Cuba
Ever been to Cuba? No? Well, you should. I had the time of my life there.
Cuba, New Mexico is not on anybody's vacation itinerary. But boy, did we have an interesting time there. We discovered it quite by accident, or rather by incident, on our way from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. We stopped for fuel for our Class A motor home about forty-five miles south-ish of Cuba, which was not yet even a blip on our radar. A motorist at the same fuel station had just come from Cuba and gave us the sad news that something in the town was on fire, and the fire fighters and all their associated fire-fighting equipment were blocking the only road through town. The. Only. Road. Through. Town. No way around. Traffic backed up for hours. Hmmm.
After a bit of thought and discussion, the three of us agreed to press forward on our planned path. The thought was that if it had already been going on for hours, and in this RV we would be yet another hour getting there, the odds of it being cleared out by the time we arrived on scene were good. The other factor was how far we would have to backtrack to find a big-rig-friendly route that did not include passing through Cuba. We projected that with any luck, we would not actually be stuck in Cuba for very long at all. We had no clue just how our luck would run.
When we got to the southern city limits of Cuba, US Highway 550 was a parking lot of maybe forty vehicles. We joined the stopped traffic and visited with other motorists who were also out of their vehicles and walking around. In a couple of hours, vehicles slowly started to move, and we immediately realized something was wrong with our brakes. Oh, Holy Mother of God, what fresh hell is this?! In the interest of time and space, I'll spare the details of the search for brake fluid; vacant buildings (plural) with auto-parts signs; the fortuitous location of the town's only mechanic, George; the ordering of the master cylinder; and the second search for brake fluid. But, know that in a town of only 679 people, those were all adventures on their own.
Our new best friend George the mechanic was fabulous! He ordered the part that afternoon for delivery to his shop the next morning, and told us that with any luck, we would be back on the road by noon the next day. He offered us an overnight parking space at his shop, helped us unload our car, and let us store our tow dolly in his fenced back lot. And, in the big picture, had it not been for that fire in Cuba, we would have been 3 hours further down the road, in the mountains and REALLY in the middle of nowhere when our brakes failed. In the grand context of things, we were incredibly lucky. Don't you love how that word “luck” keeps getting thrown into the mix?
The next morning, George came over to share the bad news. Some sort of hold up at the supplier meant the part wouldn't arrive until the next day. I suspect he really came over to have coffee with us, as we had power (generator) and water (bottled) where he did not. It seems that the fire impacted Cuba's power supply somehow, and putting out the fire depleted Cuba's entire water supply. Wait, what? Nobody in the entire town has power or water?! What?! But George is a native, so visiting with him was quite interesting, and we got the local's scoop on all the cool things to do in the area. That included the food truck across the street, the liquor store next to the food truck, and Chaco Culture National Historical Park about forty-five miles away. It was a cool enough day that we could leave Roxie-dog in the RV without having to leave the generator running, so we loaded up the car and headed north-ish to Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
To be fair, George told us that part of the ride to the Park was via a washboard-gravel road, but he gave us the impression that the gravel part of the road was short. We were under the impression that it was short enough that, if we weren't comfortable driving the gravel part, we could just park at the start of the road and walk on in. We had NO IDEA that it would be twenty full miles of washboard gravel. We were in a Mitsubishi Mirage, a tiny little speck of a car that has tiny little wheels and tiny little tires, about four inches of road clearance, and a substandard suspension. Oh crap, George, where have you sent us? We were about five miles in when we saw a sign that said we were still fifteen miles away from the Park. We could've turned around, but realistically, we were already committed. And, what else were we going to do with our time? I mean, we had already done the food truck and the liquor store.
A few key things I should mention:
* One of us three was my sister Bonnie. She had flown into Albuquerque the night before, just so she could join us on our western road-trip-of-a-lifetime. The brakes failed on her first full day of vacation.
* In certain parts of the country, particularly those places that have only 679 people in a 100-mile radius, one should expect to have trouble with smartphone-based GPS.
* When Bonnie and I are together, we tend toward laughter. No, scratch that. We laugh hysterically, and often, and usually at things that nobody else appreciates. And we can't even explain later because we laugh hysterically in the retelling.
* And now I had to pee.
I had, as is my nature, packed an ice chest for the ride to Chaco Culture National Historical Park. I only had three Bud Lights in there, but I was seriously only expecting about an hour ride. Having sold insurance in a previous life, my personal mantra is “it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.” So, in keeping with the theme of this entire story, having packed that ice chest turned out to be both a good and bad.
