Day Three of our road trip was a road trip. That is to say, we spent the day on the road. This was one of our longer days driving - a 500 mile trip that Google maps says should take eight hours and forty minutes. Of course, that's without any stops. It took us something between nine or ten hours.
By now, much of it comes back as a blur of dry country and bad readers stumbling their way through David Copperfield (a Librivox recording). We still haven't finished David Copperfield, despite listening to the book almost every minute we were on the road, but the second half of the book has had much more consistent good reading than the first half. Thank heaven!
We took lunch a little early in Las Cruces, New Mexico; prompted by Libby's good memories revolving around the Cracker Barrel. Back when she was in Awana's high school program, she'd take annual trips to Chicago. And, every year, she'd eat at the Cracker Barrel. It's a very large and popular chain, but there aren't any locations in California. It has very southern or midwestern fare, soI enjoyed the opportunity by trying some deep fried breaded okra with my chicken and dumplings.
Las Cruces is also the first place we saw the mighty Rio Grande! After lunch, we jumped on the road, and, next thing we knew, we were in Texas!
The 10 dips down into Texas right at its western tip (see above). We took the 10 into El Paso before turning off and taking a smaller freeway west and north into New Mexico. The area around El Paso is Chihuahuan desert scrub, and areas of it were very reminiscent of the Mojave. But, soon after, we dropped down into some flatlands that were basically grass and salt pans dotted with cholla. Lots of Meadowlarks flew around on the side of the road, but both species are probably present here so we never actually added the birds to our trip list.
The scenic highlight of this part of the country is definitely the Guadalupe Mountains. After hours and hours of flat country and rock-dotted rounded hills, you finally reach something with some cliffs and some height to feast your eyes upon as your drive. Especially spectacular is the southern tip of the range - where it is capped by a beautiful massif called El Capitan.
Not long after passing Guadalupe Mountains National Park (not a place I'd heard of, before) we were entering New Mexico, parralleling the Guadalupe Mountains northwards as they shrunk down toward Carlsbad. And as dusk fell, we pulled into our motel for the evening, stretching our cramped legs and happily anticipating the next morning's adventures.
Pictures for the day are here: http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/sets/72157612325020902/
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