Moving Across the Country Continued

Road Trip Phase 2: Deserts, Caves, More Deserts, and More Caves
The next part of our road trip took us across what I can confidently called some of the ugliest parts of the US: South-Eastern California, Southern Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas. Out of all of them, West Texas was the worst. Everything there--the landscape, the buildings, the sky--was the same dusty brown color. I was not impressed. There were some pretty parts, like the saguaros and the botanical gardens in Tucson.

We also visited several caverns, which were all gorgeous. Karchner Caverns was just outside of Tucson, and was really neat since it was discovered relatively recently so it has been preserved and is still living. They had a whole series of hatches and lights on timers to make sure to preserve everything and keep the cave from drying out or growing mold. The other cave we went to was Carlsbad Caverns, which was simply huge! It had a great natural entrance, just the type of thing you'd imagine in an Indiana Jones movie, and came with a 'bottomless' pit.

Dave and I at the natural entrance--during the ranger show they made us participate in an educational choose-your-own-adventure about bats. My bat died right off the bat because it was too lazy to practice flying and fell to the earth and died when it finally tried.

My Dad in front of the natural entrance

Later on in the trip we went to Blanchard Caverns in Arkansas, but I'll just throw in a couple of pictures from there too so you can get your fill of pretty holes in the ground.

Out of all of the caves we went to, this was the one where I had to try the hardest to resist the urge to touch the formations.

Road Trip Phase Three: Severe Weather and my First Introduction to Dixie

After driving through muted brown landscape for several days, it was refreshing when things started greening up in Texas. From there all the way to Florida we saw nothing but trees. I thought it was very pretty, especially the Texas Hill Country and Arkansas. Right around Texas was also where we started encountering some bad weather. Although we drove through or right by different tornado warnings, we were lucky enough to avoid anything dangerous. 

Sky over Dallas after we stopped for dinner. The funny looking bumps are the cloud cells that tornadoes can form from. It reminded me of illustrations of gray matter in the brain. 

The worst thing we came across was some pretty badly flooded areas on our way to Memphis. If it weren't for a teeny little dirt side road that was only partially flooded and some very nice locals we would have had to take an hours long detour.

Despite the bad weather, I would not mind going back and visiting Arkansas at all. The entire state is beautiful, and it's a great place to go camping, fishing, and hiking. It surprised me that a state that has been around for so long could be so empty. In fact, some parts that we drove through seemed like they were still in the process of becoming ghost towns. I think that there were more antiques in some places than there were people. Even though Arkansas is west of the Mississippi, I sure felt like we had driven right into the middle of the old south. There is definitely a strong accent there, and people are really friendly. Dave was amused to find a small shrine in a antique store filled with statuettes of famous confederate generals and States' Rights (personified by a woman wrapped in the Confederate Flag)