Scottsdale AZ to Los Cruces NM
Drive time: 6 hours
Distance: 400 miles
Total Miles: 882.5
MPG: 18.6
Brake light status: off
Amount of Bug Splatter: Inconceivable
Steve and I have a great and ultimate respect for life. Every life is precious, every loss is a dark stain against karma. Having said that, the number of bugs that were demised on the front of our Jeep has probably set our karma back approximately 347 years.
SO MANY BUGS!!!
Seriously. There were so many bug storms on the route between Scottsdale and Tombstone and then Tombstone and Los Cruces that at one point it looked like we were driving through a snowstorm.
The first few layers of bug flesh were, we figured, just a natural event. After the seventh, eighth, ninth swarm of impacts, we knew we were being personally targeted. This wasn’t just the Biblical prophesies returned to torment humankind. This was a concerted effort by kamikaze insects; a determined assault designed to slow us down to the point that we’d have to stop in the middle of nowhere, exit our vehicle, and be completely overtaken. Our meat puppet bodies picked clean and our bones left to whiten in the sun.
I might be exaggerating a bit, but some of that may be because seeing a bug the size of a small Volkswagen splattering directly in front of my face kinda grosses me out.
We did stop at least 4 times to clean the windshield, all at gas stations with quick refuge while, we knew, the swarms watched and waited from a distance. Our efforts to keep the windshield pristine are marginal at best. So if you see a lot of bug splatter spots in the photos…. Well… we tried.
I might note that none of these offenders were ladybugs. My alliance with them remains unshaken.
Florida in May and September. Lovebugs. I can definitely relate. Watching unhelmetted motorcyclists scrape pounds of funky smelling black goop off their faces is a new kind of entertainment.