Well, it's finally time to leave. I've felt ready to go for a few days, and since this is the longest driving day of our trip, we wanted to start early. We got up at 5:40 and left before sunrise. The traffic was a little heavy but not too bad, though it still took us about 45 minutes to escape the sprawl of the Metroplex. It didn't take long for us to pass Wichita Falls. There isn't a lot of developed land and not much to look at in northwest Texas, but I felt that the dry, flat land had a beauty of its own. I drove the first 270 miles, then we switched at a nice Texas rest stop. We decided to have lunch at Whataburger, which is one of those Texas places that we won't be able to have again for a while (though before today I probably hadn't had it for more than a year). After lunch, we were glad to leave Amarillo, but we couldn't escape the pervading smell of cattle, and had to close the vent in the car because the smell was so strong along I-40 in Texas. We got into New Mexico, which made Amarillo and the Texas panhandle seem bustling. The few towns in New Mexico were far apart and don't look any different than they must have looked in the 1960's, except that most of the establishments are now missing parts of their signs. Fortunately, the scenery was a little more interesting, with bush-studded rocky hills and, as we got closer to Albuquerque, mountains in the distance and even snow on the sides of the road. Fortuantely, Lesley drove the whole way through New Mexico so that I could read one of the books I brought along and type out most of this blog post. I'm looking forward to shorter and more scenic driving days.