The 8th day was a killer

I think we are up to the eighth day. Started out in Deming, let the dogs all get out and run, checked out Silver City, the Kneeling Nun, Santa Rita mine and then thought hey the Gila National Forest is between me and I25 let's just take that road. Follow the yellow brick road or I should say ease up and down the grades at 20 mph, pull over cool brakes, check out the overlooks, I think it was a 4 hour drive or so to make an hour and a half mileage wise at most. However, it was lovely. If you get to the Gila National Forest, pull out at Emory Pass. On a clear day you can see forever , and it was a clear day.
At the end of this road through the forest was several miles of rolling ranch land that ended at a very attractive "watering hole" called the Caballo Reservoir named after the mountains that loom just east of it. I took this photo of it just before sundown. The bad thing was that shortly after this I decided I probably had really erred in judgement being 1500 plus miles from home 2 weeks after major surgery. Surely that deep painful burning that was making me double over the steering wheel could not be normal. I put my hand down over the spot fully expecting to pull it back covered with gore because my steri strips must have pulled loose and my guts were spilling out, or my internal stitches had pulled out and my intestines must be swinging around loose like a hangman's noose in my abdomen, or I was about to herniate loops and loops of small intestine through that little tiny hole in my skin. Nothing has ever hurt like that before, and nothing other than natural childbirth has ever hurt that much. I'm driving North finally on I25 thinking oh my God I've got to get as far as I can maybe I can get to I40 and drive back to Nashville and they can get my guts back in. Got as far North as Socorro hanging over the steering wheel, pulled into a motel6, paid the lady, drank a large amount of liquid hydrocodone and fell into bed clothes and all, was asleep by 8:30 PM and thankful of it but alas the pain woke me up at 3:40 the next morning. At that point I was ready to freak out, jumped up got back on the road but finally by 7 AM it had started to abate some which helped convince I was not dying but I had overdone it. I managed to get to my friend Leonore's house in Sandia Park, NM got the animals taken care of, called Vanderbilt and got reassured after describing the pain that it was neuropathy, sometimes happened but would go away with some time. Most importantly I wasn't dying. Just having someone with a medical degree tell me that made me feel better almost immediately.