Texas, Texas, then New Mexico

Morning started with -3C, after we had been told there would be no frost overnight. So much for local knowledge... Texas is a large state to cross, with many different types of scenery. At first, we had fairly flat lands surrounded by distant mountains, then the fog closed in for a few hours. At times, forward vision was reduced to a few hundred feet, most times the fog was just something that severely limited seeing the horizon. All in all, the fog just ended up spoiling the vue, it did not hamper driving the speed limits. At first it was 70 MPH, then 75, then 80 MPH for most of the day.

One eery sight during our couple of hours of fog was seeing a nearby wind-farm with the main post firmly anchored on terra-firma while only the bottom third of the blade was visible below the fog. Kind of cool seeing the slow moving blades disappear in the low clouds one at a time, only to reappear a little later further on the right.

Then the landscape changed and became quite hilly: the fog disappeared and the warm sun started an ongoing discussion about where to set the climate control, but that's another story.

One reason for the high speed limits is that no-one lives there and exits are far and few between. That kind of includes rest stops. We use a Rand McNally atlas as our main map and today we discovered the difference between the symbols for 'picnic tables rest stops' and 'rest stops' with an actual rest-room. Further to that, we discovered that they don't necessarily advise that the next rest stop is closed because it doesn't have water... On one occasion, Joan actually asked to stop at a Mac-Donald's [Peyote Texas] to use the rest room! The rest rooms weren't particularly clean but we did get our two coffee mugs filled for a paltry $1.28. Senior's discount apparently, I wonder how they knew?

We saw our first dry-gulch for the trip and well as the first rain water depth gauge at the side of the Interstate. This gauge is market up in six inch increments to a hight of 5'! The problem is that Texas is so dry that when it rains, the water just flows on the surface for quite a while before it starts being absorbed by the soil. We know this from experience; just ask Joan sometime...

Texas is well prepared for these flash floods by having huge drains under the highways so that gorged dry-gulches can flow under the road. At other times, they just let the water flow over the road by letting the road dip a little and installing a water gauge at the side of the highway. I've never seen these structures in action, but I understand that the flash flood can be quite brisk and deep at times, so when you approach these 'dips' when it's been raining, you check the water depth to see if it's safe to drive across.

Other firsts for this trip included cactus, century plants [agave], yuccas, tumbleweeds, as well as miles upon miles of useless scrub-land and large parking lots full of Homeland-Security vehicles. We even had our first Homeland Security vehicle check. This is when the highway is diverted and traffic stopped for Border Patrol officers to eyeball you and ask a few questions. This time he asked to see our passports, another first. The best first of all was a high of +15C early afternoon.

We ended up making an executive decision and have ended up here in Alamogordo New Mexico for the night. I want to go back to the White Sands National Monument to make a few pictures, possibly at the crack of dawn... Possibly more to follow.

As it turns out we changed time zones again and we're now in Mountain Time, two hours later than back home [the same as Nick, Colleen and the boys in Okotoks, Alberta]. Only one more time change to go, after that it's the Pacific ocean!

Sorry about the lack of pictures but I kept driving to get here instead of stopping to make pictures, maybe tomorrow. Could be, we start slowing down a bit.