Now you tow it to the repo man's front door and you give him these keys, I don't need 'em no more

My trip is over. Not entirely but. 

I awoke around the time we passed through a thin stretch of the Petrified Forest National Park, where we went when I was too young to remember. I forced myself to stay awake for a while though my contorted sleep had been fitful. 

The scenery was indeed lovely. So many kinds of mountains and desert I've seen, and apparently not all of them at that. We rolled into New Mexico and the mountains and mesas were quite majestic in exactly the way iPhone lenses will not capture at all. Somehow we arrived in Albuquerque an hour early, and M and D sprang into action and fetched me. We had Mexican breakfast at The Range and then went to their house, which is right in the shadow of the Sandia mountains. The Sandia Mountains which turn pink at sunset. 

There's a tram thingy that goes up the side of them that looks awfully steep and I made a note to keep us busy enough that no-one would suggest taking it.

M and D are old friends and true. Well, not that old--we met in 2008 after I had known M blogospherically for several years, but we feel as though we'd known one another a very long time, who knows why. They used to be my escape when they lived in Boston. I'd head up there when I needed people to be very, very nice to me and I'd come home recharged. 

Dinner was at a place I think was called Antiquity, very good and kind of interesting because it was so thoroughly unassuming and quiet. I don't get the feeling there's a bustling part of town. It's so sprawling. Maybe by the university but we didn't make it there. 

M drove us most of the way home and then got a demonic look in his eye and tore up a hill to where his childhood friend had lived, the highest house in town at the time. Sprawling towns between mountain ranges are a fine sight at night. 

I got very tired around 10 as we started watching the second Thin Man movie and had something of a headache and went to bed, had a dream I was caught inside a game like the one in that Michael Douglas movie. Kept waking up, feeling very out of it and increasingly nuts, occasionally certain I was very ill. 

Today I told D that I had spent maybe 1/5 of my trip acutely anxious and she made noises of pity and I said oh it's kind of fine, the salt on my trip in a way.  This is true. 

About that, sort of...people keep telling me how nice it would be if I could fly and I guess I somehow encourage them by my horribly apologetic reiterations of how strange my way of traveling is. 

The fact is it's how I travel and, factoring out some feeling of being an outsider, I can't imagine doing or being otherwise. It makes my trips feel meaningful. Would I like to go to Europe? Sure. Would I like to have it be easy, a matter of no real thought, to cross the country? Not especially. I'm glad all you normal people enjoy your travel in all its efficiency. 

We got green chile bagels. We drove to Santa Fe and walked around. My anxiety was subsiding. D bought me a tiny, lovely piece of local color. We had lunch at Pasqual's, which was terrific. I bought little things for friends and boyfriends (alright only one.)

Then a long walk among galleries largely filled with kitsch. Not that I know from visual art much but oh my god. Some of it was staggering, like big bronze native Americans looking noble and disappointed. 

We drove back. M and D had wanted to take me many more places because they love it out here. Unfortunately, I'm spent. And unfortunately, I planned the trip largely quite well but with a few missteps, like not being here all that long. It looked like more time, on paper. 

So we didn't drive through the Jemez mountains on the way home, on account of the spent. It had been few enough hours since I'd been anxious that the thought of winding roads was not doing it for me, and besides, I had suggested that drive weeks ago because I wanted to see West that looked like my internal, mythic West and I have done that. 

We went to the hotel at the top of a casino though both M and D dread casinos. Had a drink, watched a pretty though not spectacular sunset. Came home and watched the rest of the movie. 

I guess I'll write the next couple of days if there's anything to say. We're going through Kansas, which is my internal mythic version of not much. Tomorrow is the most nothing day of the trip (I'm fond enough of the Lakeshore Limited after riding it these many years) and though nothing is fine, I would at this point rather be in my bed. 

I've left out a trillion things, because how can I tell you the intimate conversations I had with old friends, but I think it will be nice to have this later on as a chronology that will, with pictures and actual memories, be a good keepsake of The Big Trip of '13.