Late Summer Road Trip Part 2

So I was one day into a cross country road trip.

The most impressive thing about driving on a trip like this is that you get to see the landscape change.  When you fly somewhere you just pickup at home and plop down where you're going, but you never get to see what the earth has to do to look the way it does there. Entering Oklahoma, I noticed the first of these changes.  The land that is soft, hilly and green turns flat, harder and yellow. And it's windy. Very windy. This is also where I started to see the first bit of Native American themed stuff.  I like that stuff, so I was excited. I looked out the window for buffalo the whole time, but the only one I saw was in a travel stop. He was kind of awesome tho.

In Oklahoma City we stopped and saw the bombing memorial.  It was sad, of course, but worthwhile and Oklahoma City was actually very nice. The buildings downtown were beautiful in an old fashioned midwest way and everything was incredibly clean.  So far, it was the best city we'd seen.

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Next was Texas and Amarillo, where I ate the best Mexican food of my life at a dilapidated shack in an industrial park. Good scenery, not so much, but I would come here again just for that food.

Next, New Mexico and the desert begins. I've always loved the desert.  I'd been to Vegas and the Grand Canyon before, but again, it was stunning to see how the desert happens... From yellow plains to rockier meadows, when the first scrub plants appear, to finally a lonely red rock sitting in a field of nothing, to be followed by more red rocks, bigger red rocks, and then you're there. 

From here on out expect more photos and vague run on sentences, because the desert is too stunning to talk about correctly.  I took photos and looked around, but there's a feeling and an impression it leaves that can't be described...

That day we traveled far from the greenness of the east coast, past the plains and fields and well into the west.  The small red rocks became larger grey mountains that appeared on the horizon and stayed there for hours as we tracked on towards them. 

You gain a bit of respect for a mountain, when you see it in front of you for an hour and still don't arrive at it! Eventually we did make it through Mount Sandia and spent the night in downtown Albuquerque.

I liked Albuquerque. I swam in the stainless steel pool on the rooftop of the hotel and watched the sun set. And everyone inside watched me through the windows because it was 50 degrees out. That was alright though. I felt like I had to swim in the desert. 

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