This past weekend, I made the 9+ hour drive from El Paso to Lawton, OK to visit Cam. He's halfway through BOLC II training (Officers' Basic Training) at Ft. Sill and needed to get away for a while. We decided that we would head the 90 miles north to Oklahoma City for the weekend.
On my long drive, I noted a few interesting things...
1)El Paso and the surrounding areas are desolate and not very beautiful. However, drive 45 minutes to the east and you begin to see trees, crops, pecan fields, and green grass! I'm glad to know that all of west Texas is not as bad as El Paso. In fact, much of west Texas reminded me of eastern Washington minus the irrigation sprinklers and BIG rolling hills (Texas has very small hills - that are called mountains.)
2)Driving Habits: I now know why El Paso drivers are sooooooooooo terrible! It's the bad influence of the Mexican drivers! I passed 5 cars with Mexican plates on my drive ... all of them going AT LEAST 15 miles under the speed limit and in the left lane! Argh!
3)Mother Nature in Action: As I was driving along, I noticed some type of bird of prey swoop down along side the road and take off again with a snake in it's clutches. As it flew over the car, the snake was writhing around. Very cool to see in person!
4)More Local Wildlife: The only armadillo I saw was some road kill, but I'm going to count it as seeing a real-life armadillo.
5) Nerd Alert: How big of nerd am I that I was excited to see the fields and fields of oil rigs and was seriously tempted to stop at the Petroleum Museum in Odessa, TX and the meteor crater outside of Abilene, TX???
And now some photos of the drive:
On my long drive, I noted a few interesting things...
1)El Paso and the surrounding areas are desolate and not very beautiful. However, drive 45 minutes to the east and you begin to see trees, crops, pecan fields, and green grass! I'm glad to know that all of west Texas is not as bad as El Paso. In fact, much of west Texas reminded me of eastern Washington minus the irrigation sprinklers and BIG rolling hills (Texas has very small hills - that are called mountains.)
2)Driving Habits: I now know why El Paso drivers are sooooooooooo terrible! It's the bad influence of the Mexican drivers! I passed 5 cars with Mexican plates on my drive ... all of them going AT LEAST 15 miles under the speed limit and in the left lane! Argh!
3)Mother Nature in Action: As I was driving along, I noticed some type of bird of prey swoop down along side the road and take off again with a snake in it's clutches. As it flew over the car, the snake was writhing around. Very cool to see in person!
4)More Local Wildlife: The only armadillo I saw was some road kill, but I'm going to count it as seeing a real-life armadillo.
5) Nerd Alert: How big of nerd am I that I was excited to see the fields and fields of oil rigs and was seriously tempted to stop at the Petroleum Museum in Odessa, TX and the meteor crater outside of Abilene, TX???
And now some photos of the drive:
I was most excited to see that in parts of Texas, the speed limit is 80 mph. Now, if only Washington would do this on many of its eastern highways! (I-90, Hwy 26, Hwy 395 ... to name a few!)
In the town of Anson, the highway curves around the city hall, planted right in the middle of town.
Do you think that Pecos Bill and his tornado are near by?
Nerd shot, but I had to as the car rolling over the 3000 mile point.
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