John Wayne or a a Ford Pick-up?

I'm in New Mexico (again) and lately my trips north from Albuquerque toward Santa Fe, Las Vegas or Taos have changed direction. Now I get my rental car and drive west toward Gallup. It's I-40 all the way, through three reservations, past four casinos, through the volcanic badlands of the Malpais and the uranium mines of Cibola County and over the continental divide.

This is the country of John Wayne movies. Flat desert, high escarpments, colorful mesas. Now it's freckled with billboards and split by railroad tracks, but even the trains are colorful out here. Not the coal cars we see in the Midwest but long chains of double-stacked shipping containers pulled and pushed by orange diesel engines. You can see them out here from beginning to end with nothing to obstruct the middle. Sometimes, when I'm gazing out to the north (instead of keeping my eyes on the westbound highway in front of me), I imagine I see horses kicking up dust. The horses in my mind are actually old pick-up trucks or, better yet, brand new pick-ups big enough to set up housekeeping in. You've gotta wonder about this land of enchantment where people drive vehicles worth more than their homes. When you pull up in front of an old adobe you can always tell if its inhabited by the satellite dish.

Another common I-40 west site is the tumbleweed. I made the mistake of picking one up once--it was stuck to the front of my car. Thus I learned that tumbleweeds are sticker bushes. Avoid them.

Rest areas here come complete with stalls where the local Native American population sells crafts in good weather. You can also pull off at any convenience store/truck stop and buy a variety of the same goods if you're itching to pay sales tax. I once bought chocolate covered bugs at Cline's Corners (east of Albuquerque an hour or so...one of those places that just doesn't live up to what the 840 billboards before it promise) and yes, my children did eat them.