5/21/13: Tuesday, Chasing the Big Sunrise. Driving eastward is chasing the sunrise.
   Between Van Horn and Sonora, the country was at first nearly flat, with just a long, gentle roll very like long, low swells on a calm ocean. Very few mesas and tablelands visible from I10. How appropriate for an ancient seabed! I wonder what Permian treasures lie locked in its layers. But the landscape was also scorched brown, with little except small shrubs and grasses.
   Around Fort Stockton, the mesas became larger and more numerous, and the tablelands became more extensive. Burrowing eastward between road cuts, I could see that the sedimentary layers were as horizontal as layers in a cake made by Martha Stewart! Nothing as unmannerly as subduction or orogeny seems to have intruded here.
   The farther east I got, the greener the countryside became -- for now, I suppose. Small trees began to appear and then grew more numerous the nearer I got to Sonora, until the landscape appeared almost lush compared to where I'd been. Patches and then carpets of yellow wildflowers brightened the median and shoulders.
   Now I'm in the Caverns of Sonora RV Park -- very pretty and lively, with lots of oaks and sycamores, wildflowers, and domestic birds: guinea fowl, peacocks, maybe pheasants. Ed should be here to get the peacocks to sound off. A big, fat ground squirrel stopped to sit up and stare at me: "So, where's the handout for adorable moi?"
   If there's wifi here, you could fool me. Probably just semaphore.