The Stater State

Just across the border of New Mexico we spotted the deal of a lifetime, Chinese food for only $1.50 an item. Once inside we realized that this was also the restaurant of choice for the local high school’s scared straight program but we remained unphased by their gang signs and JNCO jeans. The orange chicken and Mongolian beef we ordered were nowhere near worth the price, but the conversations we overheard involving knife fight stories and enjoyment of the prison-style Chinese food more than made up for it. We left the restaurant with our pants full of your standard sub-$2 chinese food diarrhea, headed toward Grants, NM.

We were planning to camp somewhere near Grants but as we drove through town we realized that it was below freezing outside and the city was home to the world’s cheapest motels. It turns out that you can get yourself a pretty decent room for twenty dollars if you don’t mind sharing a bed and sleeping less than three feet from the United States’ last functioning railroad. After paying for the motel I decided to reward our hard work and sweet find with two ice cold light beers from the motel bar. As I walked across the parking lot I noticed that Spencer, who was evidently a little more stoked about the room, had decided to reward himself with an eight-bomb of King Cobra malt liquor from the gas station next door. We slammed our beers in about two seconds and then went out to catch Country Western Night at Dirty Dick’s Saloon down the street. As soon as I walked into the bar I was hit by a severe case of Line Dance Fever. After several failed attempts to recreate the magic of my 6th grade P.E. boot scootin boogie championship I was asked to leave the dance floor so I sulked off to the bar where Spencer had already made himself at home. Luckily, the bartender felt sorry for me and offered me a free drink. Apparently, she also felt that I was a gay baby because the free drink she brought me was a thimbleful of Apple Puckers. Although nothing exciting happened, the night wasn’t a complete waste because when I got home my favorite comedian, Doug Stanhope, had returned my myspace message about how to acquire psychedelic drugs in the southwest. To help you understand how I felt, imagine if Ashanti text messaged Tho about a great new deal on crew neck sweaters*.

The next morning we woke up and visited the town’s only attraction, the Northwestern New Mexico Museum of Mining. It was free to go into the museum but three dollars to tour the underground mineshaft underneath the building. With a little fancy footwork and a couple fake mustaches, however, we were able to get the whole thing for free. They got the last laugh though; the tour was almost as boring as writing this post so far.

The rest of the afternoon was spent hiking around some pretty sweet lava fields. After the hike we began driving south hoping to finally get out of the shitty weather that we had been stuck in since we left Lake Havasu. On the way south we stumbled upon a little slice of heaven, and by heaven I mean my wrists, I want to slit my fucking wrist this post is so fucking boring. No sorry I meant pie, not my wrists, pie. We stumbled upon Pie Town, and would you believe it we ate a couple slices of pie. What a fucking interesting story, I can certainly see why someone would want to read about two guys eating pie in central New Mexico. What the fuck am I doing with my life…

Any who while eating the delicious pie the really cool old acidhead turned Pie-smith gave us a pretty detailed rundown of what we needed to do for the next 3 days. His itinerary consisted almost entirely of natural hot springs in the surrounding area. Apparently decades of abusing psychedelic drugs leaves you with a particular fondness for hot tubs, but without the necessary means to actually purchase one. I bet you just cant fucking wait to hear about the great time we had sitting in hot springs.

Following his advice we drove south to a campground in hot spring country. That night we created our best fire ever!!! Fuck yea. After we got the fire going we prepared a feast of fruit cocktail and Bush’s “Boston Baked Beans.” After the bean feast I spent the rest of the night staring into the fire thinking about how hilarious this was going to be to write about. Spencer had a slightly different plan for the night involving a 4-pack of 16 ounce Bud bottles and his own intrapersonal demons.

The next day we went on a beautiful hike through “The Catacombs” an old mining trail that cut through a small canyon…boring…Next we went for a amazing trek through a river valley to a natural hot springs, where we relaxed by a peaceful river…boring. I’ll tell you what isn’t boring though getting free pizza while chatting about mother earth with a couple hippies and an old cowboy, while their “friend” is writhing in pain in the car about to go into a poison oak induced seizure. On second thought maybe that was boring. How about you try this one on for size, Silver City, New Mexico’s KFC dining room we order not one but two orders of the $2.99 chicken-fried steak plate. While we are ordering we overheard a morbidly obese female employee tell her brother to keep still and that she’ll be off in only 5 hrs. Every eight-year-old’s dream: sitting by yourself at a Podunk KFC with nothing to do but anticipate how badly your methed up “dad” will switch-whip you for not behaving yourself at the babysitter’s.

