Semi-necessary craziness

So, there I was, in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, thinking about heading to Colorado, when I realized I was getting low on one of my medications. I had enough for six weeks. Rats.

I get my meds in Mexico because I no longer have a doctor to provide prescriptions. I don't need a prescription in Mexico. And the price is a fraction of what I'd pay in the US. The down side is that meds come packaged in smaller quantities in Mexico. I can't get a 100-tablet jar, only 30-tablet jars. I'd need to get 24 jars to last a year. That large a load raises eyebrows with customs. "I swear, these are only for my own use." So I get half that many and tell myself to make another run before I leave the area in the spring. But I forgot this year. Even though I was in and out of Baja and drove right by the place I get my medications. Twice.

Juarez is a lot closer to where I was, near Santa Fe, but the wait to get back into the US can be hours long. And it would be in 100+ degree heat. I've been going to Los Algodones, near Yuma, for my meds. It would be just as hot, but the lines to return are usually very short or nonexistent. Since it's no longer snowbird season there, I knew it would be quick even though it would be horribly hot.

But, still, that's a long way to go for pills. I think there's two kinds of craziness. In the first, you don't know what you're doing is crazy. In the second, you know it's crazy but you do it anyway. Sigh. At least my craziness has bits of fairly good logic behind it.

There are two basic ways to get from Santa Fe to Yuma: west then south, or south then west. I decided to stay north as long as possible in order to avoid extreme heat. I went from Santa Fe to Bluewater State Park near Grants, NM. After a night there, I went to Flagstaff and camped along A-1 Mountain Road, where I was about a month ago.

My strategy for dealing with the heat was to drive to Phoenix in the early evening, stay in a hotel (mmmmm, air conditioning) then get up early and make a pre-dawn dash to Los Algodones and be there as soon as the pharmacies opened, before it got hellishly hot. I booked a room in Buckeye, west of Phoenix, near highway 85 that connects to I-8. But I didn't get up and get going as early as I'd planned (I was really beat). I got to Los Algodones at 10:30. It was hot, but not brain-boiling, skin-blistering hot. I got my meds, breezed through immigration and was on my way north by 10:50.

In my mind (which we have already established is defective), the drive from Yuma to Kingman to Flagstaff isn't all that far. I could envision the various familiar legs. Yuma to Quartzsite, Quartzsite to Lake Havasu City (and it's infuriatingly times traffic lights), LHC to I-40, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino (oops, song lyrics, wrong way)... Anyway, no big deal, right?

Wrong. It's 530 miles, eight and a half hours (nine with pee, food and gas stops) all in one day. I went that way, rather than the slightly shorter route through Phoenix, because I wanted to avoid overheating on the steep I-17 grades. The elevation gain is more gradual the other way. (I'm not totally crazy.)

But the craziness isn't over yet. Remember Colorado? I have a reason for going there. I'll be helping a friend with some construction. So I'm back on the road tomorrow. Another 450 miles. But not all at once. My butt couldn't stand that again. And I wouldn't want to look crazy.