Day 6

Today was mostly a driving day because all we did was drive 9 hours to Phoenix, AZ. It was really beautiful scenery the landscape of New Mexico, West Texas and Arizona is just so amazing and so surprising. I never expected to see so many mountains, they were so big and incredible. It was really cool to the dried up water beds which  looks like a beach without the water. We also saw whirling dervishes, which are these dust/sand mini-tornados. We saw tumble-weed, old trains, and a road runner. We drove around the Guadalupe Mountain National Park, which is so beautful. We would love to come back some day and hike to Guadalupe Peak, (I'm sensing another road trip needs to happen lol). Today was my favorite drive so far. There was just so much to look at and so many cool rocks and scenery. The most exciting part of our day was driving around the border of Mexico. Border Patrol was out hot and heavy, we even had to stop at a check station for border control, and tell them all about who we were and where we were going and why.All the while I am praying please don't make us take everything out of the car to search it or whatever, it is a miracle we get it all back in the car in the first place. They let us go on but then we were nervous because we remembered we had a "Drop the I word/ No human is illegal" bumper sticker of Davids mom's that she had put on the car. This is not the safest place to advertise such ideals. We drove on through the desert passed all of the tourist traps about ghost towns and Mexican imports. We passed cow farms were there were a ton of cows all stuck in to small pins, and there were miles and miles of these small cow pins. We also saw orchards in the middle of the desert, where they are using all of the water to grow these tree's that should not normally grow in such a dry place. We saw the Rio Grande but it was completely dried up( probably because it is going to all of the misplaced orchards). It was really quite incredible to just drive for hours and hours and see nothing but desert with all of the uses that we have made out of it. Some of it is for oil, or natural gas, or wind farms or orchards or dude ranches. The West is so completely different from anything I have ever seen before, but I really like it because I feel like it has not changed completely since people have been around it, it has changed a lot but it is not completely developed, there is still so much land.

        We made it to Phoenix and we are staying at David's great Aunt and Uncle's beautiful home. We had delicious food and good conversation. It was a nice evening and now it is time for bed because were getting up at 5 am! Woo! Also Thanks to Jan and Mike Valder for letting us stay with them, cooking for us and letting us wash some laundry!