This is the road to Alamogordo, NM. I think I took this along US highway 285. Driving I-10 was really low on my “things I’m excited about on the road trip” list for some reason. I had heard that it was desolate and desert-like and this made me really apprehensive. Mostly because I hadn’t had much experience with desolate desert roads. And I kept thinking about No Country for Old Men and that somehow I would accidentally happen upon a crime scene and then Javier Bardem in a pageboy haircut would come looking for me relentlessly. (While I would love for Javier Bardem to come looking for me, I’d like for it to be for different reasons than his motives in the movie.)

In reality, I-10 really wasn’t that bad. The first two hours out of San Antonio have an interesting landscape and it wasn’t really until I hit highway 285 that I started to think, hm, well, this is not a place I would want to get stranded. Luckily, I didn’t, and I kind of thought that I wouldn’t. My car is in pretty good shape with no hint of mechanical issues that would put us roadside for awhile. So then I just had to deal with the boring monotony of the drive. Oh look, more desert. Some ranches. Flat flat flat. I thought Indiana was flat. No, it is flatter out here in certain places. But then we found the Sacramento Mountains, which had snow and all manner of breathtaking views that I failed to capture very well on film, but here’s a shot:

So really my mind had blown things out of proportion and the drive really wasn’t that bad. Good lesson for me to learn.

Filed under New Mexico, Texas, thoughts.