Southbound for silence

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Time to get away from the world. A trip south to New Mexico to visit Nick's parents turned into four days away from the world. No cell coverage, no internet - just peace and quiet. I have to admit it was nice being disconnected from the world. I knew whatever happened in the Twitterverse and Facebook didn't matter. If someone needed to get a hold of me, they could leave a message. Awesome time for some relaxing and just chilling.

I've gotten so used to having my phone all the time, it was a little odd on the last half of the drive to be in radio silence. Of course, that was when we needed the phone. We knew most of the drive - just head south on I-25 to Socorro, then west on hwy 60. Overall, it was smooth sailing. So much faster in the Subaru then the turtle! A few snowflakes, some rain near Santa Fe, but we avoided the worst of the storm. Or so we thought... We were supposed to text his parents when we reached Datil. Well, just after Socorro we hit wind and black ice. I decided to text Jean and Nick to let them know we were going to be slow in the last bit.  No luck. Off the interstate and out of range. Awesome. Slow driving and no way to tell anyone.

It was black ice and wind with very slow driving all along hwy 60. I was getting tired but needed to keep my eyes on the road. Nick's parents had warned us about elk along the road. Luckily, we saw no elk but the herd of pronghorn antelope crossing the road was enough. About 40 of them - their white coats blending in with the blowing snow. A quarter of the herd was on the road, with the rest of them not far behind. I think it was the crunching of the tires on the snow that scared them because the antelope scattered. Jumping forward and back across the road, a path just big enough for the Subaru opened up between the animals. I'm not sure how we managed to not hit or get hit by one of them. It took a bit for our heart rates to come down!

Then came the hard part. Finding Nick's parents new house - a place we had only seen in small photos - at night. And we didn't have the pdf with the exact directions. We had a general sense of where we going, but nothing more. Go past this road about a mile and a half, turn right at the cemetery that doesn't look like a cemetery. We almost missed that turn. We pulled in, but it didn't look like a road and Nick stopped. Then I saw the head stones. Right road at least. We drove around for a bit -trying to find the right house. Christmas lights threw us off the most likely place. But after reaching the dead end and turning around I saw a figure in the window. Finally - we'd found the place. Time for three days of relaxing with family, some hard workouts and no technology interfering with the quiet.

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