Random observations:

Did you see the moon tonight? The slenderest crescent, with the dark portion of the moon faintly illuminated by Earthshine. It reminded me of the eclipse yesterday, when it neared totality.

This trip has made me realize that all motel and hotel rooms now have tile instead of carpet. Brown, woodgrain tile - all of them.

In the Great Wide Open you can see weather coming from a long way away. You get a glimpse of your future. We drove a long way today, from Junction TX to Sierra Vista AZ, and the weather caught us once. I-10 was under construction and we were headed uphill when a thunderstorm dumped rain, then snow, on us travelers. It wasn't a lot of snow, but it was enough to make the tires spin when you used the accelerator. The slushy texture of the snow on the road made steering approximate instead of exact. Tense moments.

Later rainstorms were more distant and kind of picturesque, actually. And the landscape out the window was kind of interesting, too.

When we started out from Junction, the goal was Las Cruces, NM. we watched the green, fertile landscape around Junction gradually fade to desert around Fort Stockton. In that part of Texas, topsoil is pretty shallow, with thick layers of limestone rock just beneath. The structure is revealed in every highway cut. We pressed on through the mesas and scrublands. At about the time that we navigated the lane closures and construction in El Paso, Patrick said, "I have a lot of juice left. What towns are after Las Cruces?" I mentioned Deming and Lordsburg. He decided we would skip an overnight stay and go to Lordsburg, that much farther along the path to home. When we got to Lordsburg he said, "Hey, what about that place you wanted to go birding in Arizona?" Which is how we ended up watching the slender crescent moon on our way to Sierra Vista. 750 miles today. I did some driving, but Pat did most of it.

Tomorrow morning we'll present ourselves at the gate of Fort Huachuca and seek permission to go to Garden Canyon, on the base, to search for some of the rarities that are found in Southeast Arizona but nowhere else in the U.S. Wish us luck.