Leg 3 - Arizona

Greetings from Wickenburg, AZ! We arrived here late Friday night, after a marathon 14 hour drive from Abilene. Even though this was the longest leg, it was my favorite one. The first 7 hours of the drive were still in Texas, which was brutal, but still pretty neat. I loved seeing Texas change from huge cattle ranches to tons of oil drills as far as we could see, to a desert, hilly area. We made it to El Paso around lunchtime. This was another great area, because we were literally looking out the left window to Mexico, and out the right window to the U.S. At the Mexican border there is a massive Mexican flag, and beyond that we could see the city of Juarez, which seemed significantly less prosperous than El Paso. 

After stopping briefly in El Paso, we headed out to New Mexico, where we drove through the Continental Divide, and were warned by multiple road signs of extreme dust storms. Luckily, we didn't run into any, but we did see funnel clouds of dust in the distance. 

We arrived in Arizona (which was officially 2 hours behind Abilene, since it is in the Mountain Time Zone but doesn't recognize Daylight Savings Time) around 3:00. We drove through Benson, Tombstone, Tucson, and Phoenix, before reaching Wickenburg around 7:30. My parents were nice enough to let us stay at their house out here this weekend, so we are enjoying ourselves, and getting used to the beautiful, cloudless, 95 degree weather. It's wonderful! We are heading out to California tomorrow, to Yucca Valley. As soon as we get email access again, I'll give an update. Thanks everyone for keeping in touch!

Pic of the post - what got us through the long Texas ride - the best speed limit ever!