Leaving Arizona and all those cacti behind

tkscovill ♦ January 23, 2014 ♦ Leave a comment

From Apache Junction we drove to Las Cruces, New Mexico, just a 3 1/2 hour drive. I expected desert, and maybe some grassland….

but only ten miles down the road, there was a rest stop with these dramatic rocks:

Highway 10 runs through the southernmost parts of Arizona and New Mexico before turning south at Las Cruces, NM, toward the vastness of Texas. This whole area is dominated by scrub brush and scraggly palm trees with small non-descript groups of mountains here and there on the horizon. Not much to look at. But suddenly at the bottom of one of those little bumps in the distance was a sprawling town–Las Cruces.

It was a one night stay there, but this view mesmerized us for the few hours we had there.

Then it was on to that big state with a big reputation–Texas. Just after entering Texas I saw a sign that said “Beaumont 849.” I thought it was a joke. It wasn’t. Texas is that big from west to east. Here’s what I looked at for two whole days until we arrived in San Antonio:

The ONLY good thing about this part of the trip is that the speed limit was 80 miles per hour, and believe me, you really wanted to go that fast! But San Antonio would prove to be a worthy prize for all that boring, dusty, dirty air highway through nothingness. However, I would not want to do it again. I’d rather scratch my eyeballs out!