God's country

this is how you are welcomed in the city of hondo (or rather, the street of hondo, as it was just one street we drove through, with some houses here and there..)... to me its just interesting that so far, texas has the highest speed limit i have seen in the us (75 miles per hour! while around boston its often 55...)

Texan desert

this morning we left san antonio and took highway 90. after i had done some reading online last night, i had high expectations. and... we were not disappointed; it was beautiful. so much desert!! and such an ever-changing landscape. here and there a teeny tiny town, with many abandoned buildings... the nature was a whole lot better, whenever there seemed to be some humans around, there was also a lot of old crap; from cars to barns to entire houses....  the roads were perfect and there were not too many cars. we stopped here and there to take some pictures, and i also took a lot while driving. i just had to think of those cowboys in the early days, going through this empty, so very empty country!! at least at this time of the year its not soaring hot, as im sure it will be during summer.... (we didnt wear our jackets, but it was a little chilly when outside). we passed creek after creek, but all the riverbeds were empty...

eventually we stopped in alpine, which is surrounded by several hotels (luckily for us, several were pretty full already!), and also by an interesting mountain landscape...

ah, along the way we also got checked by the border patrol (along the road we saw 2 inspection stations, i guess because we were close to mexico), but everything was fine after showing our passports...

now its time to sleep again, seeing so much beauty is tiring... ; ) we havent fully decided how to drive tomorrow, and we still havent left texas......