Day 10 & 11: 2 for 1

“The earth has music for those who listen.” Shakespeare

Deja vu is a weird concept, I'm skeptical of a lot of things, only recently have I been more open to spiritual type phenomena. Yesterday when I was driving I had a really strong deja vu when I was driving to Carlsbad Caverns. This happens every once in awhile to me, I'll have a dream that I'll remember and then later the same things start happening in real life. So the deja vu I had was about my car, I had a dream that I was trying to name it and decided to name it Carl because I was going somewhere with Carl in the name. Strange thing to have deja vu about, but I did and I have officially named my car Carl because of it!

Carlsbad caverns was amazing, it was a bit out of the way of my main path but it was totally worth it. I had to drive through quite a bit of desert to get there. It kind of gave me a flashback of when I rolled my car in eastern Oregon when I was 17, so I was careful to drive very delicately. The road leading up to the caverns had a cute little town consisting of a restaurant, a gas station, a convenience store and a post office, complete with fake alien statues out front. It took about 15 minutes up windy roads to get to the main visitor center. The park ranger who helped me said it would take about 4 hours to take the natural entrance into the caves and do the full tour. I really wanted to that but I knew I had to drive 7.5 hours to get to San Antonio and didn't want to get there at 3 in the morning. So I took the elevator down to the lowest level of the cavern, the further down you got the more it smelled like farts, maybe it was someone in the elevator… the cavern you enter is called “the Big Room”,you follow a premade concrete path about 1.5 miles long that circles around the whole cave. You can walk around at your own speed, I'm having trouble with being around other tourists though, they drive me nuts. At one point there was a woman behind me that was clomping her feet so loud that I wanted to smack her. I learned probably more than I needed to about caves and caverns but I had a really enjoyable time, I definitely want to go back at some point so I can do the full 4 hour hike.

I downloaded the 3rd Harry Potter book to listen to on the road. Before I left I had started reading it the old fashion way so I was already about 7 chapters in when I started listening yesterday. I started it when I left El Paso and finished listening to the whole book with about 45 minutes to spare before getting to San Antonio. I don't know if you know this, but Texas is freaking huge. For about a third of the way I had to drive on a 2 lane highway, it was okay for most of the way, but I had a near death experience when a huge pickup truck hauling a huge water tank tried to pass a semi truck without enough room and was in my lane. I had to slam on my breaks and he careened into the ditch on my right, barely avoiding hitting me head on. I'm not sure what happened to him, I just kept on driving, but it shook me up. I didn't want to pass anyone and when people were passing coming toward me I had some anxiety about it. That was my first impression of Texas so I was kind of in a grumpy mood about the whole state, plus all the pickup trucks and the excruciating heat didn't help anything.

I'm going to squish 2 days into one post since I didn't write yesterday, so sorry for the length. It was another 9 hour day of driving for me so once I got to my motel at midnight I was ready to pass out. This morning I headed out to six flags, I was very excited for this part of my trip. Ever since I was a little kid I've loved roller coasters and going on rides. I credit this to my mom, she dragged my sister and I on rides all the time, even if we didn't want to. So needless to say I've never really been afraid of going on any roller coaster or ride, yet. A few years ago I got 3 concussions in one year and it's messed up something in my body. I get motion sickness way easier and too much movement around my head makes me get outrageous headaches. Knowing this I tried to prepare, I took ibuprofen and Dramamine before even setting foot in the park. So I started out the day on a pretty mild coaster, not too rickety, I was doing okay, then I made my first mistake. I went on the Batman roller coaster where it spins you around and smacks your head around while you ride. I was feeling a bit ill after that ride so I decided to get something to eat and some water in me before heading to the next ride. The heat and humidity was getting pretty bad at this point as well, so it wasn't helping matters. I went on the superman coaster and that's when I started to feel pretty lousy, I decided to do another coaster called the Iron Rattler. This coaster didn't make me feel sick and it was probably the best coaster in the park. You freefall 180 feet, it was thrilling. I went on one last coaster and that did me in. I couldn't do anymore, I felt like my brain was jello and my stomach hurt so bad. I sat down for awhile and just walked around the park before deciding to leave. I've never really had any physical limitations that made it so I couldn't do something, so this was pretty disappointing to me. I'm not sure if I even want to try again.

After the epic failure that was my theme park experience I decided to go back to my motel and take a nap. I've been pretty exhausted so it was exactly what I needed. Rene suggested the riverwalk to me so I decided to hop in my car and drive downtown to check it out. The humidity was still pretty awful at this point and I almost immediately was drenched in sweat, but it was really fun to people watch. Small tour boats come through the canal about every 5 minutes or so, so I got to listen to them spout out random facts about the scenery. I walked around for a bit and then went to a dimly lit tex-mex place and got some pretty amazing beef tacos. There was live music so I was able to enjoy that while eating. After dinner I walked around a bit more, and even though the beginning of the day didn't go as I wanted it to, the end was pretty great. I didn't really talk to anyone, but I'm feeling a little bit more comfortable going out on my own, and I'm looking forward to what the rest of my trip has in store for me.