Yoga ~ Travel ~ Joy: Road Trip!

Though most of our travels take us away from the country and usually the continent, we decided to stay stateside for this vacation and see some of the wonderful, quirky and striking towns and landscapes of the American Southwest We started off the trip with a visit to my brother in Dallas, and had a nice weekend of sporting events; two in a row, which is more sporting events than we have seen in the past six years or so. :) We first went to a "game watch" of my brother's alma matter Iowa State University versus their arch-rival Iowa. This was in Dallas, several hundred miles away from Iowa, but there were still 60 or 70 Iowa State grads of all ages in the bar all dressed in Cyclone colors and cheering at the TVs. Immediately after that, we headed over to the Toyota stadium to watch FC Dallas play Vancouver in a soccer match. It was a good day for my brother's favorite teams, as both of them won!

Everything's bigger in Texas... This was casually sitting in the parking lot of a bar.

Brad and I at the FC Dallas match.

GOOOOOAL! Brad was kind enough to lend me an FC Dallas scarf so I could look like a real fan. :)

The next day Gavin and I hit the open road in our rented Jeep Liberty that definitely shows the marks of previous travelers, including signs of an obvious break in through the driver's side. Despite the rental car associate's suggestion we take a Toyota instead, I insisted on the Jeep, feeling nostalgic for Gavin's old Jeep Wrangler soft top. :)

We headed through what is hopefully both the longest and most boring part of the trip: 8 hours from Dallas to Roswell, NM. The scenery, as it were, was mostly oil rigs, windmills, and cotton fields, with the brief relief of a beautiful sunflower field and the occasional tiny town. We attempted to entertain ourselves by listening to Jack Kerouac read his own novel The Open Road, thinking it appropriate because it describes his own journeys through the Southwest, but we got bored within a couple chapters and went "low brow" and listened to stand up comedy on YouTube instead. :)

We did stop to tresspass on a couple farms and take some pictures. :) I had never seen cotton field before and wanted to touch cotton "alive" and growing on a plant, so we turned off the highway and drove down a muddy dirt road to get a picture in a cotton field with some windmills.

Cotton fields and a wind farm.

Me copping a feel of my first ever cotton plant. :)

Sunflower fields. At twilight the sunflowers are all facing down since there is no sun for them to follow. I bet they look much more perky during full daylight!

We arrived in Roswell later in the evening, and checked right in to our hotel rather than go exploring. We did notice some Roswell quirks at some of the fast food restaurants...