Gorditas!

We drove 600 miles in 11 hours today. We started in Pecos and ended in Tucson. We would've made even better time, except we hit another bunch of ice on the road about an hour outside of Pecos. Luckily, they had sanded the roads, so I had some warning that things were about to turn icy. Otherwise, I think I might well have hit the ice at full speed. Others weren't as lucky: we saw another bunch of semis and cars that slid off the road.

Sadly, we came across another sort of accident today as well. Driving around Tucson tonight, we passed a woman lying in the middle of the road, motionless. A bunch of other people were already helping her, so we didn't stop, but the situation looked pretty bad. I wish I could get the image of her lying there out of my head.

Since this post has taken on a rather depressing tone, I should mention that we listened to an incredibly horrifying This American Life episode today, about the current situation in Guantanamo. I highly recommend it; in fact, I think it should be required listening for all Americans.

We also finished listening to McCulloch's biography of Truman today. If McCulloch's depiction of Truman is at all accurate, then I have a new hero.

Our drive this morning began with a photo shoot at Ma Wilson's. Long-time followers of my travels, if they have a photographic memory, will remember that I took a picture of Ma Wilson's sometime in the late 90's. It was only when we drove past Ma Wilson's last night that I realized I had been to Pecos before. So I took a few photos of it again this morning. It looks completely unchanged, so I'm not documenting anything new.

Aside from the icy roads, our drive to El Paso was rather uneventful. Yesterday, the ice storm had transformed the otherwise barren wasteland into a relatively (for western Texas) beautiful landscape. I wish I could think of a metaphor that describes what scrub brush covered with a thin layer of ice looks like, to make the scene vivid for you. But I can't, and once again I forgot to take a picture of the one aspect of things that was memorable. There wasn't any ice on the brush today, so until we got close to El Paso, the scenery was pretty miserable.

We did take one interesting detour on the way to El Paso. From looking at the map, my mom noticed that we were just a few miles from the Mexican border. So we got off I-10 and drove south. The border was only a couple miles down the road. On the first road we drove down there was a border station with a big barbed wire fence, so we drove down another road, this time a dirt one, and stopped at what I assume was the border. There wasn't any fence. There was just a concrete covered irrigation ditch.

We didn't stop in El Paso, but we saw enough of it to note that it looks very different from every other American city I've ever seen. There didn't appear to be any city planning at all. The houses were just piled on top of each other. And the moment you got any elevation at all, you could see for miles and miles. I assume much of what were were seeing was Juarez, just across the border.

For lunch, we went to another great Roadfood find: the Little Diner in Canutillo, just north of El Paso. I had an "authentic" Gordita, which was basically the contents of a beef taco inside of a pita-shaped corn tortilla. It was pretty good.

After lunch, we drove up Rt. 28 and saw a rather disappointing folk art environment in La Mesa (pictured), took a photo of a nearby Roadfood destination (also pictured), and drove around a cute, but equally disappointing small town (La Mesilla). I should say, however, that I liked the look of small towns around El Paso and in New Mexico a lot more than those we saw in Arkansas and Texas.

The drive across southern New Mexico was quite scenic: it was an enormous flat expanse with mountains on all sides.

When we eventually got to Tucson, we tried to find a restaurant that was both mentioned in Roadfood and recommended by friend Tiff. After repeatedly driving up and down most of the streets of downtown Tucson, we eventually found it, but it was closed--hopefully, just for the night. Maybe we'll try and go tomorrow for lunch.