The Land of Enchantment

As promised, here are some pictures from yesterday.

Texas Hill Country (central TX, just west of Austin)

Western Texas..Basically flat with lots of oil fields and towns with names like "Notrees" (and they weren't kidding. There are really No Trees)

Robbie and I stopping for a break in Llano, TX

We have officially made it to New Mexico, and we are now relying on our somewhat pitiful mobile broadband connection. We spent most of today driving around NM and figuring out our national park strategy over the next couple of days. We ended up staying at a really pretty state park called Brantley Lake State Park. It's situated between Roswell and Carlsbad, NM, which is an ideal spot to call "home base" for a few days. Our campsite is really nice, has hot showers, and costs something like 12 cents per night. We saw our first roadrunner:

And here is our view for the next few days, overlooking Brantley Lake. Yes, that is our tent.
It looks more desolate in pictures than it does in person. We have people within 100 yards to our left and right, and we are currently cooking dinner on a little charcoal grill. Our neighbors are kind of noisy, but at least they like good music. We are planning on driving down to Guadalupe Mountain national park tomorrow morning, then we are most likely going to Carlsbad Caverns in the afternoon/evening to tour around and see the bats.

New Mexico is pretty cool. So far, it seems to be the type of state where you can do things like pull over in the middle of a major state highway and go look at a gigantic centipede in the road (which we did this afternoon). No worries, because there are no cars coming in either direction for miles. The cowboy hats are starting to fade out, but there are still a few around in town.

We're pretty excited to get back into some natural sleep rhythms - up with the sun, and head to sleep when the sun goes down. We'll post some more tomorrow. Good night!