White Christmas
While the planning of this particular road trip was a bit complicated since it’s winter and things like snow and ice become a factor, so far everything has been very smooth. Despite the image you see above. Yes, that’s snow. This was taken at the Texas Canyon rest area about 60 miles outside of Tucson, Arizona.
Yes. South Arizona. Snow. I-10.
Actually it wasn’t all that bad. Since the air temp was hovering around freezing, there was no ice on the road. And when I stepped outside to take the picture, it wasn’t terribly cold since I was only wearing a hoodie over my t-shirt and jeans. And a little bit down the way I was caught up in some light snow flurries.
When I planned this trip, I made my first stop in Tucson since I knew a storm was going to blow through. Ideally I would have made my first stop to be in Las Cruces, NM or something further, but there was no way I wanted to drive through a snow storm especially at night. By the looks of it, it was a good thing I did that.
Besides the snow, the one thing that worried me about driving on Christmas Day was how many things would be open. Fortunately the truck stops like Love’s and Flying J’s were all open, so that was much ado about nothing. They are also nice to break up the monotony of the Texas flatlands.
Some random thoughts:
El Paso is still a fucking ugly town. As many times as I have driven through there, it never gets any better. The only thing that saves it is seeing Juarez across the border. Texas really thinks a lot of itself. It’s like they have taken Terrell Owens’s famous quote and use that as a life motto: I love me some me! “Still Processing” podcast with Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham is the shit. They can make me laugh and cry in the space of five minutes.