Between our stop at Joshua Tree in California and our stop in San Antonio Texas, we covered a lot of miles of, well... as Bill said "there sure is a lot of nothin' out there." We wanted to get to San Antonio on the weekend, so we stayed right straight on I-10 through overnight stops at Quartzsite Arizona, Deming New Mexico, and Fort Stockton Texas.
There are some pretty cactus hillsides just past Tucson (bordering Saguero National Park), but before and after that, it is just scrub desert like the picture, except sometimes without even the mountains in the background.
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At El Paso, we took a trans-mountain road around the city, happily missing the stop-and-go city freeway traffic and instead getting this view -- looking down on El Paso and beyond it, across the Rio Grande into the dangerous territory of Ciudad Juarez Mexico. We recently read that El Paso has a very low crime rate, in spite of it's proximity to the most dangerous city in Mexico. Probably true, but we still aren't tempted to spend much time in El Paso.
So this part of the journey was really just a road-trip. Traveling along for miles and miles and reflecting on the acres and acres of this big country where nobody at all lives.
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We were happy to get into the Texas Hill Country and then into San Antonio, which is a beautiful city -- and especially so because we have family there now.
Ah yez ... looking at your photos and reading your post reminds me of the drive I made in July of 2007 from Southern California to Taos, New Mexico for a week long writer's retreat. Lot of sameness in the desert ... yet some beauty too ;-)
Hugs and blessings,
Posted by: happilyretired | February 25, 2010 at 05:02 PM
I always wonder when I see so much empty land - how we can be running out of land - maybe they mean unuseable land.
Don't you wonder too - how many people there are out there and we will never meet them . . .
Sandie
Posted by: Chatty Crone | February 24, 2010 at 06:50 AM
I loved reading this post because we've stayed in some of the same places you did. We really enjoyed Joshua Tree and Deming. At Deming we stayed at the Escapees campground and had fun meeting all the other people there. And then we really enjoyed the Texas Hill Country too. So beautiful. I hope the rest of your trip is going well.
Posted by: Margot at Joyfully Retired | February 23, 2010 at 11:39 PM