July 3
We got up early to begin the ride to Las Vegas, NM from Santa Fe. I was kind of excited about it because I have never been to Las Vegas before. Of course, I knew it wouldn’t be anything like Las Vegas, NV, but still. The ride was uneventful, and we are in a part of the country where photos really don’t do the subject justice. I think it takes an excellent photographer to capture any part of what it feels like to ride through these wide open spaces where you can see a long ways.
Our ride was 69 miles for the day. When we arrived in Las Vegas, we were staying in Connor Hall. I was expecting to sleep on a rec room floor, but we each got our own room in a residence hall, and we had the use of a very small kitchen area (basically frig and microwave) in another building. Getting our own rooms with beds felt like a great luxury! In the morning, though, several people mentioned that it felt kind of weird to sleep alone. It’s strange what we become accustomed to over the course of a month. I kind of missed having everyone near, also. It reminds me that over the millennia, humans have more often lived in groups of twenty to thirty, than in the small nuclear families or even single person dwellings that are common in the US now. It makes me wonder if living in such isolation is a good thing or a bad thing.