When I first realized I needed a restroom, we were at the fifteen-miles-to-go sign on this gravel road. And we were going exactly fifteen miles per hour. Okay. I admit I was an idiot for not stopping at the last gas station just outside Cuba-proper, back at the turn before the pavement ended. At the time we passed it, I was really only thinking about getting more beer, but I certainly would have and should have gone to the restroom there. Looking back on what I should have done didn't help me much at the time, but, easy math here, we were exactly one hour away from a restroom. With a little luck, surely I could make it one hour.
Picture yourself as riding along with us in this tiny car, bumping and jostling and rattling and vibrating, and cursing George. The land is relatively flat and extremely dry, as is typical of this particular part of the country, with tiny little scrubby plants spaced four or five feet apart for as far as the eye can see. (No trees to hide behind and no ditches to duck into. Damn.) And after five minutes, at fifteen miles per hour, we'd only travelled a mile and a quarter. Oh, but wait. Booth was our driver, and in the interest of not damaging our only running vehicle, Booth was being extra-cautious. By the time we got to the ten-miles-to-go sign, we were only going ten miles per hour. Are you kidding me? I have to start my time-to-the-restroom-clock back at the one hour mark?! And you must remember that every single solitary thing that happens when Bonnie and I are together is wet-your-pants funny even in normal situations. Oh, this was not good.
Repeat the exact same realization at the eight-miles-to-go sign. We were down to eight miles per hour. Bonnie was not helping. Everything that happened as we were creeping along this heavily-rutted road was hysterical. First, we passed a sign that said “SLOW!” Hysterical! Then, a guy in a high-clearance vehicle like a Jeep or Hummer came blowing by us at the super-speed of perhaps ten miles per hour, and out here on a gravel road in the middle of nowhere, he put his blinker on to merge back in front of us. Maniacal laughter!
Repeat the exact same realization at the five-miles-to-go sign. We were down to five miles per hour. This was now borderline insanity. I don't remember being cast in an episode of the “Twilight Zone.” I normally carry toilet paper in my car (review my previous statement about needing and not having). I no longer cared about not having a tree to hide behind; there were no humans anywhere around who would notice. But dropping my drawers in the high desert, giving snakes and scorpions unrestricted access to my bare tushie, was not on my list of things to do. And I was powerless to stop laughing.
We had several conversations about our final destination. We just could not understand why George would send us this way. If it's a National Historical Park, meaning it is a part of the National Park system, how the hell could there not be a paved road into this place? Whenever our GPS comes back up (and surely it will), we'll find another way.
That was the exact moment that our GPS sprang to life. There was a shortcut. There was a cut-off road. The main road (which, in case you've forgotten, is washboard-gravel) swung out wide and looped back, but the shortcut road, which on the GPS map appeared to be paved, cut off the loop and saved a couple of miles. And by this point, I was in dire straits. Thank God, some good luck. I could hear the angels singing! Sweet relief was almost mine. Hah! That beautiful Godsend was, well, not. It was not even a road. It was not even a Jeep track. Hell, it was not even a sheep track. And, by now you've guessed it, more insane laughter. The only good news, which was possibly bad news, was that by this time I was out of beer.
We did finally make it to the Park. We had a wonderful time. This place was and is one of the most amazing places I have ever been. Ever. Thank you, George; I am sorry I ever doubted you. Let me say that again. This park, this National Historical Park, is one of the most wonderful things I have ever done in my entire life, ever, and is totally worth whatever hardship you endure to get there. You can Google it if you doubt me. This place is one of the highlights of my life.
It took another day to get our part, and we enjoyed our food-truck-and- liquor-store experience for one more day. The Continental Divide is right at the city limits, and the Continental Divide Trail goes right down the street where we were parked. Watching hikers became our favorite pastime. We found a drive-through sculpture garden (actually some guy's yard) and we were regulars at the Family Dollar. The part arrived. George saved us. We had already used all the brake fluid in this entire town (yep, there were three whole pints of brake fluid available in the entire town, and we used them all), so on the afternoon of our third day in beautiful Cuba, almost exactly forty-eight hours from when we pulled into George's parking lot, we moved on down the road in search of brake fluid. I'm a bit sad that we had to skip Mesa Verde National Park, but had we not broken down in Cuba, we never would have met George and we never would have known about Chaco Culture National Historical Park. And when you can laugh with people you love, anywhere and everywhere is beautiful. Yeah, lots of people vacation at Mesa Verde, but we had our own wonderful, one-of-a-kind vacation in Cuba.
