on the US side.

Austin, TX–South Texas

We’re heading west on Government Blvd. At least, that’s what US Hwy 90 is called in Mobile. We’re in south Texas. It’s flat land as far as we can see, which isn’t as far as usual because it’s a little foggy. The forecast for Del Rio tonight is chance of thunderstorms. Still, winter has got to be the right time to visit Texas.

We’re not sure we’ll get to the place we plan to camp tonight before dark. We had a late start from Austin this morning. Our host Dave had an 8 o’clock class this morning, so he left us his spare apartment and car keys. We slept in (later than we had planned, but Berck and Dave had stayed up till 3:30 discussing geek things), gathered our things, and packed the car. Then Berck opened Dave’s car (he takes a shuttle to the law school at UT), put the car keys back in the apartment, closed and locked the apartment door, put the apartment key in Dave’s car, and locked Dave’s car.

It was right at this moment that I realized that the stereo’s faceplate wasn’t where it should be. “Berck!” I called out. But he had just slammed Dave’s car door.

There was nothing to do but call Dave and leave him a message. While we waited for him to get out of class and turn his phone back on, we drove to a tiny Mexican restaurant that advertised breakfast tacos on its outside wall. We sat down at the counter beneath a huge screen showing a Mexican soap opera, and the waitress put a basket of chips and some salsa in front of us. We had just been served some Huevos a la Mexicana, breakfast tacos, and Mexican Coke, when Dave called us back. We got some to-go boxes to dump our food in and headed to the University. He met us outside the law building and gave us his remaining apartment key.

Sure enough, the stereo faceplate was sitting on the coffee table … beneath a magazine. We sat down at the table and finished our breakfast. Then repeating the process with the key, we were finally on our way.

Well, the sun has shown itself, and we should be at our campsite with our tent set up in time to enjoy the sunset. The terrain has gotten bumpy, and instead of endless plowed fields, there’s nothing but scrub brush and cactus for grazing.

Joanna wanted to go out and see live music tonight. The three of us first went out for some Thai food, which was quite good, then moved onto a coffee shop where some folk music was supposed to be playing at 8pm. Most of the live music playing in Austin on this Tuesday night seems to be country and heavy metal, with the exception of Travis. We would have gone to see Travis, but at $32/head, it just didn’t seem worth it.

Here it is at 8:30, and there’s not only no sign of a band, it doesn’t look like there’s even a place for them to play… So no music, but a wireless connection and some good coffee. We’re leaving for Del Rio in the morning, such that we can arrive in time to pitch camp. It’s not that we’re terribly interested in Del Rio, but it’s halfway to Big Bend. Del Rio is nearly 250 miles away and appears to have plenty of campgrounds. Texas is a big state.

Since I still don’t have a modem, it’s quite likely that there won’t be any more journal entries until we get to California. We’ll be journaling, but it won’t get posted for a couple of weeks.

Lorena, TX

Driving down to Austin, we were just outside of Waco when the radar detector started going crazy. We have a radar detector because police pull the red Miata over all the time, whether or not we’re exceeding the speed limit, I guess because it just looks like it’s going fast.

So Berck slowed down to the speed limit, and as we crested a hill, sure enough, there was a police car sitting on the access road facing oncoming traffic. “That’s a good place to hide,” Berck declared. A pick-up flew past us in the left lane. As we approached, the patrol car pulled out and then got on the interstate behind us. “Guess he got somebody,” Berck said, continuing to drive carefully. But the cop didn’t turn on his lights, just kept heading the same direction we were. “Watch him pull us over,” sighed Berck. I laughed.

But sure enough, the cop pulled up behind us and switched on his blue lights.

What could he possibly have pulled us over for?

He came up to the driver’s window and asked for license and proof of insurance then asked Berck to step out of the car. “I want to talk to you, and then you’ll be on your way.”

He talked to Berck for a while, then came over to my window and talked to me. “How you doing today? Do you have anything illegal in the car? Any illegal weapons or drugs? Have you picked up anyone who might have had anything illegal? [The Miata is a two-seater.] Where are you going? Do you live with Mr. Nachzen? What’s your address?” I told him we’d just gotten married and were on our honeymoon. “Well, congratulations! When did you get married?” I suddenly drew a blank about whether it was the 28th or the 29th. Wasn’t the 28th a Saturday, and then we’d decided to have it on Sunday? (No.) I told him December 29th. He wrote down “12-29” on a pad of paper.

Then he went back and talked to Berck. Berck told me later that the officer told him he was involved in interdiction, making the streets safe, blah blah blah blah, and could he have a look in our trunk?

Well, the 4th amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects us against searches without warrants. If there’s one thing that I learned in my Con Law class, police have no right to search your trunk without your permission. If they really want to see what’s in your car, they can bother a judge to issue a warrant. But otherwise, never let the police search your trunk. It’s not a matter of hiding anything. It’s a matter of Constitutional rights. If civil servants think they can poke through your personal property any time they want, what’s to keep them from inviting themselves into your house?

Besides, it’s an ordeal to repack everything in the Miata’s tiny trunk.

So Berck did what I would have done. He said, “Sure, you can look in my trunk … as soon as you show me a warrant.”

Then the police officer told him, “I don’t need a warrant. I’m the police. We’ll wait for the K-9 unit to arrive, and then we’ll search your trunk.” I guess he figured the dog would smell drugs, and then he’d have probable cause to search us? The cop went back to his car, then came back and said, “Today is your lucky day. The K-9 unit can’t make it.” Then he wrote Berck a warning for “Following to closely [sic]” which is ridiculous. He added, “You better not have anything illegal, because you’re going to have to talk to the DPS further down the road!”

Berck got back in the car and told me the rest of the story. The cop had told him he’d pulled him over for speeding and following too closely. He also told Berck that he had been sitting at a truck stop when we’d passed (even though he wasn’t). He’d asked Berck a bunch of questions and then came over and talked to me to make sure our stories matched.

And that was that. We continued on our way, paranoid every time we passed another police officer, relieved when we finally reached our destination and parked and went inside.

Our host Dave tells us that race relations in the area are strained lately, racial profiling and such. So he guesses that the police were busy pulling over and harrassing as many whites as possible … to make things even.

What I want to know is, why would we be smuggling drugs SOUTH?