Goodbye Texas, Hello New Mexico

It was a simple task, an easy run, from Alpine to Carlsbad—a distance of about 200 miles.  We didn’t rush this morning, but got up at the usual time and sipped coffee with an eye on the morning news.  Since it doesn’t really get light until about 8 o’clock out here on the western edge of the Central Time Zone, we didn’t go out before daylight to start hitch-up.  We were real pleased with ourselves when we were ready to pull out of the campground at 8:45.  After all, we only had 200 easy miles and would probably be there by lunch time.

What is that saying?  “Best laid plans of mice and man.”  We were taking US 67 to US 285 and straight into Carlsbad, New Mexico.  To our dismay, about 50 miles from our destination, we encountered a sign which warned us of a load limit restriction across a bridge and pointed trucks to follow the detour.  We were over the load limit, we thought, so pulled over to the side of the road to assess our options.  Gene walked back to read the sign again just to be sure we saw it correctly.  There was some confusion on our part about what the sign really meant.  Not being true “truckers” we were unsure about the term “tandem weight”.  If we were correct in our assumption that our two axle weights together was what this was referring to, then we were over the weight limit.

While looking at the map to determine how the detour would affect our trip, we noticed there was a picnic area not far from where we had pulled off the road.  We decided to go there, have lunch and make a new plan.

The detour turned out to be about a hundred miles out of the way.  We decided to try to find out if we were interpreting the “tandem weight” issue correctly.  The only thing we could think of was to call the Highway Patrol.  The line was busy and busy and busy for the 30 minutes or so that Gene tried.  Giving up on that, Gene called our son-in-law and asked his opinion.  He had the same opinion we did.  That left the hundred mile out of our way detour as our only option.

We got to see some of Texas and New Mexico that we would not have gotten to see.  However, we were fraught with the connecting turns through small towns and the hassle of finding diesel fuel out here in the middle of nowhere.  Luckily, we only had to turn around twice, and the man working on his lawn was very helpful in giving directions.

With only a few miles to go before reaching our campground, the wind blew a large portion of cardboard box in front of the truck.  We hit it, of course.  Gene could not determine if it had passed on through and came out the back or not.  Once again, we pulled over to check for stray cardboard box parts.

The main thing is that we arrived safely, although we were both pretty stressed out.  The good news is that we gained an hour today crossing over to the Mountain Time Zone.  The bad news is that we used it up driving instead of being able to take a nap.

Tomorrow, Carlsbad Caverns National Park.