A sign???

Sunday morning began perfectly. The weather was nice; we got an early start to our day; everything was GREAT. We pulled out of the crappiest campsite yet at 7:00 a.m. in order to have plenty of time to hang out in Santa Fe before heading to Amarillo for the night. The drive to Santa Fe from Colorado Springs was lovely, if uneventful. The landscape was unlike any other we had seen. Mesas popped up randomly on either side of the road as well scrubby trees and bushes. Approaching Santa Fe, the colors began to change. Short little trees became a darker green against the deep red of the earth. Deeper into New Mexico from Colorado, the architecture also changed. All around us the buildings became flat roofed adobe structures of light browns and pinks. It was unlike any place I had ever seen.

We arrived in the downtown Santa Fe area without any trouble even finding RV parking without much work. The employees of the tourist information office were incredibly friendly and helpful offering plenty of advice on how to spend two hours in the city. They gave us a great map and set us on our way.

The first stop on our self-guided tour of Santa Fe was the Mission of San Miguel, the oldest church in the U.S. Completely charmed by this little church, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it was constructed before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. I was ashamed to admit that as a history buff I knew so little of the Southwest and the people who inhabited it well before the Europeans landed on this continent. Inside the church, the adobe walls had been plastered over but sections of the original walls were visible behind the safety of plexi-glass. The beams in the ceiling had been replaced in a still very impressive 1710. Cordoned off holes in the floor allowed us to view the original 1610 adobe altar steps and the floor of a dwelling that was erected on this site long before the church. The floor was dated c.1300. Aidan was thrilled and excitedly jumped from one display to the next. Even Abby and Ella seemed intrigued. After making a couple of small purchases in the church gift shop, including fifty cent plastic wayfarers marked San Miguel Church for Abby and Ella, we began again our abbreviated walking tour of Santa Fe.

Behind San Miguel is the oldest house in America. The date of its construction is merely approximate, but what is certain is that it was built before the seventeenth century with some experts dating its construction as far back as the 1200’s. The adobe structure was two stories tall with exposed wooden beams poking through the walls. It looked exactly like the illustrations of the typical Navajo dwellings in my 5^th grade social studies textbook. Unfortunately, it wasn’t open for tours on Sunday. We spent a few minutes examining the mud and straw exterior, no doubt refurbished recently, but we were still impressed. Aidan was excited to have his picture taken in the doorway that wasn’t much taller than he is.

Continuing into the center of town, we passed some newer structures built to blend perfectly. The area was full of shops advertising handmade jewelry and rugs. If we had the luxury of time there, I most certainly would have found something wonderful to bring home; alas, there wasn’t time for shopping. We wanted to check out the Spanish Festival and have some lunch.

Wandering through the narrow lanes, we came to the beautiful Church of Loretto. The church sat on a small but beautiful square of land surrounded by a lovely low iron fence. Inside the fence, vendors had erected tents to sell their art, jewelry, and locally made crafts. I really wanted to tour this church as well but the girls were getting very cranky. I was forced to bypass the “miraculous staircase: As Seen on Unsolved Mysteries.” Bummer.

Unfortunately, the rest of our visit to Santa Fe was hurried and hectic. Abby and Ella were having some serious meltdowns. We rushed through the Palace of the Governors, stopping to check out the flamenco music coming from a stage on the square. The sun was shining brightly, the music was great, the crowd was energetic, and I could have stayed all day, but we needed to get these kids some lunch right away.

On the walk back to the RV, we passed a restaurant called the Pink Adobe touted as the “oldest and most well-known restaurant in Santa Fe.” We were shown to a table in a shady part of the outside dining patio. The setting was perfect and the food was great… too bad the kids didn’t want to cooperate. We spent much of our lunch apologizing to the waitress for kid malfunctions as Abby, Ella, and Aidan fought and argued mercilessly. Still, we had a wonderful lunch and reluctantly headed back to the RV for a four hour trip to Fort Amarillo RV Resort in Amarillo, Texas.

While driving east on I-40, we ran into a thunderstorm of enormous proportions just outside of Tucumcari, New Mexico. Mildly concerned, we considered pulling over on the side of the road to try to wait it out, but there was nowhere to stop safely. I was concerned about pulling over on the shoulder as the size of our RV would leave us barely over the white line. We would certainly be in as much danger there as we would be driving into the storm. Out west, the far reaching horizon allows one to see deep into the distance. Up ahead, we could see the lightning streaking from sky to ground. This was dangerous stuff. Aidan turned to me and asked, “What happens if we are struck by lightning?” “We’ll be fine, honey,” I replied. “The tires will keep us from being shocked,” I promised. We kept driving knowing that a rest area was only two miles ahead. Just then, the unthinkable happened. The air around us turned bright green and a thunderous boom-boom shook the RV. It seemed that we even came off the ground for a split second. We, a moving target on a crowded stretch of interstate, had been hit by lightning. Two alarms immediately began to sound and made thinking nearly impossible. Brent, however, remained incredibly calm and focused as I surveyed the damage. Everything but the engine was dead. We lost all power to the cabin as well as to the dashboard. We no longer had so much as a functioning speedometer.

We finally reached that rest area and began searching for ways to turn off the security alarm as well as the fried carbon monoxide detector. When the torrential rain passed, Brent opened the door to inspect the generator. The smell of sulphur was overwhelming. We were only a few miles from Roswell and it felt like the Twilight Zone. Brent popped open the door to the generator and asked for a pair of scissors. I reluctantly agreed to hand a man standing in a puddle a pair of metal scissors to cut a wire, but the sound of the alarm was driving us all mad. With one swift cut, Brent successfully disarmed one of the alarms. Now we had to find the source of the alarm ringing inside the cabin. Finally, we found the carbon monoxide detector and had to restrain ourselves from ripping the ting out of the wall. We needed a tiny Phillips head to unscrew it. Unfortunately, we didn’t have one on board. We would have to wait until we reached a truck stop where we could buy one. In the meantime, Megan stuffed paper towels into the alarm speakers and provided some relief to our ears.

Perhaps most shocking of all was that Abby and Ella slept through the whole thing… lightning and alarms. Of course, I assumed the worst. They couldn’t be sleeping. They must have been knocked out by some mysterious gas or worse. I think I checked for pulses every five minutes until they woke up cranky and hungry… in other words, completely normal.

We called Roadside Assistance who basically told us, “Too Bad. As long as you can still run the engine, we won’t be coming to your aid.” Ok. So what do you do when you’ve been struck by lightning in New Mexico? You make like heck for Texas. We decided to press on to Amarillo and stay the night in a hotel.

I found a Hampton Inn in Amarillo with an indoor pool. Brent was a little more than annoyed by the cost of our rooms, but I knew that he would be leaving us there for hours while he searched for a mechanic to diagnose the problem and potentially fix it. I wasn’t backing down. We needed entertainment options. My plan worked perfectly. The kids enjoyed their morning swim while we waited for Dad to return with the verdict. When he arrived at noon, the news was not great. There was nothing that could be done quickly. The RV, it seems, would need a long stay.

We made the decision to keep on trucking as far as we could without A/C, a refrigerator, or working dash gauges. We are calculating our seconds between mile markers to estimate our speed and keeping track of the gallons of gas left in the tank by counting the miles between fill ups. As I write, we are closing in on Fort Smith, Arkansas. The kids are restless, but so far, no one has completely flipped. We are staying the night at another Hampton Inn and planning to be home tomorrow sometime in the afternoon. Sadly, the Big Big Trip is coming to a close….mixed emotions all around…regardless of broken coffee pots, bored kids, and lightning strikes.