Day 9 – Flat!

For those of us born and raised in the western side of Washington, we are used to seeing mountains all around us – Mt. Rainier, the Cascades, and the Olympics. Unless it is raining or cloudy, they are usually visible and they certainly help navigate when traveling.

However, southeast New Mexico and northwest central Texas are just flat! As Pat said, “It’s like being out on the ocean and all you can see to the horizon is water.” Rather than water though, we saw miles and miles of flat land. It might sound boring, but really it was interesting to watch the changes in the landscape as the miles rolled on.

As we left the red rock bluffs of northern New Mexico behind, the eastern portion of New Mexico through Tatum and just across the Texas border the land was a very dry flat desert. We saw miles and miles of sagebrush, but there were also yucca plants and cholla cactus (I had to look that one up) scattered over the landscape. 

There were only a few signs of human habitation along that stretch of road. Far off in the distance to the west, periodically a snow-capped mountain would peep above the horizon.

[As an aside, this route took us through Roswell, NM, which is a much larger town than we had expected. It had Walmart, Home Depot, and every type of fast-food joint that you can imagine. We didn’t see any aliens though, except for those painted in the window fronts of shops, on wall murals, or statues outside the doors of establishments to welcome customers]

Not long after Plains, Texas, the landscape began to change. Pretty soon, although the land remained flat, farmers were tilling fields getting them ready to plant. Further on, there were crops that had already sprouted and were reaching towards the sun. Scattered among the crops were many oil pumps . Most of those were isolated, but in places there would be several side-by-side.

Eventually, the land began to change again to low hills. These were covered with low bushes and prickly pear cactus began to join the yucca plants alongside the highway. We crossed many dry river beds and “draws”. It took us awhile to figure out that draws were mainly just shallow dips in the landscape that we often call swales.

Almost 500 miles of travel over flat landscape none the less kept us intrigued for over eight hours. We can’t help but miss our mountains though when it comes to trying to figure out what direction we are heading.