As we left the plains of Texas I was mentally prepared for more hilly terrain - but New Mexico surprised me a bit - with mountains. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains are quite a sight when driving from Las Vegas, New Mexico north to Taos, New Mexico. That was our favorite drive - very scenic, lots of warning signs: No trucks over 40 feet in length, High Snow Area, and my favorite - Watch For Snow Plows. We did see some snow, but not on the road, it’s too warm for any serious amount of snow, even at 5,000 feet above sea level.

This photo was snapped right before we left New Mexico, we were a short drive from the Arizona border. You can see the mesa in the background, the difference in landscape was significantly different between eastern and central New Mexico and the western edge.

The above photograph was taken on our way out of the Santa Fe National Forest. This was a twisty windy mountain road that eventually turned to dirt and then became a logging road. Lots of fun to drive, especially because we did not see any logging trucks. Kate has a video of me driving around one of the hairpin curves… it was too much fun.

And, last but not least - there was the hail storm. Our drive getting to Las Vegas on country roads was very interesting. There were large mountains and huge fields with the occasional cow or horse grazing, but mostly just mountains and grass for miles and miles. And then we saw a rain cloud that kept getting bigger and bigger. And then it started raining. Lightly, then harder, and then the rain turned to hail. And it was loud. Very very loud. We stopped at one point to see if it would just pass over us, but the storm wasn’t moving very quickly and we all wanted to be done with the hail, so we just kept going. I managed to take this photo while we were stopped, the hail was bouncing off of the ground and collecting - in no hurry to melt. Luckily there were no other cars around, so we could just concentrate on the road and the hail. One of our more stressful driving experiences, but we survived.