Cuba, New Mexico is not on anybody's vacation itinerary. But boy, did we have an interesting time there. We discovered it quite by accident, or rather by incident, on our way from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. We stopped for fuel for our Class A motor home about forty-five miles south-ish of Cuba, which was not yet even a blip on our radar. A motorist at the same fuel station had just come from Cuba and gave us the sad news that something in the town was on fire, and the fire fighters and all their associated fire-fighting equipment were blocking the only road through town. The. Only. Road. Through. Town. No way around. Traffic backed up for hours. Hmmm.
After a bit of thought and discussion, the three of us agreed to press forward on our planned path. The thought was that if it had already been going on for hours, and in this RV we would be yet another hour getting there, the odds of it being cleared out by the time we arrived on scene were good. The other factor was how far we would have to backtrack to find a big-rig-friendly route that did not include passing through Cuba. We projected that with any luck, we would not actually be stuck in Cuba for very long at all. We had no clue just how our luck would run.
When we got to the southern city limits of Cuba, US Highway 550 was a parking lot of maybe forty vehicles. We joined the stopped traffic and visited with other motorists who were also out of their vehicles and walking around. In a couple of hours, vehicles slowly started to move, and we immediately realized something was wrong with our brakes. Oh, Holy Mother of God, what fresh hell is this?! In the interest of time and space, I'll spare the details of the search for brake fluid; vacant buildings (plural) with auto-parts signs; the fortuitous location of the town's only mechanic, George; the ordering of the master cylinder; and the second search for brake fluid. But, know that in a town of only 679 people, those were all adventures on their own.
Our new best friend George the mechanic was fabulous! He ordered the part that afternoon for delivery to his shop the next morning, and told us that with any luck, we would be back on the road by noon the next day. He offered us an overnight parking space at his shop, helped us unload our car, and let us store our tow dolly in his fenced back lot. And, in the big picture, had it not been for that fire in Cuba, we would have been 3 hours further down the road, in the mountains and REALLY in the middle of nowhere when our brakes failed. In the grand context of things, we were incredibly lucky. Don't you love how that word “luck” keeps getting thrown into the mix?
The next morning, George came over to share the bad news. Some sort of hold up at the supplier meant the part wouldn't arrive until the next day. I suspect he really came over to have coffee with us, as we had power (generator) and water (bottled) where he did not. It seems that the fire impacted Cuba's power supply somehow, and putting out the fire depleted Cuba's entire water supply. Wait, what? Nobody in the entire town has power or water?! What?! But George is a native, so visiting with him was quite interesting, and we got the local's scoop on all the cool things to do in the area. That included the food truck across the street, the liquor store next to the food truck, and Chaco Culture National Historical Park about forty-five miles away. It was a cool enough day that we could leave Roxie-dog in the RV without having to leave the generator running, so we loaded up the car and headed north-ish to Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
To be fair, George told us that part of the ride to the Park was via a washboard-gravel road, but he gave us the impression that the gravel part of the road was short. We were under the impression that it was short enough that, if we weren't comfortable driving the gravel part, we could just park at the start of the road and walk on in. We had NO IDEA that it would be twenty full miles of washboard gravel. We were in a Mitsubishi Mirage, a tiny little speck of a car that has tiny little wheels and tiny little tires, about four inches of road clearance, and a substandard suspension. Oh crap, George, where have you sent us? We were about five miles in when we saw a sign that said we were still fifteen miles away from the Park. We could've turned around, but realistically, we were already committed. And, what else were we going to do with our time? I mean, we had already done the food truck and the liquor store.
A few key things I should mention:
* One of us three was my sister Bonnie. She had flown into Albuquerque the night before, just so she could join us on our western road-trip-of-a-lifetime. The brakes failed on her first full day of vacation.
* In certain parts of the country, particularly those places that have only 679 people in a 100-mile radius, one should expect to have trouble with smartphone-based GPS.
* When Bonnie and I are together, we tend toward laughter. No, scratch that. We laugh hysterically, and often, and usually at things that nobody else appreciates. And we can't even explain later because we laugh hysterically in the retelling.
* And now I had to pee.
I had, as is my nature, packed an ice chest for the ride to Chaco Culture National Historical Park. I only had three Bud Lights in there, but I was seriously only expecting about an hour ride. Having sold insurance in a previous life, my personal mantra is “it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.” So, in keeping with the theme of this entire story, having packed that ice chest turned out to be both a good and bad.
