Day 4: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Carlsbad, New Mexico

Heather: What a long, terribly long, excruciatingly long day. It took 13 hours to drive 550 miles, when you include stops for bathroom, gasoline, eating, photographing and shopping. We met some nice people today - two ladies at a welcome center just in Oklahoma, and the Mayor of Cookietown, Oklahoma. We're Girl Scouts, so we just couldn't resist a stop in Cookietown!! But like so many small towns, as soon as the interstate was built, Cookietown disintegrated. Now it has just has a Mayor - who is also Police Chief, Fire Marshall and City Administrator. As we entered Texas, the roads became straighter and seemingly flatter, a gradual increase in 3000 feet of altitude. The vegetation changed from cotton and peanut plants, to prairie covered in mesquite bushes, and finally to prickly pears, chollo and yuccas. Lunch was at the world's first Prairie Dog Town in Lubbock, Texas, and we raced against thunderstorms all late afternoon. We finally found our campsite and managed to put tents up before it got too, too dark (some flashlight was required for putting in the last few tent pegs). Standing still is definitely underrated!

Janelle: I am definitely not in Kentucky anymore. Kentucky is all green in the summertime, and although New Mexico is much greener than I had pictured it, it's certainly not the Emerald City. The ground is all gravel and red dirt, speckled with cacti and scrubby brush and plants that look like extraterrestrial life forms. The landscape alternates between plains and mountains, and on the prairies I can see all the way to the edge of the world. In the towns all the buildings are adobe or brick, so that they match the desert around them. Even places like Target or Walgreens, which I'm used to seeing in colors like white or blue, are orange and brown here. We have to watch out for such creatures as scorpions and rattlesnakes--and ticks, because it turns out they can carry bubonic plague here. This desert is beautiful, but it all seems so alien to me, like something from another planet. In many ways New Mexico feels more like a foreign country than England ever did.