Leaving Home

Once we got our car, and loaded it up, it was time to say our goodbyes and hit the road.

From Houston we drove West. 13 hours later we were in El Paso which is the western most city in Texas, and also 15 minutes from the Mexican border.

Being a clutter freak, I didn't want to have a zillion CD's in the car. So I bought one of the new Video Ipods and uploaded all our favorite songs onto it. I think it had like 14 hours of music or something. I had also got an FM transmitter so that we could listen to the Ipod over the car speakers. Technology is pretty cool nowadays.

Our Tomtom GPS navigation system worked beautifully as well. It took us straight to our hotel with no wrong turns or missing directions. 100 times better than mapquest. If you do a lot of driving to new places or addresses you must get one of these. It's the Tomtom300. It'll cost you about $500 online but it was totally worth it.

One of the great thing about it is it will tell you what restaurants are nearby. So whenever we had to go to the bathroom and there weren't any rest stops around, we would look for a McDonald's or similar fast food place. It also has a list of tourist attractions, stores, libraries, universities, gas stations, and many other points of interest.

After we passed San Antonio, there wasn't much to see. Just desert. It's amazing to see so much empty land just sitting there. Miles and miles of nothing. As far as you can see. Living in the city, you assume there are people everywhere. But there aren't. Good thing we had a new car. I wouldn't want to get stuck out there.