Monday, May 11, 2009

From Texas, Through New Mexico, To Arizona

It took us two days to drive from Austin to Mesa, where we stopped for three days to visit family. We left Austin on Thursday, May 7, driving out through Hill Country on back roads till we hit the 10. The drive through Hill Country was pretty, as we passed ranch after ranch. Most had impressive gates with large limestone pillars, but some entrances were modest and quirky, like this 'wreath' on a gate where we stopped to walk around a bit:



The road we were traveling at the time looked like this:

We stopped overnight, still inside Texas, at a small town called Van Horn. The next morning we crossed the border into New Mexico, passing sign after sign for possible dust storms. New Mexico landscape has some interesting rock formations, like this one...
...but mostly it is just boring.
By afternoon, we were in Arizona. We stopped at the welcome center just across the border, and saw this friendly warning:


We saw a rattlesnack once when we were hiking in Sedona, so I really didn't need much encouragement to stay on the pavement and out of the brush.
Just east of Tucson, we saw a large brushfire in the distance. We drove towards it and by the time we reached it, it had jumped the eastbound lanes and was burning in the median only feet from where we had to drive through. This is the closest I've ever been to such a large fire. The police were just arriving as we drove past; there was no firefighting equipment on the scene yet.
We arrived in Mesa/Phoenix by 5pm Friday, after two very long days. We spent three days and nights, resting and visiting with family, and then headed on to California.

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