(Catacombs)
After our feast at KFC we met our diarrhea quota for the post with our second obligatory case and headed up to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. We weren’t entirely sure what exactly the cliff dwellings were but the dead head pie shop owner had assured us that the park included numerous “far out” hot springs. It was getting late so we found a campground on the way and set up camp next to a creepy old VW bus, hoping to score some drugs but risking a late night stabbing. Surprisingly, the following morning we woke up both stab wound and drug free and drove up to the park. It was a short hike up to the cliff dwellings, which turned out to be unexpectedly impressive. The attraction was an entire town built inside seven large caves on the side of a cliff, which had been inhabited by an Indian civilization somewhere around eight hundred ago. We spent quite a bit of time walking around the site and talking about how amazingly simple life would have been for these people. They had basically everything you need in life (abundant food and water, ideally-located shelter and a true sense of community) without all the trivial worries and stress of life today. I found something really beautiful about this simple existence and it made me realize how people in our society build their lives around status and material possessions, completely missing the whole point of what life was meant to be about. This really got me thinking about the new self-sufficient psychedelic cult that I am planning on forming (I’ll keep you posted but I can assure you that you are not going to want to miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity).

After the dwellings we stopped by the Ranger station to ask about these far out hot springs. We he had no idea that he meant far out so literally. The hot spring was located 7 miles away from the nearest road. The ranger did not recommend the hike and suggested a few easier and more enjoyable ones. We misinterpreted this as a challenge and decided we would go for our first overnight backpacking adventure. We grabbed a trail map and headed to the car. Once there, we threw a random assortment of stuff into our bags and set out on our hike. The trail started out winding through a merciless dessert. About fifteen minutes into it we realized that this was a horrible idea: it was over ninety degrees, there was no shade and we had already drank about half our water supply. Thankfully, as we got closer to the river the hike became much more bearable and at some points even something close to enjoyable. That was of course until we reached the river. Our trail guide said that the hot spring was located just past river crossing fifteen, which I interpreted to mean the fifteenth bridge where you could cross the river. It turned out that the true meaning was that in order to reach the hot spring you were forced to ford a thirty-foot wide, waist deep, raging artic river full of very slippery rocks on 15 separate occasions. To compound the shittiness it was getting dark and the temperature was quickly dropping.

After dragging our frostbitten legs three miles through fifteen river crossings, with a large number of near falls we had finally arrived to where, according to the map, the hot spring was located. At first we were more than a little disappointed, thinking that the hot spring was no more than a dirty lukewarm puddle next to the river. Ever the optimist, however, Spencer immediately jumped in and basked in the fruits of our labor. While Spencer was enjoying the swamp hole I went off to find a quiet place to cry and just happened to stumble upon the most incredible hot spring known to man. Once I set eyes upon the hot spring I knew it was more than worth the last three and a half excruciatingly miserable hours. It looked like what I assume a resort spa would look like, and absolutely nothing like any of the KOA fly-filled hot tubs we had been partying/sleeping in recently. My first inclination, as always, was to hide my new find from my “friend” Spencer. For some reason though I decided against my better judgment and went to haul his unconscious body out of the leech pool.

After taking in the majesty of the hot spring Spencer rewarded my honesty by telling me that he had brought along the remainder of our toadstool stash and that now he wouldn’t take them all himself. I was pretty excited about the drugs, but even more excited to learn that using the term toadstools to describe magic mushrooms was making a comeback. This was going to be the first time I had eaten mushrooms at night so we began a firewood gathering frenzy to prepare. Once we had collected a fortnight’s worth of wood we set to creating a cuzi-side fire pit so we wouldn’t have to get out of the water to stare at the fire like retards. Though the hot spring was beautiful and a perfect ninety degrees, I failed to realize that it was by far the creepiest place you could possibly take hallucinogenic drugs. It had dark creepy caves in two corners, spider webs nearly everywhere, and there were bats flying directly overhead. The creepiness was only heightened by the fact that Spencer refused to talk about anything except whether or not the devil existed. After a couple hours we decided that we should have something to eat, namely a delicious can of Boston Baked Beans. Though we had previously been opening our canned goods and cooking them on a grill over a fire we decided to speed up the process by cutting out the middleman and just throwing the unopened can of beans directly into the fire. While it seemed like a good idea at the time we quickly discovered that it was, in fact, a terrible idea as the can began to bulge and nearly exploded. This would have been quite the disaster seeing that we neglected to bring any other food items on our hike. Luckily though, my attempt to save the can was highly successful**. The rest of the night went pretty mushroomly. The only notable events were my discovery of a stick that was harder than rock and Spencer’s unrelenting insistence that we talk about the devil***.

The next morning, after a quick dip in the cooz, Lucifer and I packed up the campsite and headed out on our second river-crossing bonanza. It was another hot day so to avoid the miserable stretch of dessert we decided to follow the river all the way to the ranger station, adding around three miles and exactly thirty-two river crossings to the hike. Around river crossing #8 we had our first, of what would prove to be several, near-death experiences on this road trip. We heard what sounded like a rattlesnake, which, in fact, turned out to be a real life motherfucking monster rattlesnake. Yeah, who’s writing the boring blog now? With a complete disregard for my wellbeing I was able to get up close and personal with the deadly beast and snap these dynamite action shots for our adventure-hungry fan base.

