Into The Great Wide Open 3

The second half of Texas was as boring as the first. I took a picture but Blogger is apparently having issues with all that. Figures. I finally have pictures, and it won't work.

New Mexico was long and moutainous. For the first couple of hours I didn't know if my little red car would make it up the huge hills. It never has had much power, but there were times that had me a bit worried as packed full of stuff as it was. After all, Tennessee has some pretty big hills, so it shouldn't have been a problem. Later on, I realized that I was driving at an elevation of 6,000 feet. That explained it all.

I veered off the interstate a few times so I could cruise on parts of the old Route 66. There's signs everywhere marking the historic road and I couldn't resist. It was so cool to think about how that was the only way out West back in the day before there were interstates. There were even some original sites along the way.

Then came the Rockies which were magnificent. Snapped some cool pics of that, too. Albuquerque was the first major sign of civilization I had seen since I passed through Oklahoma City the day before. Visually, it reminded me a little of Phoenix, with the whole Southwestern thing going on.

Once I got to Arizona, I started to get tired. I still had about five hours to go. The scenery changed almost immediately from brown grassy hills with little shrubbery to huge colorful mountains with oranges and pinks and browns. It's weird how as soon as you cross state lines you start to see changes in the landscape.

At any rate, I drove through the Painted Desert, The Petrified Forest (although I never saw any trees), and when I made it to Flagstaff, my I-40W journey was over. I hopped on I-17S and made the final descent (3,000 feet to be exact) into Phoenix. It was sundown by the time I hit the 17, which was a bummer because I'm told that the two hour drive south through Sedona is absolutely breathtaking. By sundown, I mean pitch black. Darker than the backroads in Tennessee, it seemed. The fact that I began to hallucinate from being on the road too much, that I was driving down three or four Monteagles at 80mph, that 18-wheelers were flying past me, and that I was trying my hardest to keep my eyes open made for a tough last two hours.

I rolled into Ciaobella's driveway and could barely return the warm greetings after driving twenty-three hours in the past thirty-six. I mustered up a few hellos and passed out till morning.

Wednesday was spent lounging on a floatable chair in my cousin's pool. It's taken me a few days to recover, not from the drive, but from the past month of complete insanity of trying to get everything jiving out West. It's rewarding to know that, after all my hard planning, things are shaping up just perfectly.

Tonight it's Jill and Ciaobella do Phoenix night and then I leave for my final trek to LA in the morning. Woo hoo!!