Desert-ed

Six hours of driving will get you from L.A. to San Francisco, or from New Orleans to Houston, or maybe from Jacksonville to Miami if traffic is good. Or, if you're as adventurous as us, six hours of driving will get you from this to this. Scenic, no?

To be fair, the scenery from Albuquerque to Kingman, AZ today was tremendous. I went into the day with the expectation of dryland shrubbery and sand as far as the eye can see, but the vegetation varies widely from pale sagebrush to dense forest to fields packed with bright yellow and orange flowers. There are hills, flatlands, mesas, panoramic vistas, sunshine, thunderstorms (both at once, occasionally), etc. The only thing missing was wildlife. Through our entire trip across New Mexico the only wildlife we saw was a pair of black birds resting on a power line south of Albuquerque. It's some kind of beautiful desolation.

At any rate we're now in Arizona at Trevor's place, and aside from the possibility of rattlesnakes in the garage and the low-maintenance landscaping, the high desert is a pretty nice place. We've elected to stay an extra night here, in fact, so there should be a significant update to the blog tomorrow detailing how we got from Virginia Beach to New Orleans on the first leg of our trip. Sorry about that.

Also, I have two corrections to make. First, I mistakenly misused the name of Fort Stockton, TX a couple of days ago, calling it Fort Stevens by mistake. The second is that I only have one correction to make. Oops.

Goodnight for now, and I do hope that the new layout is satisfactory. Feedback, commentary, prayers for safe travels, and other wishings (preferably well-) are appreciated. Cheers!