I thought a map would be helpful for this story. (Map is just the Northeast corner of NM) After our camping trip we decided to swing down into New Mexico to visit my parents in Nara Visa. Strangely enough it is so small they left it off my example map. Nara Visa is at the intersection of Highway 402 and 54, Northeast of Logan. To get to their house from Colorado you go on I 25 from Trinidad CO to Raton then to Clayton and then another 60 miles down 402 to Nara Visa.
While we were in Trinidad we received a phone call telling us there was a bridge out on 402. I did the smart thing and called the NM State Police and asked them whether it was closed or not. They say they were allowing passenger cars across, no commercial trucks. So we were good to go. We drove all the way to bridge only to find the Highway putting up signs to completely close the bridge. Okay let me refresh your memory. We are driving a Tahoe with a 28 foot camper attached. We just went down a hill that curves to find the bridge that we were told was open is now closed, we are only 35 miles from my parents house. Not happy campers anymore. Not only do we have to find a way around but we simply have to turn the vehicle around. With Terry's good driving we were able to get it turned around without problems.

Now we have to find a way around this problem. Here are our options, go back 5 miles to a nice paved road that will take us all the way to Dalhart Texas (1 hour) and then from Dalhart take 54 directly West (1 hour) to Nara Visa. NO way do we want to do that. It is 8:30 at night. Next option County roads that are not paved and finding one that will get us back to 402 eventually. The County roads were showing up on our GPS so we decided to take Option #2. In the meantime we stopped to call my Dad (never know if your cell phone is going to work in this area) and he gave me the name of someone to call to find out which dirt road to take. Of course that person wasn't home.

While I am doing all this cell phone work Terry hears a kitten and goes exploring. He and Dylan find the kitten in a tree. We are about a half mile away from any house so the kitten was lost. Terry also discovered that something had skinned the kitten's tail. We had to rescue him. To get to the tree he was in you had to walk thru knee high grass and of course now it is dark. Terry has a flash light and all 5 of us are walking around this tree. Terry can't stand up under the tree due to all the dead branches so it is up to me. I am holding Jason and take about 3 steps while holding onto one of the dead branches when I step on something and it moves, I scream, let go of the dead branch, which hits Terry in the forehead. Terry shines the light down at my feet where there is an empty beer bottle. OOPS.... Okay we get the kitten (who is very tame) and we throw him in a rubber maid tub in the camper.

Now to find our way. We know we need to head South so we pick a road and go and go. After a couple of miles the road no longer looks like a county road, we are now in someones pasture or cornfield. So we have to back the trailer up till we can actually pull into the corner of someones cornfield and turn around. (No corn was damaged in this activity). Then drive back a half mile or so to a better road. Now we see a few tail lights and think maybe someone is leading other people on a detour. So we get on the same road and use our GPS to look ahead and find that if we make a few turns we will find 402 again. We are happy and laughing and feeling like we are going to get there before midnight. Again remember we are out in the middle of nowhere, there are NO lights besides our headlights.

We are on a great road headed the right direction when we see a curve ahead on the GPS. Great we are really on the right road. What we didn't see was that the road is a 90 degree turn. Terry didn't slow down enough so half way thru the curve the 28 foot trailer behind us starts to swing out. I say a few choice words, grab Terry's sleeve of his shirt and he says "Everyone hold on". He then intentionally drives the Tahoe into the bar ditch (on a dirt road your road is usually built up and so there is a ditch on both sides of the road) and now we are in the ditch and the trailer finally stops swinging to the side and after what seems like minutes we finally stop. I am still not breathing Terry gets out to make sure the trailer is still attached. When he gets in and he says something about that being exciting and Dylan looks up from his video game and says "what curve?" All is well and we stop shaking and start breathing and drive extra slow. The road we are on does lead us back to 402 about 3 miles South of where the bridge was out and it only took us about an hour. We arrived without any problems to my parents house at about 11:00pm.

What did we do with the cat? I called the local Vet (50 miles away) and asked her to fix it and try to get someone to adopt it. I will find out later today whether I have a $100 vet bill and if someone fell in love with "BOB".