FIFTY STATES AWAYAfter spending the night stargazing we rose ready to leave Texas, after one last stop. Today would roughly be a 280 mile, four hour drive to our next stop, taking in plenty of sites in the meantime. Leaving Fort Davis behind we made our way along up and down various mountain elevations. It was quite and ear popping experience, one minute you’re at 6000ft, the next 3000.
Our journey took us through El Paso, the last big town that we both wanted to check out in Texas before heading onto another state. Driving towards El Paso was something else! It actually looked pretty much like all the westerns I’ve ever seen. It’s so desolate, I don’t think we even saw another car. I had visions all the way along of olden day Cowboys and Indians roaming the land, it’s easy to see how they led the life that they did. There’s not much in sight apart from the one very long road, I imagined back in the days they just went by the surrounding mountains for navigation as they would probably have been the only thing of navigational help out here during the day.
El Paso has been completely different from all of the other major cities we’ve visited, Texas or elsewhere. There are not really a lot of tall buildings and the cities and homes are set lower down on either side of the main road. It’s actually quite pretty houses are mainly orange in colour and everything seems so spacious. I can imagine someone strolling down the street in their Cowboy get up.
Having reached El Paso, it’s time once again to move the clock forward, we now cross over into the Mountain timezone. I am glad that we are going to be driving back across and loosing hours slowly and one at a time, it should help with any jet lag. Completing Texas, and wrapping up I ask myself: has Texas been all I hoped it would be? Yes, I am really pleased that I got to see such a diverse range of Texan life. The cities were large and everything I thought they would be, whilst it’s was informative to see the farm and desert sides. At times it was hard to deal with endless desert, but it was an amazing experience and certainly allowed for a lot of reflection on my life. I do have to say though that whilst I’ve had a fabulous time, the motels in Texas just aren’t as clean as the states we’ve previously passed through, sorry Texas!
Our drive was not over yet over as we headed into New Mexico. They do border checks here and you if you are not American you have to produce your passport and appropriate visa’s. It was a quick and efficient check and we were soon free to pass through and continue on the massively long road! Entering New Mexico the way we did you drive past a lot of army ground, specifically missile testing ground. The terrain is somewhat the same as El Paso at this point, I didn’t have any expectations coming into this state so well see what it has to offer.
I hope you are all still enjoying reading about our adventures, it’s great to know that we can keep in touch with everyone wherever you may be! I’ve managed to make all the pictures (current and previous) a bit bigger, so I hope this is a good change!
