Originally Posted by crockett

I've traveled around Texas a little over a month while on my extended vacation from normal life. I've now finally moved on to New Mexico but one thing that has been a real eye opener is how bad the drought in the south west actually is.

If you look on Google maps or if you are lucky enough to find a river on Apple maps it's a pretty good chance that the river is not there anymore, but only a dried up rocky or even grass filled basin.

I like to kayak so I make it a point to go check out various rivers and lakes and many are simply not there. Only dried up places that used to contain water. Yesterday I drove through Big Spring, Tx and stopped at the town's name sake, "big spring" it was just a pool of old stagnate water. As I drove toward New Mexico on 87 then finally 180 there were miles and miles of farm land but every river and lake along the way was completely dry.

A few random pics from my cell phone, to show what it's like..


This was Buchanan Lake just north west of Austin from 2 days ago as I left Austin for the last time. I'm driving in the lake bed and that is a public boat ramp, obviously built to lauch boats but it hasn't in quite some time..