We left Asheville at 8am on Tuesday the 6th; we drove for 20 hours straight and pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot at about 4:30 am, slept till 8:30, and where back on the road at 9am and in Roswell, NM by 1pm Wednesday the 7th. What a hellacious drive. Now, let me back up. Tennessee is pretty, but really, really, really long to drive straight across. Arkansas…what can I say about Arkansas…there’s a whole lot of not much there. Although we did drive past Peckerwood Lake and Toad Suck Park, both of which made me snicker, I gave up and had to call my sister to guffaw about Toad Suck Park, I mean, come on. I can’t say much about Oklahoma, the sun went down about 20min into the drive through Oklahoma and we drove through the night, if there’s anything there, I didn’t see it. From Oklahoma we drove into Northern Texas, parked in Amarillo and slept for a little bit. We got up in the morning and drove through Northern Texas, at which
time I wished it was night again, there is nothing to see there except A LOT of cows, acres and acres of cow pens. But four hours after getting up from 3 hours of sleep after 20 hours of driving, we arrived in Roswell,
NM. We are both really tired and looking forward to a good nights rest. We are all set up and ready to stay and have been talking about the different things we want to see while we are here.
We had to pick a few things up at the store and I am SO happy to be back in a part of the country that has Tillamook cheese. I’m very excited to be in the South West and looking forward to spending a good amount of time here.I told Bill to remind me to kick us both straight in the head if either of us ever thinks a drive like that would be a good idea again.
Hugs from New Mexico~
;-)K
PS - we've named the hula girl, Hi'iaka. Here is an exerpt from http://www.huna.org/html/hawaiian_goddesses.html that explains the name a little bit. Given the weather we've driven through so far, we thought it appropriate. "Hi'iaka is the sister of Pele, born in the shape of an egg. Her name is often given as Hi'iaka i ka poli o Pele, translated literally as "Hi'iaka in the armpit of Pele," and figuratively (by the missionaries) as "Hi'iaka in the bosom of Pele," which has turned into the idea that Hi'iaka was the youngest and favorite sister of Pele among a group of eight sisters. However, the earliest accounts indicate that Hi'iaka was the only sister of Pele who came with her to Hawaii. The other Hi'iaka "sisters" are actually just aspects of the original Hi'iaka. "Armpit," by the way, was a euphemism for another part of the body, so Hi'iaka may actually have been the daughter of Pele. All of the Hi'iaka "sisters" had cloud forms, but their names really refer to the "holding" of clouds, according to the translations of William Ellis, not to the clouds themselves. So there is Hi'iaka-wawahi-lani (Heaven-rending cloud holder); Hi'iaka-kapu-enaena (red-hot mountain-holding cloud); Hi'iaka noho-lani (Heaven-dwelling cloud holder); and so on. The word hi'iaka is not found in Hawaiian dictionaries with a separate meaning, but hi'i means "to carry something," and ka'a means "to move along like a cloud." Another kino lau of Hi'iaka is the pala'a or lace fern, and she is also associated with the 'ohi'a lehua tree. Since the wind can be said to "hold" clouds, and since she went on many journeys, for the Kahilis she represents the element of wind. "
