Roswell NM

In 1996, I took one of the best road trips of my life. My sister was finishing her MS in Education and wanted to teach in New Mexico. The way to get a job teaching in NM is to go to teacher job fairs.

My sister had a sixteen month old daughter. She had missed a couple NM teacher job fairs before she grokked the job fair situation. She was poor, having just finished a graduate program. By the time she had figured out what absolutely had to go to teacher job fairs in NM there were two left, several days apart. 

She discussed her options with me. Flying to NM and staying in hotels for ten to twelve days was expensive but she had to go to NM if she wanted a teacher job. What to do with her baby? She couldn't take her daughter without access to child care. These job fairs were not set up with day care for interviewees.  Maybe she was setting me up to make the offer I made.

I had a much larger and more reliable car. A Toyota Camry SE. 

I said that if she would pay for the gas and Motel 6's, which are reliably clean and affordable, I would pay for all my food and provide child care.  It wasn't child care to me. I liked hanging out with my baby niece. I like hanging out with any baby.

Nobody's fool, my sister immediately agreed.

I had reasoned that she had to pay to travel to and from NM, she had to pay for hotels. I reasoned I didn't have to go and my car and free child care had some value. And I reasoned that if I paid all my expenses other than gas and hotels, it was win win win.

And it was win win win. We had a great trip.

I let my sister plan the drives, where we would stop overnight. She read about a part of southwestern New Mexico that is said to be extremely beautiful. She proposed we go there and then swing back to Portales, which is an hour north of Roswell. She allotted only an extra 24 hours to drive six or more hours each way, with an overnight stay in this beautiful part of NM.

I wanted to go to this beautiful part of NM. I love NM and had never heard of, much less seen, that it had semi-hidden, gorgeous places I had not yet seen.