Another Day, Another Bucket of Sweat...

The last couple days have gone very well, aside from the excessive amounts of sweat I've had to dealt with because of the ridiculously warm weather. But all gross thoughts aside, it's been a good couple of days. I took a set of 4x5s at the Monahan Sand Hills just outside of Odessa Texas, before returning for one final night in Midland, Texas. There was another game of Scrabble (which I lost again, but not by as many points this time). There was also another dinner, this time at a bar that Kristen used to work at. We sat outside and enjoyed the comfortable Midland nighttime air. I didn't take any awesome digital images of the sand hills except for the next entry of the traveling Lego Cowboy.
When I woke up I headed out onto the road, on my way towards Maricopa, Arizona, my next stop along the way. It took about eleven hours in total so I arrived at about six-thirty after the two hour drop behind. The scenery along the way was probably the single greatest that I had ever experienced up until that time. There were the plains, the valleys, and the beautiful, never ending mountains that stretched far, far across the New Mexico and Arizona landscape. The colors would change, but the mountains just continued to spread.

Today I woke up and headed on out towards the Sonoran Desert National Monument, which is a tremendous area of land that is protected by some government agency of another; I don't really remember, except that it is a small area that is set apart from the rest of the desert, which spreads across most of southern Arizona and part of Texas and Mexico, but if you really want to know more, then you can look into it here: http://www.desertusa.com/du_sonoran.html
It was actually the most beautiful place I have ever been in my entire life. I had never had the urge to cry just from looking at a landscape before, but there it was, just staring me in the face. It's not even the beautiful cacti, or the colorful flowers growing everywhere. The best part was being there all by myself, staring at this great immensity in front of me, taking it all in. It was perfect. Had it been just a little bit cooler, it would definitely have been perfect. My sun spots decided to return today because of how hot it was, so now it looks like I have some sort of crazy rash or leprosy or something... It's my last night here and then off to bigger and better things tomorrow. It's been hot, but fun.

Peaks rise towards the sun,
and the plants follow right behind.
Soon the smoke will rise
from my signal fire to you.