Hurrevac

(Apologies for the long delay, we just recently got reconnected to the internet after the storm.)

Leaving Florida was really odd, I've been through plenty of earthquakes, but those just sort of hit you and then in a few seconds they're over. There was forewarning for Dennis, and especially in an area so hard-hit by Ivan last year people worked themselves into a frothy hurricane evacuation frenzy. People were busy boarding up houses and businesses:


And the few gas stations that hadn't run out yet were a maze of confusion and anxiety that made it look like the cheap gas station in Oakland on a Friday evening, with cars jammed in in all directions:

This station was out of the way enough to have some high-octane gas left by the time we got there (we almost ran out while we passed all of the empty stations). You can see the other two pumps are papered over. The price of gas also jumped a quarter per gallon overnight.

Some forward-thinking souls stocked up:


We hit the side roads to avoid the two hour delays our friends were experiencing on the main highways to areas out of Dennis' path. From there it was about a 24 hour trip to New Mexico, 72 of which we spent driving across Texas. There's some kind of magical time warp in Texas that makes it feel endless. It looks like this:

It is sort of nice at first but after so many hours of the same thing you start to feel like you're watching a Flintstones running sequence where the same rock and two cacti keep passing by over and over again in the background. Rock. Cacti. Rock. Cacti. I assume Flintstones animators did it to save time and money; for the life of me I cannot figure out why Texas does it.

I snapped some photos of local flavor out my window as we caught some radio shows about how little room there is in heaven and how few ways there are to get there.


This charming fellow was Ridin' on Faith:

Which I thought was maybe a spiritual thing until I discovered that his other bumper sticker read "Brakes are for Pu***ies." Having slightly less faith in his anti-brake belief system, we quickly passed him.

This is a pretty good summation of what was available on the side of the road:


Texas does have an awesome town named Bossier:

Remind me not to get into a barroom brawl there.

Politically, I'd sort of thought we were in Bush country, but apparently even he's too far left:


We did make an awesome stop at a goat farm in Texas, where I got to feed them live tumbleweeds (how cool is that?):


And I saw a live mesquite tree- which apparently isn't just for barbecues. You can make jelly out of the beans:


After a few more hours of rock-cacti-rock-cacti, we reached El Paso. I'd known El Paso was on the border near Juarez, but I didn't realize exactly how close.

The Highway through town runs along the border for a few miles, and it's a pretty stark juxtaposition: one side has a plethora of tin roofs along dirt roads, the other has strip malls with tanning salons.

We finally made it to New Mexico, where we drank a little beer:

And ate a LOT of hot green chilies. On the topic of chilies, I will pass along a rule of thumb as explained to me by a born-and-bred New Mexican: "If it's warm going in, it's warm going out. "

Speaking of warm, it was hot hot hot in New Mexico, and beautiful. We were certainly not at risk of being hit by the hurricane.
You can see fields of green chili plants growing for miles in any direction:


And beautiful desert landscapes surrounding the cities:


But the most awesome part is the sky, which looks like it goes on forever: