If you’ve never had the chance to drive across and experience the Southwest region of the United States, you owe it to yourself to do it at least once in your lifetime. The sheer magnitude of the sky and the endless vistas that unfold in front of you are humbling, inspiring and exciting, all at the same time. You can’t really imagine the scale until you see it for yourself.
The state of Texas alone is unbelievably huge, and though somewhat uninteresting and flat for hundreds of miles, there is something fascinating in the amount of emptiness and desolation – the state of Texas is roughly the size of France but the western half of the state is very sparsely populated and filled with an almost eerie stillness (and little else). The drive across the state on Interstate Highway 10 is almost 900 miles, and the distance from Orange, Texas, in the southeast corner of the state to the city of El Paso is roughly the same distance as from Orange to Chicago!
Texas, however, is just the beginning. New Mexico and Arizona have much to offer and the distances between points of interest is not quite so great as in Texas. You could leave Taos, in northern of New Mexico in the morning and be in one of the hotels in Tucson, Arizona by evening, for instance, and though these two states are smaller than Texas, there is plenty to see and do in both. If you’ve never seen a real desert or witnessed a sunset over the Rocky Mountains, then you’ve missed out on a great deal of what the United States have to offer.
Texas, New Mexico and Arizona hotels abound on all the major highways and there are resorts, campgrounds and bed & breakfast facilities everywhere you go, making budget or luxury travel possible, depending on your budget. Do yourself a favor and plan your next holiday in the Great Southwest!