(Don't let this giant venomous monster fool you he is actually in this photo)

The remainder of the hike was challenging, spectacular, and, you guessed it, boring.

We reached the car around four and began driving east. As soon as we hit the highway we had our first run in with Johnny Law. I was only going fifty in a forty five but once I saw the stater pull a U-turn I knew that one of our lives would be ending soon. Luckily for him he was pretty cool as far as staters go and only gave me a verbal warning**** . I stood my ground though and gave him a verbal warning of my own that the next goddamn dirty stater that pulled me over would get a face full of my fist. Although this warning was given after he had driven off and I had rolled up my window I believe I got my point across. This would prove to be a very idle threat less than twenty minutes later when we were pulled over by a small smelly herd of staters. This time I was caught breaking New Mexico’s land speed record attempting to take the Stink Wagon of a sweet jump. They clocked me going 63 in a 45 but I’m willing to guess it was closer to 163. After three separate staters came to the car and harassed us with tips on their favorite local campgrounds and restaurants I was let off with a written warning. Apparently, after reviewing our rap sheets, New Mexican staters tremble with fear at the thought of dealing with two criminal trespassers. As they were leaving Spencer reminded me of my promise to serve up a heaping helping of knuckle sandwich to the next stater who pulled me over. I vowed then and there that the next stater I saw, regardless of whether or not he pulled me over, would be getting socked the fuck out. Around ten minutes later I would get my opportunity when we stopped for gas in Hatch, New Mexico, chili capital of the world. After an unsuccessful chili-related bumper sticker search I walked out to the car and saw Spencer talking to what appeared to be a pair of gay cowboys. When I got out there I realized that it was even worse; it was a pair of undercover staters. One of the staters approached me and flashed his badge and that’s when I knew something had to be done to teach these staters a lesson in pain. Right as I was about to punch him, though, I saw the fear in his eyes and realized that he was just a small town boy who never had an opportunity to learn what a stupid and useless job being a stater really is. I’m sure if he had been given that knowledge he might have become something worthwhile, possibly even a fellow tripper. I base this on the fact that he asked us repeatedly if we were carrying any BC Bud as he illegally searched our trunk. Fortunately we had recently exhausted the majority of our drug supply and he failed to find our cleverly hidden Halls bag of acid and let us go on our way.

Exhausted from our day of hiking and stater-dodging we went of to find a nearby campground. Assuming that the staters were planning some sort of sting operation we decided to stay at the only park in the area that they did not recommend to us. When we got to the campground the office was closed so we helped ourselves to a primo spot and went to sleep. A surly old lady in a golf cart woke us up the next morning by loudly asking if we had paid our fees for the night. We, of course, had not paid but were considering paying on the way out until her verbal assault and questioning of our character changed our minds. We drove right by the office on our way to Albuquerque, yelling “you’ve been boondoggled” out the window.

Our drive to Albuquerque was fairly quick and uneventful except for our spotting of several signs reading “life is good, don’t meth it up.” We weren’t sure if this was a public service announcement regarding the dangers of methamphetamines or lisps but decided to hedge our bets and cut both crutches out of our lives.

We got to Albuquerque, my favorite city of the southwest, late in the afternoon. At Trevor’s suggestion we went to an all you can eat Brazilian restaurant downtown. Though, at fifteen dollars a piece, it was well outside of a roadtripper’s budget, the food was amazing. At least that was our opinion until we had spent over four hours eating there in an attempt to get our money’s worth and, in the process, making ourselves violently sick. The rest of the night was spent watching 300 (enjoyable) and losing badly to Spencer “while other kids were out practicing real sports I was in my basement practicing air hockey” Morgan at a best of seven air hockey showdown (not so enjoyable). It was getting late and we had spent all our money on Brazilian food and air hockey tokens so we decided to move on to Santa Fe and meet Spencer’s parents earlier than expected. Thus concludes the longest, most uneventful internet blog post in history.

*Joke only funny to three people and two of them are writing this blog.

**My attempt to fix the situation consisted of awkwardly pointing at the fire and then pointing at Spencer, shielding my face from what I thought to be an imminent bean explosion.

***Spencer’s note: Corey spent the rest of the night banging a piece of wood against a rock like a five-year-old mongoloid idiot child. And, for the record, I was merely attempting to discuss the existence of a negative essence that happened to be in the back of a cave, beckoning me to a life of evil. If that makes you creepy, then yeah, I guess I’m creepy.

****Not saying much, on the ladder of coolness staters are one step below guys who take shirtless flexing pictures for their myspace profile.

-Corey