Inner Musings: New Mexico, Part 1: The Desert, Lights, and Adobe

In case you weren't aware, I was born and raised in the South. I'm a total Southerner, complete with the constantly-made-fun-of accent and being offended if you leave my house without having at least two helpings of everything and your pants button about to pop off. All that to say, I've never really been out West. Sure, I've seen pictures online and maybe even a video or two, but have never really been to visit that I can clearly remember. Sure, I know most of it's desert, and yes, I learned about that in school. Sure, I know it's dry (what does that mean, exactly?). And of course everyone knows that out West you can see a lot of sky.

So last weekend we went for a visit.

Problem is, I'd forgotten what the pictures of the desert look like, had no idea what it meant to have a dry atmosphere, and had absolutely no idea that "you can see a lot of sky!" really means there's no trees.

So visiting New Mexico was kinda like coming out of the air-conditioned air and getting hit by Southern humidity...but without the humidity.

But at least there's lots of mountains!

So after the initial shock wore off, we got our rental car and headed out on the road. We were cruising along until we noticed something a little strange:

Sure, it was a little off, but still, it was easy enough to figure out and off we kept going. Until we needed to turn left and got stopped at a red light. Suddenly, the person behind us started honking their car horn angerly. What was this person's deal? And then we figured it out:

By the time we figured it out, we were the only car to get through before the light went back to completely red. Oops! Glad we could share a little bit of Durham with NM. :)

Next stop: snack time! Except...something's a little weird. This doesn't look like a regular Walgreens. Can you spot what's different?