It's been a relatively uneventful day thus far. We've been driving now for about 11 hours but it hasn't seemed that long. It's starting to get dark now, though, so the driving will get harder. Might be time to catch up on some sleep.
I've started to notice that one cool outcome of a road trip, which is not easily predicted until you've been on one yourself, is how much you get better at road tripping itself. Each morning we know exactly how to pack the car. Depending on your seating position in the car, you have different jobs. You in the driver's seat? Better be ready to drive, monitor the amount of gasoline left, and keep us safe.
How about the passenger seat? Well this is a good seat to have since you get the best views and don't have to keep an eye on the road. But it also means you might have to take pictures on the spur of the moment while also using your iPhone to play music. It also gets a little warm since the sun shines in unimpeded. But then again, you have much easier access to the car phone charger compared to the schmuck sitting in the back seat.
So what about that schmuck in the back seat? What's his responsibility? Actually, he holds the most important responsibility of all: the food. In fact, the food is accessible almost exclusively to the back seat. So it can be tough, always taking orders for Gatorades and Chex Mix. But the beauty of the back seat is that it's the best temperature and set up for sleeping. Just hope people aren't too hungry.
So there are clearly pros and cons to each seat. All three of us have gotten pretty good at the tasks at hand for each seat. I, just now, polled Anthony and George to see what their overall favorite seat is:
George: The back seat.
Anthony: The back seat.
Me: I'll go out on a limb and say the driver's seat. I'm the most aware of my surroundings and I see a lot more of the terrain, which is one of the coolest parts of this road trip. Although, since right now it's late and dark and time to sleep, I'm glad I'm in the back seat.
Thus far today we've been gauging our progress by the amount of towns we pass. You know, those places where people live and do things. There's not a lot of them out here, and every 40 or 50 miles it's time to slow down from 70 MPH to 35 MPH to go through downtown. Which takes 30 seconds. "Well, we pass two more towns before we get to the border of New Mexico" was spoken about 145 miles from the border.
We stopped at one of these local towns for lunch, this one called Coleman, Texas. We got lost, had to do a couple U-turns, and with my bright-lettered Party Rock tshirt and George's Harvard sweatpants, I think we looked like complete aliens to the locals. But we did find a restaurant and had some delicious Mexican food. The outsiders (us) didn't stay long enough to find out what happens to them once their welcome runs out, and we left town and got back on the highway.
Overall, driving across Texas and the whole southwest has been a very cool experience. The vastness of our country is hard to believe until you see (drive) it.
Well, it's time for bed for me. I apologize for the lack of photos on this post. As far as I can tell (I'm no professional blogger, though), the iPhone app that I'm using to post these allows me to attach only one picture per post. And I don't think I can add a caption. And that's my favorite part.
So with this post's one picture, I present you a picture of a landscape. This was in Texas, taken out of the passenger seat window while I was on photo duty. I like this picture because I was trying to include the oil rig (pictured in the center). However, I snapped the picture a little late and, instead of seeing the side of it, the perspective was directly behind the rig, giving it the form of a cross (which are fairly common along the highways in the south).
Have a good night, I look forward to sharing a picture from the Grand Canyon in the morning.
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