Finally New Mexico!

 We're not only welcomed to New Mexico, but our clocks went back an hour into Mountain Daylight TIme.

 I liked the welcoming banner.

 And then there were the first views of mesas...the sudden drop off from a plateau! We had arrived in New Mexico for sure.

 And there in the distance, a real mountain.

 It took a while to get to it...really just another mesa.  Isn't that spot on the windshield neat, it looks like a moon!

 When we next stopped for gas, the truck ahead of us had a horse wearing it's saddle. Cowboy country.

Rocks that are incredibly big are stacked up on this mesa.

TODAY'S QUOTE:

Sometimes we behave as though there was something more important than life. But what?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

More of Texas

 The soil that had been recently plowed was deep red here.

 And a grain elevator was actually in business.  Many of them we passed were abandoned.

 We enjoyed a sunny hot day on the road.

But we had miles to go before we slept...as Robert Frost said.

Today's Quote:

It’s our insides that make us who we are, that allow us to dream and wonder and feel for others. That’s what’s essential. That’s what will always make the biggest difference in our world.

Rev. (Mr.) Fred Rogers

Across Texas panhandle

The grass by the side of the highway was sometimes different colors...we looked for inspiration wherever we could find it!

We finally saw some electric wires. We couldn't figure out where all the electricity that wa being generated was going from those windmills.

It was still a bit hilly, which I didn't expect.  I've usually traveled across Texas further south.

Today's quote:

Let me fall if I must. The one I will become will catch me.

Baal Shem Tov

To Oklahoma City

A break for stretching legs and emptying bladders...and as I stood by our car, this lovely little bird sat on the next car in front of me, perhaps wishing that he could sing the words on her window!

This may be the place we stayed our second night on the road. Actually it's al beginning to blur in my mind. But the clouds were always changing!

The dramatic sky that day, which intermittently dropped a lot of water on us. My valiant friend didn't hesitate driving through everything, though she did put on her hazard lights when visibility was bad.

Her trip odometer said we'd made 985.8 miles by then. We expected it to be 1550 or so total.

A bit of skyline of Oklahoma City.  We wanted to sleep on the western side of it, as close to the Texas border as we could make it that day.

Another interesting building caught our eye as we whizzed past.

There were wonderfully decorated overpasses and walls along the interstate in Oklahoma City!

And then, between all the spots on the windshield, there was our first sighting of a wind farm.

These stately giants just slowly turned but not in a pattern that made them synched together. All at about the same speed, but each pointing one arm up, another pointing one arm sideways.  It was hypnotizing.

I am glad to have a few minutes today to start reading my friend's blogs and commenting on them. I've missed you guys!

Today's Quote:
The more space we create in the body through a physical practice, the healthier our energy is.  Madisyn Taylor in Daily Om

Memphis and then...

 A rather dramatic sunset on our first evening on the road...in western Tennessee

 We were on the bridge, or it's approach, when we saw this strange building in Memphis TN.

 And the bridge goes over the Mississippi River.

 It was a great moment for me, since I haven't been west of the Mississippi for 14 years.

 Sorry for the blur, we're blaming it on Arkansas

 The sign even was a blur.

 Once we were over the bridge, there were no more towns, just many fields.  We stayed here, and the clerk told us these were rice fields, and there were a lot of mosquitoes, so we would need to close our doors quickly.

 Right next door was this quaint building by the campground.

We headed for Little Rock, but didn't see a bit of it because the interstate highway took us around the town.  On Tuesday we drove from just west of Memphis in this no-place in the rice fields, through all of Arkansas and most of Oklahoma! My friend dealt with driving through many thunder storms during Tuesday! Then we finally got sunshine and stopped for the night...I've got a few more photos of that chapter to show you later.

Today's Quote:
We are in a co-creative relationship with the universe, connected to an infinite supply. Madisyn Taylor Daily Om

Go the long way through Tennessee

After all the villles...Ashe, Knox, Nash. Oh yes, there were some pretty sights too.

 Nice skyline in Nashville...wonder what the double-pointy building is...

 A rather strange dome on the Nashville Electric service building.

 Kept trying to see the pointy building as we drove along the other side of it...it doesn't seem to be the tallest building there...

 AND THERE IT IS (behind that crane in the center right distance!) What is it? There are obviously some other nice buildings, but we became fixated on it. And the best I could find about the "Batman Building" was that it is the tallest building in Nashville, and in Tennessee, and is known as the AT&T building.

And this is the part of the story of the first day of driving that we'd rather forget.  We were told of an accident (even Google Maps told us early that there would 1:30 minutes delay there)...and we were still 3 hours away from it. We went through Nashville knowing it was there, but there wasn't any indication of a detour on our guide.  Until we'd done an hour waiting...and nobody was moving unless they just got off the interstate at the next exit and took back roads, which we did...not much further, nor slower, and traffic was coming through on the other side of whatever the accident was, not very much, but some. It must have been pretty bad that from noon to 4 pm, when we finally went around it, almost nobody got through on the 2 lanes going west.

Today's quote:

What you are, the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.

J. Krishnamurti