This morning I was determined to get the fire going. With some sunlight, it was easy to see the fallen braches to pick up and cactus to avoid. By now, even our paper towels were damp, so it was even harder to get the kindling to light. It just sort of smoldered and went out until I shredded it into tiny pieces and piled them up lightly so that more air could get in. It must've been funny to watch two city-boys from NY with laptops running, trying to start a simple campfire. When we got it going we had a feast of smoked sausages and soup for brekky.

Not far from our campsite is a ginormous outcropping of granite begging to be climbed. So of course, we packed our backpacks with water, I covered myself in sunscreen, and off we went. All around the horizon, we could see similar rock formations cropping out of the hills. Though we were warned about the rattlesnakes, we didn't see any.

Our Campsite	Brekky	Matt preferred using a stick...	The hawks were circling
Tiny little people	Watch out for these nasty little guys...	James and the giant rocks.	Big balancing rock
Boulders on hillside	Strange shapes	Split	About halfway up
Another hill	That one looks much harder to climb	Almost there...	At the summit
Panoramic 1	Panoramic 2	Panoramic 3	Panoramic 4
Reflection	Skipping stones	The same giant rocks (in center) looking tiny in proportion	"Heavy backpack" or, "Matt needs a V8"
Lizard

Then it got completely flat, with horizontally striped plateaus. I think they filmed most of the roadrunner cartoons here:

Leaving Hill Country	Roadrunner landscapes	Windmills in distance	Windfarming
Driving into the sky	And then Texas got flat...	I mean REALLY flat	Into the sunset

After a long drive of nothing but flat desert and alfalfa fields, some lights appeared on the horizon, and we found ourselves in Roswell, New Mexico, famous for the 1947 alien spacecraft crash site and the annual festival which commemorates it. It was getting dark, so we decided to save the UFO stuff for tomorrow. We managed to find a cheap place with high-speed wireless internet access, walking distance to Farley's Pub. They card everyone and even sell T-shirts with the slogan, "No ID? Drink Iced Tea!" They had a flying saucer hanging from the ceiling, and movie posters on the walls of, "Plan Nine from Outer Space," "When Planets Collide," and our favorite, "El Superhombre!"

Entering Roswell

UFO Museum