Be It Heartbreak or Highway: Bizarre Happenings on My Solo Road Trip to Guadalupe National Park

And we who are out there this late
Be it heartbreak or highway
Or some altered state
When it's time that we slow up
And wrap both our hands around our cup
And stay until the feeling goes

-- David Wilcox, "Waffle House"

I loaded up the Jeep with a backpack, a few vittles, a camera, and a GPS with the idea of landing myself in Guadalupe Mountains National Park for a number of days.  This was my first solo trip in years, and preparing for it felt as foreign as walking on the moon. Just me and the Jeep, no family this time.  535 miles and four days. And somewhere out there at a campgound in the Chihuahuan Desert, a few friends awaited in a huddle around a campfire.  They'd be waiting a while.  I didn't get there until 2:00 am.

Guadalupe Mountains National Park holds the tallest peak in Texas, Guadalupe Peak, at 8,749 feet.  Not bad.  And it's just barely within the Texas line.  You could probably heave a baseball sized rock from the top and nail New Mexico. For desert admirers, I found the park incredible.  Big mountains, desert plants, wild temperature fluctuations, and immense geology at work.

But, but, but my adventure began long before I arrived at Guadalupe Mountains.  The whole of the exploit became the cover story for JPFreek Adventure Magazine for the Spring 2009 issue, but that's just the magazine stuff: hiking to the top of Guadalupe Peak, driving the rough road to Williams Ranch, and drinking like fools while telling tall tales around a campfire.

You, dear reader, get the other juicy stuff that didn't make it to the article.  Word count, man, will dictate to the delete key how to kill a great story. Thank God for blogs!

How to Get Free Coffee When You're Traveling

Around 11:30 at night I needed gas and jerky, naturally.  I'd been cooking along the interstate listening to David Wilcox - go ahead and play his song Waffle House in the background while you read the rest of this, it'll set the right mood.

A truck stop appeared in what I thought was the middle of nowhere, emitting a spectacular heavenly glow on the New Mexico horizon on this dark night from 3 miles away. When I finally found the exit, I joined my fellow midnight, weary-eyed road travelers at the fuel pumps.  A couple in a Toyota 4Runner fought about something with the ferocity of wild animals.  At the point I entered the scene, they'd escalated to shouting things they'll be sorry about in the morning. Specifically: "THIS IS THE FUCKING EPITOME OF YOU!" He screamed that at her through the windshield as she stared in the opposite direction.

Yep, that's not going to bode well later. Why is it that watching a couple fight makes me think about my wife?  I think I was thinking how much I already missed home - and how I've never said anything like that to her.  I think I'll go get some coffee while the tank fills.  Hope there's no blood on the ground when I come back.

It must exist because I got a picture of it.
So I walked inside to spot, of all things, a seriously good looking babe running the cash register.  No kidding.  Long sand colored hair, a bright smile, and she looked no older than 20 years old.  Not only did this truck stop appear with a heavenly glow in the middle of nowhere, it also sported good looking girls running the show.

Surely I'd crossed over into the Fourth Dimension.  This place doesn't really exist. Does it?

I must have pulled off the highway into one of those bizarre anomalies that only exist in one place at one moment in time, the kind of thing no one will believe when you tell the story . . . and God does this just to screw with we midnight road travelers. I'm convinced of it.  Come back in 10 minutes, there'd be nothing here but a field of creosote, or maybe a graveyard.

But what the heck, random good looking girls remind me of my wife so I was enjoying the "ride."

A cheerful old man was manning the cigarette inventory.  He smiled at me and nodded, "Evenin' to ya. Welcome to our truck stop." Are you thinking the same thing I am?  Who in the world welcomes you to a freaking truck stop?  This guy does.

And I'm wondering, "Where is this place?  Am I going to drive and drive and drive, and then get off the highway in 3 hours only to be right back here again?  Am I in an Alfred Hitchcock movie?"

Instead of asking that, I decide to roll with the punches.  "Hi there! Where's the coffee?"

"Right over there, young man."

Though it was questionable, I did make it to Guadalupe Mountains National Park and got the story published in JPFreek Adventure Magazine
Perfect.  The kind where you have to pour it out of a brown-stained carafe, and there's a 45-year-old yellow sticky just barely hanging on to the brewer's casing that reads, "If the coffee's out, tuff shit!" True roadside java. The old man watched me pour it.  Then he said, "Out here we make it stronger than a freight train, so the cream an' sugar's right over yonder."

He watched me too closely.  Creepy.  I wandered to the beef jerky section and picked out some teriyaki and some peppered. I set my coffee and jerky down on the counter, and the girl looked at me with total indifference.  One of those clues that tells me that I'm getting older, that flirting with a 20-something would certify me as a creep.  Next up?  Gray hair growing out of my ears, right?

The old man stepped over and said, "No charge for the coffee."

"Wait, wuh? You sure?  I should pay for it."

He cocked his head over a bit and whipped his hand in the air and goes - seriously now, are you sitting down?  This part's freaky - he goes, "Oh, you'll be back" bobbing his head like he was talking about the weather.

I could only think one thing: This is why you shouldn't drive late at night.