After 3 weeks, yes, 3 weeks in Tucson, we finally received our DMV paperwork. I have to begin with a huge thank you to Ken's parents. While we would have liked things to go perfectly and to be in Guatemala by now, it was great to have such a wonderful place to call our temporary home.
While we hoped to take off Monday night, we didn't have it all together until about 1 -p.m. Tuesday...so we said good-bye to Jan and Ken (Sr) and set off into the 100+ AZ heat.
Our route, selected to do as much of our driving in the US as possible, takes us through New Mexico and into Texas. For the first several hours we saw....more desert. Osa (our gray kitty) was pretty unimpressed, even when we crossed the state line into New Mexico.
We did see this..old timey gas pump at the station in New Mexico where we refueled the first time.
And then we saw Las Cruces - what a dramatic burst of mountains that seems to come out of nowhere. We hit it at the perfect time...near sunset.
We took the opportunity to get the cats out of the car and let them roam a bit...on some harnesses and leashes we picked up for the trip. Cats and leashes...not a great start, they didn't really get the whole walking thing....but it did keep them from taking off. Both enjoyed a great roll in the dirt.
One of the cool things about New Mexico are their rest stops - each one offers a series of little shelters with a table and fire pit or BBQ grill so that families have their own private space. Interesting concept!
This is the view from one of the shelters looking out onto another one on the left and those beautiful mountains in the far background with the city of Las Cruces at their base.
Some more photos of the shelters, yes I was completely charmed by them.
We should probably have stayed the night in Las Cruces, but well, we were anxious. In our minds, 3 weeks behind and in a hurry to get to Guatemala, and knowing we would be fairly comfortable driving at night here in the US, we kept on going....
Into Texas and through El Paso - which was a MUCH larger city than I imagined based on Google's depiction on our map. It was dark, but El Paso and Mexico's city literally across the freeway, Juarez, went on for miles and miles and miles. It was a very odd feeling to be driving the freeway there, that dividing line between countries and fates.
We set our sites on Fort Stockton, Texas....but didn't really think about the whole time zone thing. We passed through 3 different zones on our way, making our arrival very, very late. We also had a cloth carrier on our roof which kept making strange noises so we had 3 stops with poor Ken trying to figure out how to quiet our ride. And the most challenging part of the trip? Our cats, or should I say cat. Osa is a wonderful little traveler, but Belle, not so much. We even got a prescription for her from the vet for Xanax (yes, cats can take the human med) but I forgot to crush it so it took longer to kick in and once the negative vibe was set, we were doomed. She was so awful you had to laugh...when you weren't the one she was hissing at or biting. ;-)
About 2:30 am, we pulled into pet-friendly La Quinta Fort Stockton and grabbed their last room. Wish I had grabbed a photo of the chair in the room, truly the dirtiest piece of hotel furniture I have ever seen. But we were there to sleep....and we did.
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