Road Trip 2012: Leaving Texas

Because of our late start on Thursday, we stopped for the night in Fort Stockton, TX. Once there, we learned from my mother that they have a mandatory road trip stop: Paisano Pete.

10-11 feet tall, 22 feet long

I inserted myself to give you a sense of scale

 And then we were once again on the road, this time for a little over 7 hours to take us to Santa Fe.

Can you see the cowboy hat in the truck ahead of us?

Scrubby Texas landscape

Our plan for this road trip is to leave enough flex time that we can make side trips when we are so inspired, yet for whatever reason we opted out of a detour to Mosquito Lake. Call us crazy.

And then the inevitable: I left Texas. Probably never to be lived in again, but certainly to be visited.

Once we hit New Mexico, it seemed like the terrain instantly changed. It was hillier, and the dirt had a tint of red to it. Shortly before Encino, NM, we encountered a sign that greatly amused us: Gusty Winds May Exist. They certainly did exist, and continue to all throughout New Mexico.

We stopped for lunch in Roswell, NM. The first few miles were distressingly void of aliens...

But plenty of tractors

 But once we got into the heart of downtown, the extraterrestrials came out to play!

I'm pretty sure this was just a grocery store

I have tried like crazy to rotate this, and it's not playing dice. My apologies.

 We stopped for lunch (Sonic- I only discovered it a few weeks ago, but it's really quite good! Now I know why everyone was talking about it all throughout college...), and continued on our merry way, with me at the wheel this time. Photos from this point on were taken for me by the lovely Katie.

We touched down in Santa Fe around 5 or 6 in the evening (thank you, time zone change!), and settled in. Our Santa Fe adventures are to come! Today, we move on in to Arizona.

P.S. Katie is also documenting our trip, on her blog. She's a pretty spiffy writer, so you should check it out!