It's a Long Way Across Texas

Deming is very dry and warm when you step outside. The orange land around you looks even more orange and yellow in the morning light. The green cactuses turning brown are the only things aside from the city that break the pattern. You grab a quick breakfast and hit the road. Hopefully with an early start you can get most of the way through Texas

You make it to Las Cruces. It is the second largest city in New Mexico, but it passes by fast. The town is home to a New Mexico State and many historical sites. The town itself hides in the desert with most of the buildings being tan, Native American theme, or Spanish themed.

Not even an hour later you reach El Paso, TX. To your right is a tall fence. Over the fence, you can see dilapidated houses of Mexico. El Paso is by no means like Tuscon, AZ. It is a big town, but it is a border town. It is not the type of place you would want to hang out in overnight in most parts of town. You follow the tall brown fence through town. When you compare the houses of Mexico to the houses on this side of the fence there are definite differences. Over here most houses are stucco or concrete. Over there the houses are plywood or cheap stucco.

The border fence dives to the south as you continue east. The further east you get, the more boring the land gets. The land repeats itself every few feet: cactus, rocks, dirt, more dirt, even more dirt, cactus, rocks, dirt, etcetera. It is like a single scene from a silent moving picture on everlasting repeat with no way to turn it off. This scene drags on and on until darkness finally overtakes the land around you. The only things that break the dark theme around you are the colors of cars passing, marker lights, and the lines of the road.

Finally, you spot a faint glow on the horizon. The yellow lights in the distance grow closer. They cover a huge spread of land ahead of you. This town is where you will be staying the night. When you climb out the wind softly cries. Maybe it is the cries of ghosts. Whose ghosts? The ghosts of the men and women who lost their lives in the Alamo. San Antonio is still hot this late in the evening. The wind does little to help. The desert is flat. The dry land crackles underneath your feet. The cactuses standing in the dark look like the bodies of giants.  They all reach towards the sky asking for rain. A few clouds gathered in the distance offers a little hope.