I was in the mood to cover some serious ground today. I was hoping to have a decent amount of time to spend visiting my sister in Phoenix, so I figured sacrificing some hours today would help to ensure that would happen, especially since we were crossing the empty expanse between San Antonio and El Paso. My goal was to make it to Las Cruces, New Mexico, and then to be in Phoenix by tomorrow night.
This morning it was grey and cloudy. In fact, it was so grey and so cloudy all day that I felt like it wasn't really daytime at all until the sun 'came out' around 5 or 6pm. Thankfully, this cloudy weather also made it feel much cooler outside, even though we spent a solid 8 hours in the car today. Once we left Kerr county, the speed limit on Hwy 10 went to 80mph. I'm pretty sure that's the highest speed limit I've ever seen (not counting Canada's km signs ;) The highway in Texas also greeted me with the cheery message that 1102 people had died on Texas roads so far this year. As I drove I wondered how often this sign was updated and how eerie it would be to watch the number climb as you drove knowing someone on the Texas roads had just died.
For lunch we stopped at a DQ. For some reason the kids were astounded that a DQ would sell hamburgers, chicken fingers, and even tacos. Back home they just sell ice cream. I thought it was odd that they sold steak fingers alongside the chicken fingers as well as a chicken fried steak sandwich. The kids pulled a small cup full of creamy white stuff from their chicken finger kid's meal bags and said, "What's this?" "It's gravy", I replied, as they stared at me like I was speaking some sort of foreign language. It was good with the chicken fingers - I tried it.
The kids' meals come with an ice cream treat, so while the girls enjoyed those, I worked on the blog a bit. A older man walked up to me in the parking lot and asked if we were headed home and where we'd been. He told me that they were from Florida and had just finished a vacation that took them to California. We were both on our way home in opposite directions and just happened to stop here for lunch. What a small world.
Once we left DQ, an alert came in on my phone's weather app:
Yes, that does say 80mph gusts and 2 inch hail. Luckily I was just at the southern tip of that wild weather and didn't see any hail, but the wind was still enough to make me feel like I was driving one of those kid's pull-toys with the uneven wheels that bobbles back and forth as it goes forward. We drove along in the bad weather for a long time but I got to enjoy some lightning even earlier than I had hoped. Based on all the road trips we did as kids, I knew New Mexico was the place for lightning and I was counting on NM to deliver some big sparks for me. So, I was even more excited to encounter it earlier, in western Texas. It came just in time, too. I was getting pretty tired from fighting the winds and the closest Starbucks was 3 1/2 hours away, so the lightning gave me something to do and watch for. We also turned on another audiobook, this one being a random grab from the library. The story was called The Whizz-Pop Chocolate Shop, and it was an excellent story that I would highly recommend to any kids out there. And it was really, really long.
We gained another hour while driving today, heading back into Mountain Time, so I treated myself to a sit-down dinner to relax for a bit before we finished the drive. We stopped near El Paso, where Hwy 10 goes so close to Mexico that you can see it on the other side.In fact, if you zoom in on the map, you can see that only 500 feet separate the highway from the Rio Grande in some spots. It's so close, in fact, that everybody on Hwy 10 has to go through a border patrol checkpoint when the highway curves back away from the border, even if they never left the country.
Right where the highway is nearest to the border, there is a shopping mall, and this is where we stopped for dinner. We marveled at the huge number of Mexican license plates in the parking lot and thought about how odd it seemed to 'head over to America' for dinner or to catch a movie for the evening.
The sun was setting as we neared the edge of Texas, and even though we still had a ways to go, I stopped to take some photos because I'm a sucker for a sunset in every state.
I also noticed (in my boredom) that Texas hadn't taken the time to line up their exits with their mile markers. They were close, but didn't quite match up. This wasn't really a big deal, though, until I reached the border and noticed that Exit 2 was at Mile Marker 3, and then a little while later at Mile Marker 2, they had already run out of exit numbers, so it was Exit 0. Oops.
We made it to our hotel in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and the first thing I realized when I went to unpack the car was that my pillow was missing. What is with me this trip?!? I must have left it at the hotel back in Kerrville. Guess I'd have to do without for the next couple of nights.
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