El Paso Drive

This morning started quite early for me -- about 6:00 am in El Paso. I woke to plenty of snow on the ground. Being from Phoenix, seeing live snow is quite a treat, and I was sure that the girls would enjoy seeing and playing in the snow. I snapped a couple of photos of the snow.
















We got on the road for our drive back to Phoenix at exactly 12:01pm (we had planned to leave at 12 noon -- so we were right on time). The drive across the desert southwest is anything but exciting. The only solace from the monotony of driving is that the speed limit on most of the drive is 75 mph -- which means that you are pretty safe up to 80 to 85 mph, although on some stretches even that speed feels like you aren't even moving.

The drive carries us through a few towns -- Mesilla and Las Cruces, NM; Lordsburg, NM right at the AZ/NM border, and then in Arizona -- Willcox, Benson, Tucson, Casa Grande, and then Phoenix. Click Here for a map of the drive. Door to door -- it takes about 7 hours, and it is 459 miles. With good mileage, our car will get about 450 miles to a tank, but we did this drive on one tank, and the low gas light came on just outside of Phoenix. (I ignored it for 20 miles until Lisa noticed it.)

The only other saving grace for our El Paso drives with the kids is the in-car DVD player and satelite radio. A couple of movies for the kids and Lisa and I can listen to good music without station searching or shuffling CDs.