I write from a Hampton Inn in Gallup, New Mexico, near the border to Arizona towards the north of the state.

Today began early; I had wanted to compensate for the relative lack of miles made yesterday, so I was out the door and on the road by 6:30 AM and well before the sun had begun lightening the sky. In fact, I was several miles down I-10 before the sun started to make its presence known, and I stopped to watch for a little bit, and watched the sun actually climb above the horizon a few miles further down the road. How often does one get the chance to watch a sun rise over Texas hill country?

There really isn’t much to report from today, except for lots and lots of driving. And lots of it. Of driving. Lots. Honestly, I was dreading the latter half of Texas, with its seemingly endless stretch and its promise of a monotonous plains section, but instead it was brisk, and even the ‘plain’ part of Texas was a pleasure to drive through, with the true hill country being absolutely beautiful, including the massive wind farms with hundreds or even thousands of modern windmill generators stretching across the landscape. I was always looking forward to the landscape of this part of the drive, but I didn’t expect to enjoy it quite so much, or for its captivating effect to last quite so long.

Nevertheless, as much as Texas exceeded my expectations, I still had a definitive feeling of accomplishment after finally crossing the border into New Mexico, which I did around 1:30 PM. After a quick meal at a Burger King and some calculation, I decided I would in fact have time to make a detour north to see Meteor Crater. Thus, after pressing a little further west, I hit I-25 north and used the rest of daylight to make it to Albuquerque, rounding left and west towards Flagstaff (and Meteor Crater) around dusk.

Admittedly, once the sun disappeared, the drive became much more monotonous and slightly taxing. But in order to make the timeline work for tomorrow, I had to cover at least some of the distance between Albuquerque and Flagstaff. I settled on getting within spitting distance of the border, where I am now, and calling it a night. Tomorrow, I’ll stomp around some astronauts’ old stomping ground (after having done the same yesterday) before heading south to pick up Ryan at the Phoenix airport and head back to his parents’ place.

I wish I had more to write about, but the vast majority of today was taken up by hours and hours of simple, solitary, Zen driving, accompanied by a good audio book and the pretty awesome new Foo Fighters CD. I’ve got plenty of pictures (which I’ll post tomorrow, as its already past my self appointed bed time), though none will do any kind of justice to the sights themselves.

1. Jane Says:
   January 24th, 2008 at 10:12 am

   Damn straight the new Foo Fighters CD is awesome!! You should have been at the concert.. which was the 17th btw. It was amazing. “stranger things have happened” is one of my favorite songs from that album. So good. They are all good…