This picture captures the gravel, but not the constant, dust-filled wind.
Our drive from Fort Davis stands in stark contrast to our drive from Big Bend. Stark being the operative word. As you head towards Pecos things become deadly flat and stay that way to Carlsbad. We drove through Pecos, TX, which appears to have been largely abandoned and is now in the process of eroding from constant wind. We didn’t stop. The state of Texas recognizes how stunningly boring this area is and increases the speed limit to 80 MPH, so you can get through faster.
Entering New Mexico the scenery didn’t change, but the speed limit goes back down to 65. We also transitioned to Mountain Time, so our four hour drive took only three! Sort of. We are now in a gravel parking lot, I mean RV park, in the town of Carlsbad. There’s an RV park right next to the caverns which are 16 miles south of us, but after reading Rich Luhr’s experience we opted to stay in a place with clean bathrooms and less debris lying around. It ain’t pretty, but it’s serviceable. Carlsbad is not a delightful looking place either. It was bound to happen: after seeing so many amazing and beautiful sights, we finally found the area where they ran out. It is decidedly non-scenic round here.
Tomorrow we’ll go to Carlsbad Caverns. The contrast with our current surroundings should be impressive.
January 31, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I see what you mean about the ugliness. And the sad part is, GoogleMaps knows it’s ugly too and is trying to hide it from us. You cannot zoom in nearly as closely on the satellite image as you can for many of the other sites you’ve visited. Also, the closest satellite view is blurry thereby further obscuring the area’s ugliness!
January 31, 2008 at 4:23 pm
When you get to Tucson and visit Rich, Eleanor and Emma (of Airstream Life) are you going to do a “crossover” blog. Have him write about your visit in your blog and you in his? I love that when they do that on TV shows…
Ralph