Today was another crazy driving day. Woke up early and hit the pavement hard... Made 957 miles in 13.5 hours today and am currently in Gallup, New Mexico. Crazy to think that yesterday morning I was in Winston-Salem, NC! But hey, it was well worth it, because now I have a lot of time to enjoy this area of the country, which was the intention. No more psycho driving days, yay!

Leaving Arkansas was nice, that state was lacking... Oklahoma wasn't that bad and OK City was bigger than I expected. After passing OKC though, the state is wide open plains and pretty boring.

Texas wasn't much to write home about, but I only passed through a small part of it. Amarillo was pretty crazy though. This place had a HUGE sign for just about everything. Restaurant, gas station, homeless person, whatever. Does everything have to be bigger in Texas because Texans can't read? I don't get it, but it was sign overload. The Big Texan offered a free 72 oz steak dinner, if you could finish it in an hour. I passed on that one, and the rest of the state.

New Mexico started out pretty boring as well, but I'm now in the Mountain Time Zone. However, once you get just outside of Albuquerque, there is a really nice mountain range and the rock formations start popping up. Combining this with the sun starting to set made for a really nice end to a long day of driving.

I'm pumped that I got all this driving out of the way ahead of my planned schedule. Tomorrow I'm going to check out the 4 corners and the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert. Finally some national park action! I also spoke with a relative of mine, Spencer, and am going to meet up with him and a few other people in Phoenix Saturday night. I haven't seen any of these guys in a while, and I've never been to Phoenix, so this should make for a fun night.

After that, I'm looking at probably skydiving Sunday in Eloy or maybe a stop in Vegas. Joshua Tree National Park Monday, maybe Tuesday. And then maybe LA before Mammoth. But all that is TBD.

Good times so far, better ones ahead!