Now time really was up, mainly because Houston school district failed to push back their starting date any further. Shocking! Not that anything is going to happen in-person, but we did need better Internet than the wilds of New Mexico offered.
We spent our final days fitting in a few more hikes, dreading getting stuck inside again by the soupy weather of coastal Texas. Pete and I had a nice wander around some abandoned gold mines that - as in most gold rushes - only made money for the people who subdivided and sold them rather than dug there.
Getting home was the small matter of a 13-hour drive, a distance unimaginable to our British sensibilities but piffle in our American context. In the end it was fine given the long, straight, empty roads (until drawing close to the highway nightmare of Houston, at least) and did allow us a sneaky In-N-Out drive-thru on the outskirts of Waco.
It turns out that you can leave your house for six weeks with little problem, especially with wonderful neighbours like Kindra and David to keep an eye on it, and apart from a dead fly here and there and a lime tree full of fruit (yay!) nothing had changed, not even the humidity. Bring on winter!
New Mexico has been very good to us these last few weeks, so much so that Hannah's eyeing mountain-based jobs. Ski instructor? Chalet girl? Maybe if they actually find gold it'll be worthwhile, but until then black gold remains the best bet.
I sort of managed to almost take a photo of the Milky Way!
Worth driving 13 hours for.