When I first realized I needed a restroom, we were at the fifteen-miles-to-go sign on this gravel road. And we were going exactly fifteen miles per hour. Okay. I admit I was an idiot for not stopping at the last gas station just outside Cuba-proper, back at the turn before the pavement ended. At the time we passed it, I was really only thinking about getting more beer, but I certainly would have and should have gone to the restroom there. Looking back on what I should have done didn't help me much at the time, but, easy math here, we were exactly one hour away from a restroom. With a little luck, surely I could make it one hour.
Picture yourself as riding along with us in this tiny car, bumping and jostling and rattling and vibrating, and cursing George. The land is relatively flat and extremely dry, as is typical of this particular part of the country, with tiny little scrubby plants spaced four or five feet apart for as far as the eye can see. (No trees to hide behind and no ditches to duck into. Damn.) And after five minutes, at fifteen miles per hour, we'd only travelled a mile and a quarter. Oh, but wait. Booth was our driver, and in the interest of not damaging our only running vehicle, Booth was being extra-cautious. By the time we got to the ten-miles-to-go sign, we were only going ten miles per hour. Are you kidding me? I have to start my time-to-the-restroom-clock back at the one hour mark?! And you must remember that every single solitary thing that happens when Bonnie and I are together is wet-your-pants funny even in normal situations. Oh, this was not good.
Repeat the exact same realization at the eight-miles-to-go sign. We were down to eight miles per hour. Bonnie was not helping. Everything that happened as we were creeping along this heavily-rutted road was hysterical. First, we passed a sign that said “SLOW!” Hysterical! Then, a guy in a high-clearance vehicle like a Jeep or Hummer came blowing by us at the super-speed of perhaps ten miles per hour, and out here on a gravel road in the middle of nowhere, he put his blinker on to merge back in front of us. Maniacal laughter!
Repeat the exact same realization at the five-miles-to-go sign. We were down to five miles per hour. This was now borderline insanity. I don't remember being cast in an episode of the “Twilight Zone.” I normally carry toilet paper in my car (review my previous statement about needing and not having). I no longer cared about not having a tree to hide behind; there were no humans anywhere around who would notice. But dropping my drawers in the high desert, giving snakes and scorpions unrestricted access to my bare tushie, was not on my list of things to do. And I was powerless to stop laughing.
We had several conversations about our final destination. We just could not understand why George would send us this way. If it's a National Historical Park, meaning it is a part of the National Park system, how the hell could there not be a paved road into this place? Whenever our GPS comes back up (and surely it will), we'll find another way.
That was the exact moment that our GPS sprang to life. There was a shortcut. There was a cut-off road. The main road (which, in case you've forgotten, is washboard-gravel) swung out wide and looped back, but the shortcut road, which on the GPS map appeared to be paved, cut off the loop and saved a couple of miles. And by this point, I was in dire straits. Thank God, some good luck. I could hear the angels singing! Sweet relief was almost mine. Hah! That beautiful Godsend was, well, not. It was not even a road. It was not even a Jeep track. Hell, it was not even a sheep track. And, by now you've guessed it, more insane laughter. The only good news, which was possibly bad news, was that by this time I was out of beer.
We did finally make it to the Park. We had a wonderful time. This place was and is one of the most amazing places I have ever been. Ever. Thank you, George; I am sorry I ever doubted you. Let me say that again. This park, this National Historical Park, is one of the most wonderful things I have ever done in my entire life, ever, and is totally worth whatever hardship you endure to get there. You can Google it if you doubt me. This place is one of the highlights of my life.
It took another day to get our part, and we enjoyed our food-truck-and- liquor-store experience for one more day. The Continental Divide is right at the city limits, and the Continental Divide Trail goes right down the street where we were parked. Watching hikers became our favorite pastime. We found a drive-through sculpture garden (actually some guy's yard) and we were regulars at the Family Dollar. The part arrived. George saved us. We had already used all the brake fluid in this entire town (yep, there were three whole pints of brake fluid available in the entire town, and we used them all), so on the afternoon of our third day in beautiful Cuba, almost exactly forty-eight hours from when we pulled into George's parking lot, we moved on down the road in search of brake fluid. I'm a bit sad that we had to skip Mesa Verde National Park, but had we not broken down in Cuba, we never would have met George and we never would have known about Chaco Culture National Historical Park. And when you can laugh with people you love, anywhere and everywhere is beautiful. Yeah, lots of people vacation at Mesa Verde, but we had our own wonderful, one-of-a-kind vacation in Cuba.
