We woke up this morning to a lovely sight — our truck and car covered in a solid inch of snow. Ryder was thrilled — he loves snow (not). According to Francisco, the hotel concierge, El Paso only gets snow a couple of times a year and this was heavy one. Fortunately, I still had my snow brush in the trunk of my car from when I lived in Michigan 5 years ago.
Driving through El Paso in the snow was a heart-stopping experience. While driving under an interchange, we thought there were accidents on a couple of the ramps. Then we realized that the cars were merely stopped because the ramps were too icy (the ramps were about five stories above us) (we didn’t have to drive on any of these ramps). Shortly after the interchange, a pickup two lanes over started fishtailing into the lane next to us and promptly spun into the wall. Thankfully, after a tense hour or so more, we were out of the snow.
New Mexico turned out to be a lot like Texas sans windmills and oil rigs, but with the addition of dust storm warning signs (“Dust Storms May Exists”), safety corridors, and pecan orchards.
During our travels, we’ve discovered a bizarre plant-like specimen, which Ryder has named Seuss-bushes. Ten points to anyone who can tell us what they really are. Latin name preferred.
To entertain myself while Ryder drives, I’ve been working on some crochet projects. Five points to the first person who can correctly identify what I’m making.
Project 1:
Project 2 (yarn hand-spun and hand-dyed by my awesome crafty friend Abie):
Arizona will always hold a special place in our hearts because we got awesome gas mileage. Turns out, we were mostly going downhill. We also saw a lot of cacti.
During the last five miles of the day we made it into California and are staying in the budding metropolis of Blythe. I can almost smell Palo Alto from here!
Our license plate map – big news of the day was seeing not one, but two vehicles with Alaska plates!
Day 3 Stats:
Miles driven: 591
States visited: 4
Sight of the day: approximately 52 RV parks by the side of the interstate, all heavily populated
Snack of the day: leftover pizza, kept perfectly chilled in the backseat of our car
5 Responses to The Wincky-Niners gold rush: Day 4