{"id":310,"date":"2017-04-15T18:25:42","date_gmt":"2017-04-15T18:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/?p=310"},"modified":"2018-05-09T00:02:49","modified_gmt":"2018-05-09T00:02:49","slug":"santa-fe-part-1-aliens-yurts-mt-compost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/15\/santa-fe-part-1-aliens-yurts-mt-compost\/","title":{"rendered":"ALIENS, YURTS AND MT. COMPOST (Santa Fe, part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Driving from Monument Valley to Santa Fe I stopped by the Four Corners Monument. I’m in four states at once!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s been a while since my last blog and I am almost embarrassed to share the reason: I had a bad couple of days and wasn’t sure how or if to blog about them.\u00a0At some point, I\u00a0knew I would\u00a0have days when\u00a0I missed home, got really\u00a0sad, or just wanted to stay in bed. Let’s be honest,\u00a0“normal” life is not immune to\u00a0bad days, so why\u00a0would life on the road be any different? So here is part one\u00a0of a two-part blog about my time in Santa Fe, New Mexico, my first patch of rough road.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I stated in an earlier blog, I wanted to\u00a0experience new things and try out stuff that I’ve never had the chance to do. The Navajo hogan had been\u00a0awesome, so\u00a0I was excited about the next place I’d booked: a yurt on a llama farm. Yes, I’ve always wanted to stay in a yurt\u00a0(my brother-in-law helped build\u00a0one on his parents’ property in Oregon), and I thought\u00a0it would be so cool to sleep in a round, canvas-walled room. What’s more? This yurt\u00a0happens to be on a llama farm. A LLAMA\u00a0farm!!! Adventure, here I come.<\/p>\n

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How about this to scare it out of you<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In addition to the yurt and llamas, my host also owned the local roller rink. Seeing as I pulled\u00a0into town very\u00a0late, he had me meet him at the rink where he was working to\u00a0get the keys\/instructions there. The rink was a Roswell alien theme (this was New Mexico after all). There was\u00a0silly alien decor\u00a0everywhere, the music was spacey, and kids from town were having fun. Then I noticed a huge mural on the back wall that looked like the parting of the Red Sea. I looked closer and there was an alien in the center. I asked my host about it and he said he bought the building\u00a0from a church and converted it to a roller rink. He said yes, that was in fact the parting of the Red Sea, but who wants to see Moses starting at them while they skate? So he put an alien there instead. I guess I nodded in understanding (?).<\/p>\n

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Front desk at Roswell-themed roller rink<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At that point\u00a0my host\u00a0(who by the way looks exactly<\/em> like\u00a0a skinny version of Doc from Back to the Future<\/em>) starts railing\u00a0a bit on\u00a0“right-wing Christian Republicans.” Now don’t get me wrong, he was actually a very nice guy; he just had some very strong opinions. This is nothing new. I mean, I’d lived in\u00a0San Francisco, after all. But it was hard to take after a very long drive, and the alien parting\u00a0the Red Sea was started to creep me out. I thought if I could just get to the yurt I’d be okay.<\/p>\n

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The purple thing was the “bed” (folded up)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After my host closed up, we went back to his property and he showed me what he called, his\u00a0“Enchanted Yurt.” It was clean and modern inside, and he took delight in showing me how he built it, how he used special NASA materials for the walls (which meant if I wanted wifi I had to sit in front of a window because\u00a0the “astronaut walls” blocked the signal). He then fired up the pellet stove, the efficiency of which\u00a0he was more than happy to explain. The stove kept smoking and even shut off twice during my orientation, but he assured me it would be fine in just a few more minutes. Just as I began to notice\u00a0there was no bed, he pulled out this large corduroy bean-bag-like thing. He unzipped the cover and unfurled\u00a0what was essentially a queen-sized sack filled with tiny bits of foam chunks. \u00a0He swore it was\u00a0so comfortable that many guests had overslept. I wasn’t so convinced that would be the case for\u00a0a big girl like me.\u00a0Lastly, my host showed me his most prized feature: the composting toilet. Practically\u00a0giddy with excitement, he explained how how much water is wasted with regular toilets, how green this apparatus was, and how much mulch\/soil I would have to\u00a0scoop on top of my business every time, depending on which number I went\u00a0(there was a large\u00a0bag of mulch next to the shower). But the most worrisome\u00a0part was that the whole contraption was very tall, and the seat itself was a very precarious\u00a04.5 feet off the floor. One had to seriously climb<\/em>\u00a0on to use this thing. Perhaps\u00a0this was a little too much adventure.<\/p>\n

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Mt Compost<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a few more political statements about\u00a0the\u00a0environment and the evils of capitalism, my host left me to get settled. I put the sheets on the glorified floor pillow, turned the pellet stove back on again,<\/em>\u00a0and headed to the bathroom for my evening ablutions. After I finished brushing my teeth, there was no more avoiding it. I really needed to go potty. It took me more than one attempt to climb\u00a0Mt. Compost, figure out a way to turn around carefully\u00a0and sit, and then to safely dismount. I was\u00a0relieved (pun intended) when I navigated all of that successfully, but then I got a little stressed out playing\u00a0chemist, trying to\u00a0figure out my\u00a0exact\u00a0mulch-to-liquid ratio for scooping afterwards. At this point\u00a0it seemed\u00a0easier just to have copped a squat behind the bushes.<\/p>\n

I got into my pjs, turned the stove back on one last\u00a0time, and climbed into the foam-sack-pillow bed. I immediately sank to the floor. All the foam bits in the “mattress” got pushed\u00a0to the edges, and\u00a0I\u00a0was essentially lying on the floor\u00a0surrounded by\u00a0a ring of foam. Great. Then the stove shut off again. Awesome! Two hours of not sleeping later, I had to go potty – no!!!! – and not the lower number. Crap! Literally. So I struggled\u00a0to climb out of the foam donut and\u00a0get off the floor. The place was freezing with no heat, and I staggered into the bathroom in the dark. I will spare you most of the details of my second attempt to climb Mt. Compost, save to say I\u00a0ripped the toilet paper\u00a0dispenser off the wall trying (unsuccessfully) to save\u00a0myself from tumbling off. Bruised and lying\u00a0on the floor of the bathroom\u00a0in the dark with the broken toilet paper dispenser next to me, the decision was easy: I’m\u00a0booking another place.<\/p>\n

I got myself squared away, put on another wool sweater to stave off the cold, pulled out my laptop, made sure I was in front of a\u00a0non-NASA-blocked window, and trolled for other accommodations. I found another place, and I immediately booked it. I then climbed back into the foam donut, bundled up against the cold, reminded myself that I had been\u00a0a camper and a Girl Scout for years, I could\u00a0do anything for one night. And\u00a0then I started to cry.<\/p>\n

NEXT UP:\u00a0Santa Fe, Part 2 of 3! \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a while since my last blog and I am almost embarrassed to share the reason: I had a bad couple of days and wasn’t sure how or if to blog about them.\u00a0At some point, I\u00a0knew I would\u00a0have days when\u00a0I missed home, got really\u00a0sad, or just wanted to stay in bed. Let’s be honest,\u00a0“normal” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-mexico","post_format-post-format-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/storygirlontheroad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/IMG_2372-e1492714701534.jpg?fit=3238%2C1379&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8xsVh-50","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1112,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions\/1112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}